"Spread Your Wings & Fly"

Good evening folks, today was not a good day for me pain wise and really didn't think I was going to be able to come through with a fresh image. But I decided to play around with some macro captures to try and take my mind off being uncomfortable since macro photography takes a lot of concentration in order to get the detail & DOF right. I roamed the house for a while trying to find something fresh that I haven't shot yet to no avail, so I headed outside into my car, everything I shot looked bad to me so I headed back inside then my little buddy 'Oreo' helped me find this very small feather hidden in a dried flower arrangement I have by the front door by rubbing against it and drawing my attention to it LOL

I opened the front door for some natural light and used the bronze door plate as my background to reflect the multi-colored bushes I have out front into the lens which caused the funky colors you see here. The feather is VERY small, about the thickness of a pencil so I got up CLOSE about 3" away and started dialing in the focus hand held. I should have grabbed my tripod but I just wasn't thinking clearly. I shot a dozen frames and headed into Lightroom 2 to see what I had. To my surprise I had a few with decent detail and great DOF so I processed the RAW file then slid over to CS3 for some final touches. I hit it with a small dose of NIK Color Efex BRILLIANT & WARM filter to bring the background colors up a bit, a small dose of sharpening and then gave it the edge frame with OnOne Pro Frames to give it some outside life so the eye would be drawn towards the in focus part of the feather.

The title comes from me wanting to Spread My Wings & Fly Away because I wasn't feeling well. I am doing a little better now but still not too happy so I just took my night pill and plan on laying down for a bit and catching up on some TV programs I have recorded. I'll try to catch up on today's comments in the morning so have wonderful Thursday everyone, may it be a prosperous one for all of you !

~Bill~

"Spread Your Wings & Fly"

Good evening folks, today was not a good day for me pain wise and really didn't think I was going to be able to come through with a fresh image. But I decided to play around with some macro captures to try and take my mind off being uncomfortable since macro photography takes a lot of concentration in order to get the detail & DOF right. I roamed the house for a while trying to find something fresh that I haven't shot yet to no avail, so I headed outside into my car, everything I shot looked bad to me so I headed back inside then my little buddy 'Oreo' helped me find this very small feather hidden in a dried flower arrangement I have by the front door by rubbing against it and drawing my attention to it LOL

I opened the front door for some natural light and used the bronze door plate as my background to reflect the multi-colored bushes I have out front into the lens which caused the funky colors you see here. The feather is VERY small, about the thickness of a pencil so I got up CLOSE about 3" away and started dialing in the focus hand held. I should have grabbed my tripod but I just wasn't thinking clearly. I shot a dozen frames and headed into Lightroom 2 to see what I had. To my surprise I had a few with decent detail and great DOF so I processed the RAW file then slid over to CS3 for some final touches. I hit it with a small dose of NIK Color Efex BRILLIANT & WARM filter to bring the background colors up a bit, a small dose of sharpening and then gave it the edge frame with OnOne Pro Frames to give it some outside life so the eye would be drawn towards the in focus part of the feather.

The title comes from me wanting to Spread My Wings & Fly Away because I wasn't feeling well. I am doing a little better now but still not too happy so I just took my night pill and plan on laying down for a bit and catching up on some TV programs I have recorded. I'll try to catch up on today's comments in the morning so have wonderful Thursday everyone, may it be a prosperous one for all of you !

~Bill~