It’s been a slow couple of months for photography.  For one thing, I’ve been working crazy hours (again).  For another, it’s been HOT.  The birds aren’t as active in late summer, and I just haven’t had time to get out with the camera.   But I have had fun playing with some old images in my “digital lightroom.”  It can be fun to apply filters and effects to images.  Usually Rich looks at them and says, “that’s nice.”  (Translation: he doesn’t like it, but he won’t say so.)  Occasionally, he looks at my screen and lets out a “Wow!”  (No translation required!)

So here’s the challenge of today’s blog post: identify which photo(s) below made Rich go “wow!”  Leave me a comment if any of these tickle your fancy. :)

This was a summer sunrise from June, taken on the beach near St. Augustine.  I experimented with a combination of Fractalius and Nik Color Efex Pro to create this artistic rendering.

These were some of my purple hydrangeas from the backyard this summer.  Hydrangeas will bloom either pink or blue depending on the pH of your soil, and I’m fortunate to have flowers in all colors: pink, blue, and purple.  I think this was an in-camera multiple exposure using my 5D Mark III.  I enhanced the color tones in Nik.

It’s been a while since I processed some of these!  I believe this one was an in-camera blur in my backyard.  I panned horizontally as I made the image.  Then I processed the image in Flaming Pear’s Flexify filter.  I think there’s a round of Fractalius in there, too.

This Dahlia was an in-camera multiple exposure using my 5D Mark III.  I love that camera!  I enhanced the colors in Color Efex Pro.

I loved this image of the Burrowing Owl, but the background seemed to dominate in the original.  So I ran it through Topaz, then added an overlay to mix it with the original, then ran the whole thing through Fractalius.  I liked how it de-emphasized the background and brought out the bird.

Finally, this African Iris was done using so many filters that I don’t even remember them all!  I know Nik “Solarize” was in there somewhere, and some Topaz too.  Rich loves to make fun of me photographing the African Irises.  Every time he walks past a flowering bush of them, he whispers to me, “Freeze me!”  (alluding to my early frozen flower experiments, in which more than one African Iris met a very cold end for the sake of my lens).  Come to think of it, maybe it’s time to start another round of frozen flower experiments.  Maybe some cold ice will help bring on the fall weather! :)