Pioneer Day

In Utah, we celebrate an extra holiday here in July -- Pioneer Day.  It's a part of the Latter Day Saint Culture, a reminder of the pioneers who journeyed across the land in search of a place where they could freely practice their religion.  There have been fireworks all weekend, so I thought in honor of that, I'd include some of my favorite fireworks shots over the years.  It's hardly my forte, but it's fun.

Nebula Ball Close-Ups

Here a few more from my recent nebula ball experiment.

Fun With Photoshop!

Okay, ordinarily I'm not much for doing a lot of photoshop work -- I feel that in most cases, if you can't get it right in-camera, you aren't much of a photographer.  There are certain basic, standard things I'll do (particularly for my wedding clients) but I won't even touch a photo unless it was decent to begin with.

But...some things are just too fun to pass up!  In browsing random photos online, I found a guy who "created" outer-space shots by using a fiber-optic lamp and combining long-exposure images in Photoshop.  I thought it might just be fun to try.  I opted for using my plasma ball instead of the fiber-optic lamp, just for my own unique spin on it.  Then I used some creative cloning effects to expand the original image of the plasma ball and create some neat shapes, then added "stars" by using different sizes of lens flares in Photoshop.  The result was a lot of fun.  I even got further into the fun of things and tried some creative options in Picnik.

Now I just need to get the chance to photograph ACTUAL images of outer space!  ;-)

Here is a close-up of the original image, and then the photo art I created -- a nebula-type piece, a birthplace of stars.

That was my initial Photoshop work.  Then I did several options in Picnik.

Finally, I combined the larger images into one final conglomeration to create my favorite image.