Seaport Store at Night

Mystic, CT

Nighttime at the Seaport

Mystic, CT

Winter Evening Reflection

Mystic, CT

Winter has come early to Connecticut, as well as some other places across the US.  So far we've been spared the snow and ice of the first winter storms of the season, but the temperature has been well below normal this past week and we're expecting a bad storm this weekend.  The early setting sun behind these evening clouds made for this rather chilly reflection.  I'm linking this to Weekend Reflections where you can find many more reflections, hopefully much warmer than this one.  Have a nice weekend and thanks for looking.

Mystic at Night

Mystic, CT

Warning

East Hartford

Fellow Connecticut Blogger, Jack, who writes the blog "Naples and Hartford in Season" commented on the photo I posted yesterday of downtown Hartford.  Since he's very familiar with the Hartford area,  he knew exactly from where I took that picture.  He also knows what I learned from this sign.  It's a good thing I didn't park there too long...... 

Downtown Hartford

Great River Park, East Hartford

Rentshcler Field

East Hartford, CT

I actually had to do some work during the game, so I didn't want to bring in my D90.  I'm sure I could've produced this image with the D90, a good tripod and much post processing, stitching and image editing afterwards.  But, as they say, the best camera in the world, is the one you have with you, so this image was taken with my iPhone 4s using the pano feature of the camera.  Not too bad, if I do say so.

Game Day

East Hartford, CT

I'm not a big fan of UCONN football, but I did attend their last game of the season yesterday.  Temperatures didn't get out of the 30's during the game.  That's real football weather.  Although UCONN had a disappointing 3-9 season, they did end on a high note, winning their last 3 games, including yesterday's 45-10 win over the Memphis Tigers.

Sunrise in Madison

Madison, CT

Grist Mill

Old Mystic, CT

High Voltage

New London

Niantic River Rocks

Niantic, CT

I think rocks are often rendered pretty well in black and white.

Baylor Trucking

Somewhere Along I-80 in Pennsylvania

First Snow

Somewhere Along I-80 in Pennsylvania

We've had some snow flurries in Connecticut, but no real accumulation of snow yet, at least not in the area where I live.  Pretty soon however I won't have to travel to Pennsylvania to see scenes like this one.  It's only a matter of time.  

Black and White Exercise II

Here's another example of my exercise in trying to visualize scenes in black and white.  Again the first picture is the JPG, straight out of the camera with no post processing done.  Looking at it I thought it had possibilities.

The following is the RAW(NEF) picture with some minor curve adjustments made.  I normally optimize the RAW file to my liking before I convert to black and white. 

Finally, here's the final conversion using Nik Software's Silver Fx Pro.

At this point in my learning curve, I'm still not sure exactly what needs to be done to reach my final image in terms of curve adjustments, etc.  Silver Fx Pro allows one to quickly test a number of 'presets' which have various looks and emulate various films.  I normally cycle through the presets and choose one I like.  There's not a lot of thought involved, although there are times when none of the presets give me an image that I like.