OK, now it is time to work on photo editing! Seeing as I do not have Photoshop, I'm super exited that RMC does! The computer lab will be my new friend, and I plan on trying to edit all my photos from over the summer! Dave mentioned that using RAW pictures was a good thing to do, so I'm very happy almost all the photos I took since I bought my camera have been in RAW format!

Alright! My plan was to edit these two photos as my first attempt at learning how to use editing programs, sadly I was not paying much attention when trying to get these to RMC and only have JPG instead of RAW to work with....My plan is to later (once I figure things out) edit the same photos using RAW photos, and edit this blog post to show before and afters. This should be fun! I can't wait to see how badly I can mess these photos up on my first go at it!

Since school has started, I'm beginning to miss the mountains very much. I've been so busy with work and life in general that I haven't been able to get out and enjoy what I love. I decided to look through some photos of a few backpacking trips I went on over the summer and noticed that I was at many very beautiful streams and did not photograph them to all of their potential. I'm hoping that next weekend I'll be able to get out and go for a hike, and most of all practice my photography of moving water! I really want to get some softened streams or waterfalls, as well as work on staging a scene, like removing twigs from the background and maybe even tossing a few leaves in the water to 'spice' things up a bit.

Above are some pictures I took in the Crazy Mountains on the way to Thunder Lake. My pictures do nothing to capture how awesome a place this was. I want to be able to look at something like this, and take my time figuring out where and from what angle I should use to make a pleasing photograph. If I had a polarizing filter, had softened the water, and included some sky (as well as had a tripod) this might have turned out slightly better.  

This is a picture of my friend as we arrived at the base of our climb that would lead us to the top of Spirit Mountain. We were 10 miles away from our car, no sight of civilization, and The Bear's Tooth was towering above us in the distance! The whole experience was absolutely amazing, and I wanted to capture the moment, but wouldn't you know it...I had no idea about depth of field. I have a nice focused picture of my friend Justin, but the beautiful background looks like junk (can you say "way to blow it!"?). I really want to be able to take in focus landscapes, and in focus photos of my friends and I on top of the mountains we climb. I need some work on depth of field, so about an hour ago I went out shooting for practice!

Tonight's model was a really cool looking tree on the Laurel Golf Course's grounds. I took plenty of photos from many different angles, I used different F-stop settings, as well as shutter speeds. I also have a polarizing filter, so I took some with, and some without the filter. I'm really happy with the results, although it's not really the most artistic photo, the tree as a whole is in focus!

I love nature, but I'm starting to realize I love still things the most. I had fun trying to find the right tree to shoot, and was able to scope out a perfect apple tree I want to make my next target. Can't wait to shoot again and continue practicing!

Monday night, I decided to go for a walk by the Yellowstone (accessed off of Duck Creek Rd.) I was attempting to take photos of leaves in the sand, and also a somewhat disgruntled painted turtle. Of course I was unable to capture what I could see in my mind...however, the sun setting was absolutely beautiful! I played around with my exposures, and out of about 100 shots I found this one to be the "best" (I use that lightly) At the time I did not notice, but now I see that very annoying telephone pole in the background, I definitively want to try and get a great sunset shot, void of any modern distraction (such as that telephone pole). I quickly decided to search the web, and see what I could find for sunset tips, or photos to use as inspiration. I found these photos very pleasant, and the web site a fun place to explore.http://www.photographyblogger.net/beautiful-sunset-pictures/