The Artful Engineer

This week’s post is a little random. After my long series on Japan, I have a lot of catching up to do with my images, both in terms of editing and blogging. For this post, I decided to share an assortment of images from the city of live in, Castle Pines. No one of these outings generated enough material to support an entire blog post, so I bundled them.

Deer are very common throughout the area. The image above was taken from my deck. Deer are frequent visitors to our yard, especially in the colder part of the year. The deer below appeared while I was out looking for landscape images. Fortunately, the 100-400 zoom is more than capable of handling such opportunities. Unfortunately, there wasn’t really any light to work with:

This next image—taken 25 minutes earlier than the previous image of the deer—did have plenty of good light, not being in the shade of a hill. My biggest challenge here was trying to keep the camera’s shadow out of the image. I failed, but was able to eliminate it with some careful brushwork in Lightroom. The textures and complementary colors are nice. The lower half of the image also reminds me of a sprinter’s legs, running to the left.

I won’t lie. This next image was incredibly flat and the only reason it looks like it has any light at all is because of some love in Lightroom. This fallen tree is in a place where it will have plenty of light most afternoons, but it didn’t this time. I threw this into my “places to return” collection in Lightroom; I’d like to do this over with some decent light.

This outcropping of rock is about a 10-minute walk from my house. I had driven by it countless times before I noticed that it might make a good subject. I made a variety of images, including this one and the next, but am certain that I can do better. I’m going to have to try going a few more times.

This overhang is actually what caught my attention. From the road, it looked like a small arch. (I can’t remember if it is actually an arch or just almost one.) The sun was getting intermittently blocked by some light clouds, and in the end I didn’t quite get what I was looking for: strong golden light on the overhang and cool shadow on the rock behind it. This image would also benefit from some brushwork in Lightroom, but that’s becoming a bit of a theme in this set of images—I didn’t quite get the light I wanted in half of them. I’ll mark this one to play with later.

I hope you enjoyed these local images. Starting next week, I am going to shift my attention to the Oregon coast for a month or so. I’m going to struggle whittling those down to a reasonable quantity to share!

Thank you to all who have subscribed to my blog. Your encouragement is appreciated!