More Colorado Vacation Photos

Well, you can't tell from this photo, but these icicles were HUGE! Several of them were 2 or 3 feet long, hanging from the eaves of the condo where we stayed in Frisco, CO. This was a fun opportunity I had to work with the 50mm/1.8 that I had just bought from one of my friends. I also had fun playing with the shutter speed, which I was reading about at the time in Bryan Peterson's book, Understanding Exposure. You can see I was successful in catching a few water droplets as the icicles started melting in the afternoon sunlight. This and the other photos in this post were also my guinea pigs for Photoshop layer blend modes. All photos were slightly processed in Camera RAW, then all contrast and color enhancement was done with various layer blending modes. I believe the icicle photo was blended with the Multiply mode, which dramatically improved the contrast, making the icicles stand out.

This jeep just looked like it belonged in the Colorado mountains, especially with the 8'-12' piles of plowed snow that lined the neighborhood streets. I used the Overlay blending mode to punch up the colors and contrast. I also cloned out a basketball net at the top of the photo right over the middle of the jeep's roof... can you tell?? I currently have a love/hate relationship with the clone stamp tool--I love what it is capable of doing for my photos, and I hate that I'm not very good at using it yet.

This is my husband, complete with full winter beard, standing on a bridge that is close to the condo. I think I used both a screen layer and an overlay layer, both at lowered opacities, to get the color and contrast right on this one. I'm also fairly certain I used this same method on the photo below. This little bird was flying around our gate at the Detroit airport while we were hanging out during our layover. It got away quickly, but I managed to snag a couple of shots first.