My first post...

Hello world....sorry but as a developer geek I have to start there since this is my first post to this blog. I have been asked to try and contribute occasionally to support DPS (as we tend call Delaware Photographic Society) which is my home photo club - and a great one at that.

I have been thinking about what might interest the wide world out there and since I am one of the club's Photoshop folks I am thinking maybe I might post about assigned subject or creative images I've made for our club internal competitions and other purposes.I'll start with a simple one to get things rolling.


This shot is titled "Focus" and a larger version can be seen here. It was taken for an assigned subject competition with the subject of "Selective Focus". It is a macro shot using a 50mm f/1.4 lens on an 8mm extension tube and I actually had to stop down a bit to get the foreground and background text at a sensible level of out-of-focus. At a fully open f/1.4 the text was so blurred it was almost not visible. I used a focus rail on a tripod to mount the camera to ensure a sharp image...exposure was 0.1 secs using available light.

Post-processing here was simple. Color balance and initial sharpness were adjusted using Adobe Camera Raw then some gentle noise reduction with an edgemask to protect the edges. Some gentle color correction and contrast enhancement then gave me my "digital negative". Creative additions consisted of some selective shadows (in the foreground and background) and selective sharpening (in the centre) to further emphasize the main subject...the word 'Focus'.

OK...we'll see how this goes and watch this space for more in the future.

Al G