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When I took this shot I was actually afraid that I had blown out the background because the sun was right in my face but I think it actually makes for a very interesting photograph. I really like the shadows and the yellow tint the light took, enjoy!

Post Processing Details:
LightRoom:
- Recovery +100 to pull back on the highlights from the sun.
- Increased the saturation of the yellow channel to + 62
- Changed the luminance of the Yellow channel to - 40 and the Orange to +100.
- Dropped the Red Hue to -100 and the Orange Hue to -38.
- Increased Vibrance by 64
- Overall Saturation + 48
- Contrast + 48
- Sharpened
- Straightened the Horizon by tilting the image slightly
- Cropped to put the tree on the left third of the picture and take away some of the distracting foreground.

Well I took another week off of posting but I think I’ve got another good one! Jenna was being sweet on Sunday and decided to give me a chance to take some good pictures. Jess and I picked one of our flowers and gave it to her and funny enough Jessica’s dad had done the same thing. She was sitting there smelling them and I was able to get the picture just as she looked at me. The picture is strong because you’re drawn directly to her eye. I had to raise the ISO to 800 and purposely under-expose the shot by one stop to make sure I got the 1/40th of a second I needed for sharpness and even then I got lucky she didn’t move. I love it!

Post Processing Details:

Lightroom:

-Cropped the picture to take out some of the distractions in the background. Placed her eye in photo using the rule of thirds.
- Increased exposure by 1 stop to correct the under-exposure I needed when taking the shot. Thankfully Lightroom is forgiving when increasing exposure but this did introduce some unwanted noise into the photo because the ISO was set to ISO 800.
- Finally figured out the exact white balance I need for my in-laws weird lighting in their house. I started with the Tungsten preset and then eventually figured out that Temp 2833, Tint +5 was just about perfect. I really need to bring my gray card over there.

Photoshop:
- Noise reduction software helped a lot.
- Unsharp Mask to sharpen.

Lightroom(2nd time):
- Increased contrast
- +5 Saturation
- +3 Vibrancy
- Increased saturation of Green 100%
- Decreased the luminance of the Green level to -100
- Slightly increased the yellow saturation and luminance.
- Lightened up the highlights a bit to bring out the white in her eyes.

I actually took this picture a couple weeks ago along with the “Trying to stand out in a blue world” photo I posted. I wanted to use the picture of the bee but I didn’t want to put up two pictures that looked exactly the same. After converting it to Black and White I really like it even more than the other picture I think. Now if I could just convince my wife to let me get that macro lens I’ve been eying I can get some really up-close  pictures of the bees around here :).

Post Processing Details:

LightRoom:
- Opened the RAW file
- Large Crop
- The photo was a little overexposed so I lowered the exposure by about 1-stop.
- Export to Photoshop

Photoshop:
- Unsharp mask to improve detail (the bee was a little blurrier than in the final image)
- Plug-in Noiseware professional to lower the amount of Luminance noise

LightRoom (again):
- Convert to black and white
- lowered the contrast
- Export to JPEG for the web

This is a picture of a dead saguaro out by my house in the desert. The sun was setting and cast a very gray hue to the sky. I tweaked the white balance a bit in Lightroom to get the green background.

Post Processing Details:
LightRoom:
- Increased Contrast
- Changed the tint to make the sky a bit more green.
- Added some green saturation
- Cropped the image to put the cactus directly in the middle and get rid of some distracting elements in the foreground.

I took this shot in Saguaro National Park East on the side of the road next to one of the hiking trails at about 7:30 at night. This was the last shot of the night and I’m really happy with how it looks. I wish the sky could have been a bit more exciting with clouds and other colors but it still looks nice.

Post Processing Details:
LightRoom:
- Increased exposure a stop to lighten up the sky.

Photoshop:
- Noise Reduction software

To take this picture I had my wife hold the flower up in front of the camera just as the sun was setting. I like this a lot but I wish the flower was in perfect focus. (Get ready for my Signature excuse)It was really windy and I was hand-holding the camera :).

Post Processing Details:
Lightroom:
-Increased the exposure a touch.
-Changed the white balance to make this a little more yellow
-Added some Purple saturation
-Tweaked the red hue
- +5 vibrance
- +3 saturation

Photoshop:
-Seperate adjustment for curves to get the color juse how I wanted it
-(USM) Unsharp mask. Something like 40% strength, 50 radius, 3 Threshold