Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Southern Kettle Moraine – Paradise Springs Nature Center...


Since the 1800’s, what was once a resort and a horse-race track, people have been drawn to this bubbling spring. The parks centerpiece is a four walled, roofless springhouse, built with colorful fieldstones that have darkened with age. The springhouse was originally built with a copper dome roof to protect the five feet deep spring, which churns out 500 gallons of water per minute at a constant 45-degree temperature.




Water from the spring cascades out of the house into a shallow trout pond stocked by the Wisconsin DNR for catch-and-release trout fishing.





At the edge of the pond is a small dam and another crumbling stone structure and rusted metal pipes alongside a small waterfall. Copy from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sunday, October 12, 2014.
Images copyright by Richard Bublitz.



Views from along the pathways.










Bog just inside the entrance area.


These images were made on Sunday, October 12, 2014 during the Art's Camera Plus Meetup at the Paradise Springs Nature center.

Don't drink the water!




Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Monches Farm

These were taken on Saturday, September 27, 2014...









http://www.monchesfarm.com

Saturday, October 4, 2014

New(er) image editing software

I have recently discovered Macphun Software, a Mac only image editing software designed to enhance images that really sing. Macphun is a suite of products initially designed in Ukraine. When Google bought out Nik Software, six of the Nik executives joined Macphun and opened an office in San Diego, California. Within a few short years, Macphun enjoyed top rankings in the iTunes App Store.

Macphun products work as stand alone apps, or as plugins for Lightroom 5,  Photoshop CS5+, Aperture and Photoshop Elements. Here are a few things I have done - it is quite a pleasure to visit older images with these Apps.

Lions Den, Grafton, WI

Monchez Farm

Havenwoods State Park, Milwaukee, WI

Sedona Arizona

Sedona Arizona

Tuscon, Arizona

Milwaukee Lakfront last winter


Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Kohler-Andrae State Park

I had camped and visited Terry Andrae State Park when I was a teenager and visited there later a number of times with my young family.


The park has changed since my early years with the addition of the JM Kohler State Park. They are both managed as a single unit by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.


I was confused when I returned early in July, as I remembered the entrance to be quite different. It had indeed relocated to to north end of the Kohler Park which is just north of Terry Andrae Park. What I remembered as wide beaches, are now stabilized with grasses. And, with the high lake level, the beaches are almost non existent as swimming beaches. 


These images were taken early August.  


The nature trails are quite thrilling. The Dunes Coardwalk meander throughout and offer views of active and stabilized sand dunes, internal wetlands, and white pine forest.


Enjoy!





Thursday, July 10, 2014

First Round for July - Memorable Images

During a rain shower at the Cedarburg Strawberry Festival
iPhone 5c processed on iPad

A wonderful summer afternoon at the Havenwoods State Forest
iPhone 5c processed on iPad

 Mosquitoville 
iPhone 5c processed on iPad

Prairie view at Havenwoods State Forest
iPhone 5c processed on iPad

Kohler - Andrae State Park Sheboygan Wisconsin
Canon 5D processed with iPad apps

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Digital Imaging — iPhoneography

Being involved with professional photography for quite a long time now, I can recall my early days in photography school (1963) learning the art of light, composition, color theory, film exposure, printmaking and the challenges that came with every assignment. That education continued with photography workshops and membership in professional photography organizations. During that time, my equipment included Mamiya (6x7 and 645) medium format cameras for studio portrait work; the Bronica medium format and Canon 35mm format were for my wedding photography.

Fall of 2000 brought the introduction of the Canon D30 (priced at the $2,500 range), it was the first independently built digital camera by Canon since their breakaway from Kodak. This was my first digital camera, and my first question was “now what?”. Thank goodness for digital photography forums, I learned a lot from those. The rise of the DSLR camera and the demise of film had begun. This continued to a point with a plethora of digital cameras available to both consumers and professionals. That, along with computer software for editing those images, brought an explosion to what is now commonly known today as “Digital Imaging”.

The year 2000 also introduced the first camera phones, and my favorite iPhone smartphone was introduced in June of 2007. These iOS and Android devices have provided a new genre known as iPhoneography for the Apple iPhone.



Mobile apps for these smartphones were originally offered for general productivity and information retrieval, including email, calendar, contacts, and stock market and weather information. However, public demand and the availability of developer tools drove rapid expansion into other categories, such as mobile games, factory automation, GPS and location-based services, banking, photography, order-tracking, ticket purchases and recently mobile medical apps.

While there are tons of photography apps available, I assure you that you can become seriously inundated with too many apps. So, for starters, the first to consider is a camera app. While the iPhone camera does a fine job, its’ features are limited. You might want to consider Camera+, ProCamera 7, Kitcamera and Slowshutter. You can do a search for these apps on the internet – remember to add “app” to the one you are searching. Among the features I like are stabilization, leveling and separate touches for focus and exposure. Some of these apps may include artsy filters and effects.

Among the popular apps for photo editing, consider Snapseed, Filterstorm Neue, Mextures, Noir and Diptic. These are the creative, fun apps. Getting to know a few for starters will help to retain your sanity.


My workflow for my DSLR images is to start with them in Lightroom 5 for color, contrast/brightness and sharpening. Then convert these images to JPG’s, sending select images to my iPad via Transfer ($2.99) or Dropbox (the Basic plan is free for 2GB+)). My iPhone 5C images are automatically sent to Dropbox for retrieval on any of my computers or devices.

The question used to be, “What f/stop did you use?”,
Now the question is, “What app did you use?” 

Here are a few more things I have done and for now, I cannot recall what app I used, other than when an image is saved, some apps will create a folder specifically for that app. Others just go to the camera roll.





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