The Best Picture That I Have Ever Taken

I love this picture.  I put it as my desktop on my computer at work.  And, at 27 inches wide, it is fantastic.  I wish that more of my pictures could be like this.  Really.  I do.

My wife says that the scene helped.  Whatever.  This is the 12 Apostles, just off the Great Ocean Road in Australia.  It is truly a Great Road.

A Tiny Bit of Australia

I have a huge number of pictures of my Australia trip, but haven't had the time to finish processing them all.  Here is one of them.... More later....

Its been a while

I have been massively busy for the last month or so.  So much so that I have not had time to post pictures.  Very sad.  I am actually in an airport right now, using the free wireless.  Since I am in the airport for a couple of hours, and have just finished my conference (off to the next conference), I have a few minutes to actually upload pictures.

One of the reasons that I have not posted much lately is because I have become much more critical of my pictures.  I see "flaws" in all of them.  I don't like most of them after I take them - even as I am taking them I am thinking that this is not going to be a very good picture.  Or, how is this picture original at all?  I get very frustrated with this, and don't really enjoy it much.  I know that if I had more time and more patience, I could look around for better opportunities, but I just don't have the time.  So, I take pictures that are not very good (in my opinion).

Maybe I can find some interesting things to take pictures of in Australia.

Here are a few of the best of my latest not so great pictures....

This one looks like a nice cloud with a sunset, but it is actually smoke from the fire that is going on right now near Los Alamos.  I didn't have a car while in Sante Fe, so I walked about a mile to get a semi-clean line of sight to the sunset.  I really couldn't find a very good vantage point.  This is the best of the pictures that I got.

I should also note that I am not very good at playing with colors in photoshop.  You seem to have infinite control of colors, but I can't figure it out.  In picasa, there is a simple slider going from more blue to more red.  There doesn't appear to be something that trivial in Photoshop.  I will have to investigate more.  So, the above photo has very little done to it.

Oh, another thing that is bugging me is that my camera is relatively cheap, and it has a lot of noise in the CCD.  My pictures end up with a lot of grain, and I feel like I am constantly trying to fix this in Photoshop.  I have no idea if a better body would improve this.  Oh well.  Yet another thing to complain about.

This picture was taken just a few minute after the above picture.  It is someone's fence.  I like this picture a bit more, since it has a lot of texture.

Lastly, I took a very long walk (4 miles) in very hot temperatures (>100F) in Albuquerque and took my camera along.  I found some interesting things to take pictures of, but I am not really happy with many of them.  Here is one that I am semi-happy with, although I think that it is quite boring.

PS.  Here is another picture that I took on the same walk that is a tab bit more interesting that I may use as a banner for something.