A Visit to the Granite Falls Fish Ladder

The Lilly, ALex , Jayden and of course Rita visit the Granite Falls Fish Ladder today and see hundreds of spawning Salmon.

Marysville Boys 9 ~ 12 year olds

Team photo after the game tonight, lot's more at dgrinde.zenfolio.com in a day or so. The young men are progressing and improving in their fundementals every game.

Firetrail Road, Snohomish County Sheriff Helicopter

A wild mix of evening fall color and the Snohomish County Sheriff Helicopter putting out a small brush fire near Kayak Point. Glad to see they haven't painted their copter military strom trooper black yet.

Baseball

Kaylie at Tonights game in Marysville Wa. 2009-10-06

Couple Shots from the Arlington Flyin 2009

I went back and looked at my photos again and gave these a fast once over.

Shane and DaNielle August 29th 2009

View the online slideshow here! Click on the YELLOW ROSE, you may need this small free pluggin "Presenter" from Photodex, don't worry its works and is painless.

Photodex.com, User Name - Don Grinde

Journey to Sunrise Mt, Granite Falls Mt Loop Hwy 2009

My day to play hooky form work, the first of many images. After 32 years at work you may get bored with your challenges. The Airplane business is good, but this is better. I certainly don't plan on quitting my day job because the pay for photography for most is absolutely lousy.

The freedom to being able to press yourself to create an image is inspiring and sometimes a scary task if you are not willing to fail, and fail miserably.

I love color and lots of it, others may love 100% reality. I have seen few images that I love that were not created first in the photographer minds eye. In order to take a great photos consistanty, you need to see it first before it enters the camera.

On your journey to capture beauty, you may find more on the way then at the destination. Please stop and pause, click your shutter. The sun may never rise in the manner expected, why pass up on one light for another, if the beauty is present already? This was a total of 5 shot +<- 3ev bracketed and developed in Photomatix and CS4.

Bicycle Enthusiasts

Get Well Effort with Humor

As the case with cancer patients, people my shave their heads in show of support with laughs and giggles along the way. The crew depicted above is showing support for one of their own by wearing mock neck braces for one of their own recovering from neck surgery. We wish Rob well, the prognosis looks very good. The shot was taken indoors color balanced for the flash and another shot balanced for ambient sodium vapor and blended together. The camera was set on maual +1 EV, 1/3 sec F 6.3, 17 mm 17-40 EFS, fired two remote 580 EX flashes either side of camera with ST-E2. Ambient was I believe 5.6. Thanks for looking.

Photo Of The Day

The trees where shot with a slow shutter speed and the camera gently rock upward during exposure to create the blur effect. Additional filters were ran in photo shop to add warmth and brillance in NIK EFEX Pro 3.0. Sharpen with unsharp mask in CS4. Thanks for looking as always.



Walking on my property this morning noticed these little guys under the trees from with last fall's leaves. Processed in CS4, Topaz "denoise" and "adjust" with vignette.

Tug Boat Water Color

The image here has been edited and played with in CS4, I am learning to experiment with my new set of pluggins from Topazlabs.com. Topaz makes a series of pluggins for Photoshop that work as described and are affordable in comparison to the many top brands at hundreds of dollars more. You can buy the entire CS$ suite for $150. Some of the functions seem to overlap, you can view online tutorials videos on each filter to get an idea of their function.
Each filer can be purchased seperately as well. Thanks for looking as I experiment with Topaz.

Don

Jumpin Tree Frog Batman

My grandsons Alex and Jayden captured a small tree frog in the yard, albeit 1 to 1.5 inches long. We grabbed a piece of black cloth as the even light faded, placed it and the from on the table outside. The yellow streak was from ambient light and the more green tones where from a flashlight. Three images are combined into on here using lighten as the blend mode. The images were taken with my Canon 10-22 mm. It seems to focus very well close up. My 40D images where heavily cropped in order to more fully fill the frame. In the end, the frog lived happily ever after in my back yard.

Stary Night

The Perseids peaked on Wednesday morning 2009-08-12 in the pre dawn sky. I took about 300 photos and only captured this one perseid. The wife was unimpressed. Asked if there were telescopes or something to shoot it with? This was taken with a wide angle lens, ISO 1000, f2.8 for 25 seconds each or so. Set on selftimer. The image has been through CS4 for add sky, frame, and various adjustments. The perseid itself is basically untouched.

About midnight I went out and played in the shide yard taking about 25 shots. 17-55 mm F8 15 to 60 secs.

A new layer breaths new life into the old dog

The top photo is one that I took in 2005, the other day at a baseball game I shot a sky and some clouds with my Canon G-9. As you can see in the original photo (above) the sky was either blown out in the highlights as well as the fact it was a pretty hazy washed out looking sky.

The car shot was up in Mt Vernon during the spring tulip bloom. That evening was one of my first outings with my NEW Canon 20D SLR. In 2009 these photos are still some of my favorite images.

1. Problem, washed out sky.
2. Solution, replace with new sky.

I opened both images and import the new sky into its own new layer with the car photo. An easy way to do this is choose duplicate layer and then tell it to place it in the opened car photo. I placed the new sky layer on top, and transformed the selection to fit the sky area. I made a sky selection on the original car photo, then inverted the selection, next held down the alt key while clicking on the new layer mask. I made a few adjustments to the mask and the flattened the image when satisfied. Did another curves and color adjustment, sharpened by choosing the filter menu, "other" High Pass, the choose overlay for blend mode. Next Ctrl+Alt +C to add a 1" white matte to background and presto new photo. The old dog breaths new life. As you can see I like lots of color and saturation. That's just me, I like them to pop and be fun.

07-26-2009 Recent Snap Shots

Lily captivated by TV

Destiny Up A Tree!

~

Alyssa trying out the rope swing. Some of the best portraits

are when kids have something to do and relax the mind.

Adults too :)

Brandyn, this is as good as it gets.
A bit shy and reserved when the camera is around.

Sunny Day in Marysville

This series was shot on the way to and from my daughter house. Enjoy the journey as much or more as the photo. Today was a good day in terms of photos. All photos recieve a levels, curves and saturation sharpness adjustment in CS4. Shot in raw converted in .dng in lightroom 2.4. My favorite filter are from NIK Software, Color Efex Pro 3.0

The fields from the road edge. Urban sprawl is surly taking over our farm land, should it be? I don't know, but at the same time it should help us appreciate scenes like these.

A few moments of fun and laughter with Kaylie and Ashley, getting low and shooting high, setting the camera to -1EV and +1.5 EV on the flash. Shot in AV mode.

The Wagon Wheel seems to find balance with the arc of the Rainbow!
On the way to we passed the Mustard field glowing yellow. The cars passed busily, few seemed to noticed the simplistic color. Once again getting low with the camera to block our buildings and show the simple composition of sky and plant life.

Just beyond the wagon wheel gates this view is free for all who will take the time to look. Quilceda Creek tributary and Puget Sound tide water. Just take the Marysville Exit on 4th Street, turn left heading west, go about 4 blocks and cross the bridge, free vistas on your left.

The Sun and Rain left a perfect rainbow to frame with reflections in the water. I could sense everyone kinda wanted to go home, but I turned the car around knowing the light was worth the stop and that I would regret passing up an opportunity. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves once out of the car. Tacos and pop where had from the traveling taco vendor. A regular at this site along with a full time coffee stand.