Out of the Wilderness

Photos Before and After, My Favorites

Hello and thanks for coming by today. I love to write so I’m very glad you clicked over! I post every day at 1pm central. I also love taking photos (take a look at my galleries here). With photos, just like with words, there’s some editing that goes on with the original image. Every once in a while I don’t change the image at all, but then other times I adjust the brightness/contrast or change it to black and white. And beyond that, there are inspirational moments where I get a little crazy (for instance, the Halloween images I posted yesterday or these before and after bird photos), so I thought today might be fun to share a few of my favorite more-heavily edited photos, the ones that are manipulated into something different from the original photos. I’ll add a little description of each one, too. First you’ll see the original, then followed by the edited version.

Seahorse. I’ve never found a seahorse on the shore before until a little one washed up one summer day. I took a few photos and then, in a moment of surprise and confusion, realized my beagle ate it! RIP little horse of the sea.

Jesus. This image comes from a cemetery statue. If you’ve been following the site for a little while, you might have picked up that I like taking photos at (and visiting) cemeteries. Towering over those resting in peace was a tall statue of Jesus and I thought it would make a great photo.

Rings of Color. It was Independence Day and I was practicing with light and a longer exposure. Not all of them turned out as cool, but this is one I kinda liked a lot. It was one of my nieces using a sparkler in a circular motion.

Foxy. This was a crazy moment. I was taking photos of an alligator and all of the sudden noticed there was a fox sitting a lot closer than I ever thought a fox would be to an alligator. And sometimes, regarding the editing image below, too much of a good thing is an even better thing.

Palm Branches. The original photo was from a park in central Florida. Not a whole lot of editing but I thought it would look interesting to use extreme levels of brightness and contrast with additional color.

If you have some art to show, I’d love to hear about it! What’s your favorite type of image to edit and change?

Thanks for dropping in!

-Out of the Wilderness

Daydreaming dog

My sister’s dog returned home after a week with the vet for some health things and on the way back she loved looking out the window. She was a little groggy but seemed so happy to be free again!

My sister helping get the dog hair after I lifted the pup into the car

Thanks for dropping in…

-Out of the Wilderness

Spooky Halloween photos

I thought it might be fun to put together some eerie images for the upcoming Halloween holiday. These are all montages of images I’ve taken in the past and I’m pretty happy with how they all turned out. Do any of them stand out to you for their spookiness?

(Click on the image title and you can use them for all your haunting holiday needs)

Spooky night. A cool fall evening accompanied by spooky noises from the forest and a full moon.

Medium well. Who knew a neighborhood fire pit could serve up a tasty BBQ dinner?

Possessive. This picture is “raising” some concerns.

Catch the red eye. This might be why people have trouble maintaining eye contact.

Red angel. Red has gotta be the most common color of Halloween.

Eyes in the back of your head. Yeah, that whole eye contact thing again.

Thanks for dropping in…

-Out of the Wilderness

“Smile” movie, left me frowning – no spoilers

I was excited enough about the movie Smile that I wrote about it a few weeks ago. After all, the trailer is great. A few days ago I purchased my ticket and got comfy in the great lounge chairs in the theater. The preview trailers before the feature presentation seemed to take too long and I normally like watching the previews. The lights dimmed and the movie started. I won’t give anything away regarding the plot. I had no idea it was a psychological thriller. That’s probably my least favorite genre.

It’s the kind of movie that will show a dramatic, horrific scene that you can hardly believe is happening, then the main character blinks (or wakes up) and everything was a dream or hallucination. I HAAAAAATE THAT. In my mind, this type of horror is a cop-out. It throws out the rules of horror. There were also predictable jump scares and by the end of the movie I found myself laughing when I should’ve been scared. The word “formula” comes to mind. Everything was formulaic.

Disappointing.

I guess it’s worth watching if you’re into mind games and false realities. I was just hoping for more “real” thrills instead of the hallucination stuff. And I wanted more scary smiles. For a movie with that as a title, smiles were few and far between.

Have you seen this movie yet? If so, what are your thoughts?

Thanks for dropping in!

-Out of the Wilderness

New photography portfolio is up on SmugMug!

Hello there! I’ve enjoyed so much taking photos in the last 12 months since I got a new Sony camera. One of the first photos with this camera was taken while I sat around a fire on a cold wintery day in Nashville, Tennessee. Since then, I’ve taken the camera almost everywhere I go and my favorite subject is probably wildlife. I’ve been posting photos for sale on FineArtAmerica (see portfolio here) and I’ll continue to do that… but… exciting news that I’ll now have all of the entire portfolios of images on SmugMug! The switch seems to make sense as I started storing my images on SmugMug a few months ago.

With that said, I’m happy to include a link to each portfolio (or click here for the main site) below. These images can be used for greetings cards, wall art, and a few other framed-typed prints. Continue to use FineArtAmerica for prints on pillows, mugs, ornaments, and anything not framed-art related. Thanks for checking out my photos!

Wildlife