Graves

Graveyards; are of course, places of rest for the deceased. One evening my friend and I decided to head out to a graveyard in the countryside. There was no one there and it was perfect for taking pictures of the gravestones. What made it even greater was that it was twilight (no pun intended), the perfect atmosphere for the photos.

We decided not to tread too much, and we ended up leaving when another car came in. I recently had someone in my family pass away and once we left the site, I remembered that we decided to scatter that relative's ashes to the wind; so that she may be all around us. I know that burial rituals and such are different for every family and religion. I can respect why someone would want their loved one buried, to become part of the earth, as opposed to scattered to the winds.

Not really a picture of the graves, but there was a really neat sunset as we were driving up.

Increased the contrast for dramatic effect. Not so realistic, however.

There were tons of graves of freemasons and their symbols.

I decided to just go natural with this one.

I used this effect called solarize and just increased the contrast and saturation.

This is one of the symbols of the freemasons.

An interesting angel. Increased contrast.

This is such a touching inscription

Ordinary Life

This is simply a post showing my ordinary experiences.Often the most overlooked things in my life are the things most worth photographing. Even though I don't take that many pictures of people,  I like to take pictures of my surroundings just for documentation or sentimental purposes. Taking pictures of things I see everyday can get a bit boring but that doesn't diminish the meaning they have.

These are mating fireflies, they didn't even move for 2 hours! Used flash, no edits made.

You might guess as to what this is, but it's tissue! I changed the color into a subtle dark green

This is a view from inside my church. I negative-ed the image and made the sky a stormy blue.

This is a view from my church parking lot. No edits made

This is my friend's cat, Gooby. He's the sweetest guy I will ever meet.

This is just an artwork I did a year ago.

The trees are always there

Trees are immobile organisms and we always seem to think that they are a permanent part of our backyards, parks, beaches etc. I also understand that they get to be boring to look at after a while but trees always make the most interesting outlines against the sky.

I added a slight brown tint to the sky and increased the contrast

I played with the colors in this one and made the sky appear as if it was burning.

This piece of wood made an interesting shadow against the sand of the beach.

Snow made a rare appearance here in Georgia

I loved the ripples in the water at a pond. I added a monochrome dark red tint to the whole picture.

The Great Fire

Since I've just been doing nature posts for a while; I wanted to switch it up and do something different. These pictures were all taken on the fireworks setting on my camera and they're pictures of lights, christmas lights, street lights, etc.

The composition you get with these types of pictures is very random and it all depends on how your camera captures the light and how you move/shake the camera to "draw" the composition.

These are different Christmas lights captured at a mall. The saturation of the colors were increased by 40% and contrast was increased 20%. I like that the lines all seem to be flowing downward.

This is a different picture of the same Christmas lights. The lines are arranged in a messy manner. The only thing that changed was a little bit of tweaking of the contrast.

These are the same Christmas lights AGAIN. I moved my hand to form these curly lines and it turned out really neat with the other lights in the background. Nothing was changed about this picture.

There was this portal near the Christmas lights and I took a picture and tried not to move my hand but it still turned out this way! No edits were made.

I moved my hand rapidly for these lights. Contrast was increased by 30%.

I was in the car when I took these pictures of lights in Atlanta. I like the L-shaped lines that are in the composition.

I was walking near my neighborhood at night when I car happened to zoom by. The car only looks like a blur of light in this picture. Since the forms were so hard to make out in the original picture I increased the brightness.

This is a picture of three cars on the road that I captured. All their headlights form this interesting arc of lights.

Thistle Kingdom

Yesterday, my friend and I went out to a deserted road full of thistles, blackberry bushes, butterflies, dandelions... you get the drift. Everything there was beautifully overgrown and it was hard trying to translate that to the camera. This is when I wish when cameras were as good as our eyes because nothing can imitate the eye's perception of color and clarity.

My friend and I were trying to throw thistles in a "artful" way but we mostly got frustrated instead.