I’ve been happier in the past few days than I have been in a long time. I’ve spent some quality time with friends. I went to Portland to hang out with my family for a couple of days. I’m taking photos of things that I enjoy shooting. And the sun is out!
Here are a few images from the past week that make me smile:
There are two events that do stand out as the most smile-worthy things for me.
1) Today is my 33rd birthday. I’ve been stuck in the office all day, but I will be heading out to have a fun and relaxing night with my friends later.
And 2) My sister got engaged last night (that’s her in the picture above)! Congrats!
Needless to say, I am happy today. :)
I love cross-processed film. I hate waiting and paying for it. So, I’ve been working on recreating some cross-processed looks in Lightroom using existing presets as examples. Originally, I was only playing with white balance tweaks and HSL adjustments, but I was never really happy with the results. Then I figured out how to use split toning to get the looks I wanted (yeah, I’m a little slow sometimes…), and now I’m happy.
To test out the new presets, I pulled some images from a recent self-portrait shoot and went to town with the processing. The base lighting is the same in all images — Nikon SB-600 at full power with a CTO gel at camera left, sun at camera right.
Here’s what the original colors looked like:
And here are three variations on the cross-processed look I’ve been working on:
Overall, I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. I still need to do some tweaking to find a good starting point for the preset(s), but I’m starting to get the colors and tones that I want. Someday, I might even share those presets. :)
I’m still waiting to be enlightened…
Saturday was the summer solstice, which meant that it was time for the Fremont Solstice Parade. I was there again this year to photograph the fun, and I managed to get a handful of fun photos.
For more photos, head on over to my Flickr photostream.
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