Posted on June 3, 2016
The original image for this month’s One Photo Focus was taken by David Croker and is a lovely shot of peaceful serenity; who doesn’t like the combination of sky, water and reflections?

The only problem with this original is that the air of tranquility is jarred somewhat by the electricity pylons running right across the horizon. I realise that it’s possible to remove such intrusions through various photo editing programs,including Photoshop, which I have myself, but it looks like a very painstaking exercise, particularly if (a) you haven’t done it before and (b) when there are not only wires but also the pylons to be erased.
Then I recalled that for a WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge some time ago, with the theme of ‘Dreamy‘, I had used a reflected image to get the dreamlike look that the assignment called for, and I thought it had worked quite well.
Accordingly, I adopted the same principle for this One Photo Focus, to produce this:

Here’s what I did:
I’m quite pleased with the dreamy, painting-y effect of this revised version
Category: Before & After Tagged: ABFriday, Blur, Clouds, Editing, Inversion, One Photo Focus, Reflections, Sky, Water
Posted on June 6, 2015
Here’s one I’d completely forgotten about. This was taken with a compact camera at my daughter’s wedding reception almost ten years ago. Technically, of course, it’s a shocker (the metadata tells me that the exposure was half a second).
In mitigation, though, it was getting quite late by then and a fair amount of champagne had been consumed. Plus the composition – quite accidentally, of course – is quite pleasing.
And it’s nothing if not vivid.
Category: Weekly Photo Challenge Tagged: Blur, compact camera, Vivid, Wedding, Wedding Reception, Weekly Photo Challenge, weeklyphotochallenge
Posted on April 4, 2015
This image was taken as part of an assignment on a ‘Beginners’ photography course I took in Abu Dhabi. The technique involves mounting a camera with a zoom lens on a tripod, setting a long exposure and then rotating the zoom while taking the picture. Obviously it works best at night, as here, and it does provide some vey arresting, Matrix-like images.
WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge: Blur
Category: Weekly Photo Challenge Tagged: Abstract, Abu Dhabi, Blur, Night, Weekly Photo Challenge, weeklyphotochallenge, Zoom