Tag: Gimp 2.8

Long Bay Regional Park

One thing about New Zealand is you are never very far from the sea. Even inland areas are within a few hours driving. We actually have the 10th longest coastline in the world! Today’s image was taken on my Sony yesterday during my visit to Long Bay Regional Park. For anyone visiting the area, Long Bay is enormously popular in Summer as it has a long beach line and grassed area where families can set up for the day, groups can play sports, and all can cool off in the calm waters. It also has several bush and cliff top walks for those who don’t want to just laze in the sun.  To top it off, the park has a decent number of BBQ’s for cooking up some sausages, steaks or what have you at lunch time. If you do come in the summer, aim to come early as car parks, although a lot of them, become scarce by late morning.

 

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Into the Storm

As I often state on weekdays, I just managed to get a bit of light after work on the way home. I had packed my Nex and its new lens into my bag, hoping to give it a test out. Whilst I did manage that, and got some nice shots (and some flat sundown ones) I wanted to post up something different to my usual nature/landscape. With the lens at 210mm I set about looking for some wildlife. It proved quite still and dull overall tonight.

Just as I was heading back to the car a few seagulls approached and I managed to get off a few shots. With low light and a long lens the autofocus just missed a number of shots, but I did like this one of the bird heading ‘into the storm’.

In post processing using Gimp all I did was push the contrast to make it look more menacing than it actually was. Shot at 210mm, 1/400sec at 1250iso the push also revealed the digital grain of the image. I’m a grain fan in photos (that old film appeal) so am happy letting it sit.

In about 3 weeks I’m off to Fiji for a week, which is pretty exciting as I have never been there. My current dilemma is do I take a bag full of cameras and lenses, or travel more lightweight (with the added benefit of not carrying so much money investment!). I’m leaning towards taking my Ricoh GRD and my Rollei 35. I’ll also have my smart phone to hopefully post a snap each day also. When I went to the South Island last year I only had my Ricoh and Mju 35mm – I think the compact allows you to travel with ease and think more about how to capture the image. What do you all do?

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Dark Forest River

Today’s image, ‘Dark Forest River’ came about from a second (with daylight and more time) walk through Smiths Bush today. Just before we entered there was a massive heavy downpour of rain, which resulted in some beautiful glistening, and flooded portions of the track. A small stream had widened quite a bit sine a few days ago and I took a few shots looking up it.

Armed with both digital and film, I managed to finish off a roll in my Rollei 35 today. I’ve been shooting the 100 as 800Asa, more for a push developing experiment as I have not tried that before. Fingers crossed I will have something to show you all for it some time later this week.

Using Gimp in post processing I first converted to B&W, then manipulated the image by squishing and stretching it a little and adding the black frame-lines to give us a bit of a ‘cinematographic feel’. I like the end result.

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Mt. Victoria Mushrooms

On the summit of Mt Victoria sit a patch of giant mushrooms. Big red mushrooms with white dots. Actually ventilation ducts, the ‘mushrooms’ have been painted multiple times over the decades, and make an intersting site for people visiting the Mt Victoria to get a view of the North Shore, town, and Rangitoto (in the background of my image). I believe originally they were painted by a local Devonport artist, her boyfriend and his mate – it featured in a local paper article many years ago.

Being the oddity they are, I wanted to highlight them in todays image. After taking the image on the GRD, I desaturated all but the mushrooms in Gimp. I then slightly tweaked the sharpness and contrast to get the most out of the mixed color/B&W image.

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Natures Paintbrush

As one would gather scrolling through my posts, I take a lot of still life and nature type photographs. This may be in nature itself, or capturing a street void of people. I actually enjoy taking pictures of people and events also, but I think I often use my photography time as my own little time-out or quiet time to (in the week at least) break from the day to day roles our work puts us under.

Looking at todays image, what you wouldn’t know is that I was standing over a busy motorway with a good amount of people walking by on their way home. Titles ‘Natures Paintbrush’ I love the color todays sunset had, and the sweeping cirrus type clouds that look like they are converging upon the setting sun.

Shot with the Ricoh and cropped to remove some of the foreground in Gimp. One more day till the weekend!

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Blue Windows in the Sky

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I stopped in at Takapuna on the way home from work today for a stroll, Ricoh in hand. It was a beautiful clear blue evening, with the moon already up. The Sentinel, a 30 story apartment building in central Takapuna uses blue tint windows, and I liked the overall blue hue I got in this image. Being the biggest building in the Area, you can also capture it in the sky unhindered by other buildings.

Coming home and reducing the image size for the web I was happy to see Gimp has finally released the 2.8 version of their great program. Its taken about 3 years to come about following 2.6 and now offers a single window interface. For people who want something that can in may ways (no not all I know) do all you need in Photoshop, but free-ware, I cant recommend Gimp enough. Overall my work flow shifted from CS4 to Gimp about 3 years ago. Its a bit of a learning curve transferring, but if you have never used either I don’t think it is any harder to pick up from scratch, will do all you ever want & has a massive community of developers adding to it + there is a version for every computer operating system (yet to get to smart phones)

Off for a short 3 day holiday tomorrow, so hopefully I will have some images from a different general location.

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