Peachy Autumn Colors

Playin' around in Paint Shop Pro:

VM Toolbox Crystal Ball Filter/Plugin (Free):



VM Natural Lakeside Reflection Filter/Plugin (Free):



I love the peachy orange, gold and green leaf colors on these.

Cropped Original:



Kaleidoscope:

Pretty Colors

I'm not sure what kind of tree this was.
I thought maybe sumac, but I thought sumac leaves turned red in autumn?
Anyway, I was standing underneath it taking photos of the leaves hanging down around me.
The leaf colors were actually more muted greens and golds, but I pumped up colors and contrast and they turned rust and brilliant green.

Kaleidoscope:

Autumn Colors On Dirt Bike Trail

Right now, it's the perfect outdoor weather.
I love the autumn sun.
I love the cool crispy mornings.
I love the colors.
Is there anything I don't absolutely adore about autumn?
I don't think so.

Nothing I like better than to wander a new outdoor trail on a cool calm clear crispy autumn morning, with my camera, of course.

The trail:


But first,
Wild turkeys:

I thought the turkeys at alert attention with their heads in different directions made it such an interesting photograph. Perfect autumn leaves background too.
This was a situation where the DSLR gave a much richer higher quality photo than my little point and shoot. Not always that vast of difference between the two.

And then the climb up the steep hill:


Biker was going down the hill:


Pretty tree:


Sunshine in the trees:



More autumn colors:

Pretty Leaf Colors

I like the tree trunk background.


I like the blue sky showing through the leaf holes.

October Autumn

Got out for a photo walk. Perfect autumn day. Calm, Clear, Cool Crispy jacket weather.
Beautiful colorful autumn this year.
Still plenty of color out there, which is a little later than usual I think.
I'm glad.

Just pretty red:


At the right place at the right time:


Still some flowers out there:


These leaves were gorgeous in various stages of color. I call them gradient leaves.


This one house along the river always has something out for the different holidays and seasons:


Birds were active this day. I even managed to capture a chickadee photo since many of the trees don't have many leaves.
I saw robins, a sparrow, a woodpecker, and chickadees.


This is a not very good photo of a downy or hairy woodpecker. I'll post it because it's all I have so far of that bird.


Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens)
cornell
Downies and their larger lookalike, the Hairy Woodpecker, are one of the first identification challenges that beginning bird watchers master.
enature

Nifty Striped Clouds:


Pretty gold on the river:

Bench in a bed of leaves:

Autumn Photos And Super Harvest Moon

I was in Bismarck and some of the trees are so gorgeous I about went off the road gawking at them!
Crazy woman. :)
Some of the big trees are fully changed in color yet have all their leaves. Wow!

Here's a tele shot which captures the autumn splendor feeling I had.


Climbed the hill at Hillside Park for a city view.
(Can see the Capitol Bldg. from there.)



Virtual Tour



I'm at the dots furthest to the right, click on those, and it gives you panning views with skyscraper Capitol Bldg. (Made me a little woozy watching it). The park was redone summer 2009 and the only vehicle entrance now is off Boulevard Ave. Used to be able to drive up to that hillside view. Now you have to hike up there.

Still plenty green yet this year.
More color to come.

And further down the hill, tiny crab apples at my feet. (I think that's what they were.)


The moon was visible during part of the day, snapped that too.


Ah yes, a glorious autumn day, indeed.

How about some tunes with that:
Neil Young - Harvest Moon (1993)

What's up with the moon this time of year?

"Not since Sept. 23, 1991 has a full moon occurred on the same night as the fall equinox, and it won't happen again until 2029."

"...the Harvest Moon typically occurs a few days or weeks before or after the fall equinox. This year, though, the full moon occurs just six hours after the equinox, making it what Phillips called a Super Harvest Moon."

"The Harvest Moon gets its name from agriculture...farmers depended on bright moonlight to extend the workday beyond sunset."

(Quoting astronomer Tony Phillips.)

Why can I sometimes see the moon during daylight hours?
"The answer to your question has two parts: why is the moon VISIBLE during the day, and why is it even ABOVE THE HORIZON during daylight hours. ..."

"...there is one other object which is just BARELY bright enough to be visible in the daytime, besides the moon and sun: that's the planet Venus - the third brightest natural light source in the sky. ..."

Why does the Moon sometimes come out during the day?
"...think of the Sun as a large light bulb, and the moon as a large mirror..."

Autumn Palette In Photos

Finally got out for a photo walk, it's been a while, I missed it.

Autumn Palette:

Autumn Maples

We're having an odd autumn this year. First it got windy so the few leaves that had changed color blew away. Then in addition to the wind, it got overcast and rainy. And it's been pretty much like that for the last two or three weeks, which should have been peak autumn season here. I think it froze in spots as well, cuz the trees look a little sickly in some places. The leaves are shriveled and dark, like they are going to turn an ugly black brown instead of the usual pretty golds, reds, etc. Then, another weird thing is a lot of the trees haven't even turned color yet or still have green leaves. Today it's like 30 degrees, blustery, with a light dusting of snow on the ground. I think that might be a record cold temp set today.



About the only thing with pretty autumn colors around here are the maples. So I took some pics of those yesterday.

Over The Fence

Another Autumn pic from my 2007 photography archives.

Autumn Trees

I like this picture.
Don't know why I never posted it.
From my 2007 photography archives.
Just bumped up the colors with a Soft Light Layer.

Smudging Gradient Lines

I can view Word Perfect graphics (*.wpg) within Paint Shop Pro 9 Browser, and when I open one, PSP9 imports it as a Meta Picture Import with multiple polygon vector layers which can be turned on/off and edited.
Interesting to fiddle with sometimes.
(Photoshop, GIMP, IrfanView all failed at viewing and/or opening *.wpg format graphics.)

For example, here's the default import result, merged/resized for blog.


After my tweaks:


What I did:
1. I turned off the layer with that white blotch at the bottom right.
2. Applied Edge Preserving Smooth at 9. Just enough to smooth any jaggies, but not smooth the tree too much.
3. Finished smoothing the "gradient" lines with the smudge brush, starting with these settings and changing the Opacity and Brush Size as needed.



The smudge brush worked pretty good in this case.
In the past, when I wanted to smooth a gradient, I'd add a very small amount of noise and/or blur and that seemed to do the trick. But in this case, I needed something a little stronger. (The "gradients" were really merged polygon layers.) Gotta be careful and not smudge too much, but can easily undo.

4. Added Borders 10 and 2 wide.

Zen Art

Going thru my fonts, I found this zen-like one called Far East Font, and happened to actually read the text file that comes with it, which explains how to use it. I thought it was pretty clever, and no, I did not know that's how you use this font.

Soooo...Remember that smart blur, unsharp mask art idea I've been blogging about? Well the art posted above is that same technique.

This is the original photo (crappy, did not like it):



I ran smart blur, unsharp mask on it, lightened it a bit, then cropped parts I thought were interesting textures.
Then I fiddled some, maybe did some minor cloning, maybe flipped, mirrored, or rotated the image so the finished image would look good with the text on the side.
Add the Far East Font (read sideways), white and black borders.
And viola, my zen art.

I like it.
I did a bunch more, but these are my favs.

NOTE: I could have added some drop shadows to the borders to give it a little depth, but I was too lazy to go back a redo it.