The tour was not only terrific fun... I learned an incredible amount of tricks, tips and techniques for post processing. Improved post processing of my images has already resulted in increased attention to my posts on both Flickr and Facebook.
Some of the MOST fun was discovering iPhoneography... thanks to John and Dan, I've spent a few dollars on more applications (hereafter referred to as apps) for my iPhone, learned a few tricks to improve my ability to take pictures with it and had LOADS of fun with both taking pictures and processing the images after capturing them.
This collage has images from several different locations all over the area between Ouray, Silverton, Durango, South Fork, Creede and Fairplay, Colorado. All were taken with the Hipstamatic app set for Kodot film using the John S lens.
The center image is of a barn seen near Bayfield, CO (more on that later in this post); the phone booth was on the side of the Silver Thread highway not too far outside South Fork (you all do know what a phone booth is, right?). ;-) The cute house in the lower left was just as cute inside (the tenant moving in that day invited me in to see it when she saw me taking a picture of the outside), the Coca Cola cooler and assorted relics of bygone days were on the porch of the general store (closed on Sunday) in Creede, the Aspens were everywhere so I'm not at all sure where I took those two photos and the Shaft Restaurant is one of the two places in South Fork where I had dinner while staying at the Arbor House B&B there for two nights... I HIGHLY recommend staying at the Arbor House if you ever find yourself in South Fork. The rest of the images were all taken at the South Park Museum in Fairplay, Colorado, an open air museum set up to show how people lived in that area in the late 1800s. It was a fascinating place and I could have spent more time there if only I didn't have to drive to Denver to catch a plane home that day!
The center image is of a barn seen near Bayfield, CO (more on that later in this post); the phone booth was on the side of the Silver Thread highway not too far outside South Fork (you all do know what a phone booth is, right?). ;-) The cute house in the lower left was just as cute inside (the tenant moving in that day invited me in to see it when she saw me taking a picture of the outside), the Coca Cola cooler and assorted relics of bygone days were on the porch of the general store (closed on Sunday) in Creede, the Aspens were everywhere so I'm not at all sure where I took those two photos and the Shaft Restaurant is one of the two places in South Fork where I had dinner while staying at the Arbor House B&B there for two nights... I HIGHLY recommend staying at the Arbor House if you ever find yourself in South Fork. The rest of the images were all taken at the South Park Museum in Fairplay, Colorado, an open air museum set up to show how people lived in that area in the late 1800s. It was a fascinating place and I could have spent more time there if only I didn't have to drive to Denver to catch a plane home that day!
The next two collages show the steps in taking the red barn image from the original (taken with the Apple supplied iPhone Camera app set to take an HDR image) to a finished product through several steps.
The left image is the original, the right is after retouching (Retouch app) to remove the overhead wires and pole. (note that the entire image isn't visible in this collage but you will see it at the end)
The image on the left is the original image after processing with the AutoPainter app using the Benson effect (I may never pick up a paintbrush again); the center image is the result of blending the original (after retouching) with the AutoPainter image (50% opacity) using Iris; the image on the right is after cropping slightly, still in Iris.
The finished image after further cropping and a bit more tweaking in Iris.
PS - If you want to see another scenic image (taken with my Nikon D90) from Colorado and some more iPhone photos, visit the two most recent posts on my photography blog.
