Happy Birthday Mark.  I took this image when Mark was at home a few days ago.  He came over for the evening as he had a couple of appointments with some people in Dubuque.  He is doing an Internship for his Business degree and so he was here long enough to say hi, grab some home cooking and then because of the impending snow storm he took off back to Cedar Falls.  Today is his 22nd birthday.  Doesn’t seem possible but time marches on.

I took my camera to this week’s Rotary meeting.  In years past I used to do the Rotary website and I would take my camera to every meeting and do a feature on the day’s program.  I no longer do the website so no need to take a camera.  However we have a Rotarian who recently turned 90 and he is the first one to volunteer for any project.  Dr. Bud Bernard is a remarkable gentleman and Rotarian and so I decided since I’ve been in a shooting slump I would take some images of him and do a little story about him.

Well wouldn’t you know that this was one of the few times he wasn’t at Rotary.  So since I had my camera I decided to make some images of our speaker for the day and that is the image above.  Nice lady, very knowledgeable and had a very interesting presentation.  She works for the Jackson County Soil & Water Conservation District.  Rain or shine, snow or hail, when the DNR wants some water or soil tested she does it.  During the last snow storm she had to go out and test some of the streams for salt contamination.    As you can see my skills as a photographer are impeccable.  🙂

This is the RAW image as it came out of the camera.  I didn’t look at any of the images, just snapped away.  I shot three images.  Two of them she had her eyes closed.  Only on the last one (just below) she had her eyes open.  What to do.  I didn’t want to display my terrible photography skills on the Rotary website!!  Photoshop to the rescue.

Anyway the point of this whole discussion is Photoshop.  It is one of the most complex and robust pieces of software on the market today.  I have read many books, taken many on-line courses, and practiced countless hours (ask Jeanne, she’ll tell you) and on a scale of 1 – 10 I’m probably (if I’m generous) at a level 5 in competence when it comes to my skills with Photoshop.  Having said that when I got back to the office The gentleman who does the Rotary website asked me if I would send him the images I took of the speaker.  Well as you can see the one I had that showed her presentation was pretty bad.

So I had to make a selection on the close up of the speaker.  Transfer that to the image with the poster.  Blend the two colors, shrink the head and make it work.  Now that you’ve seen it you might say, that’s a lousy job.  But if I had only shown you the finished product you would not have known.  In fact I received several compliments on the photo that was posted on the Rotary website.  Anyway, never trust a photo 🙂

Thanks for stopping by.  I haven’t been blogging much.  Lots of meetings and work going on, lack of shooting time and quality images have limited my blogging.  I’m working at getting more reliable on blogging and taking better images.  Enjoy your day and be careful.