I Hope you ring in the New Year with peace and joy in your heart!!

I hate to leave 2015 behind, it has been a year filled with family, new and old friends, travel and wonderful new images. Whether your New Year’s Eve is filled with City Lights or Quiet Meditation, I hope you ring in the New Year with peace and joy in your heart!!

Heaven and Earth – Valley of Fire

City Lights – Las Vegas

From December 17th through December 31st, Topaz is offering 35% off of the ENTIRE Topaz store. Whether you want to achieve stunning photo enhancements or apply artistic effects, this unique collection has you covered.

To receive the 35% discount.

Fire Canyon Arch- Southwest Photo Workshop Nov 8 – 14

Fire Canyon Arch is in the Valley of fire park where we will spend some time photographing during the Southwest Photo Workshop this November. Fire Canyon Arch is a wonderful sandstone formation where iron deposits which left brushstrokes of red painted into the earth. The winter light is better for capturing images in the Southwest and I captured this image a little before sunset last January. Nature has a her way of inspiring photographers. When I look at this arch I see the head of an elephant and the body of a lion.

Fire Canyon Arch, Valley of Fire

I processed this image using Topaz Adjust 5. I first used Vibrant Crisp then I used Setting Sun Dynamic and the finished the image with a Vignette in Lens Effect and enjoyed layering the effects.  Topaz Adjust 5  has  a great set of programs.

Fire Canyon Arch unprocessed

I am off too an art fair at Crocker Park in Westlake Ohio this weekend but have next weekend off and wanted to start creating screen capture videos using the Topaz software next week. I just purchased a new Samsung computer with the third generation i7 third generation processor with state of the art video graphics that will help with my workflow. All the new software was making the processing on my older computer  a little slow. It is hard to believe that just a few years ago I was waving  cardboard wands that I made from cardboard discs and were taped to metal rods I had snipped  off coat hangers to burn and dodge the images in the darkroom. All of my friends would spend  hours making our special tools to make our images pop.