PotW #6, assabet river national wildlife refuge

For this picture of the series I headed over to the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, a recent acquisition from the US Army to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. I was a little pressed for time, or I would have spent a lot more time down in the trails. Looking ahead I will definitely revisit this site and spend some time down by the old abandoned ammunition bunkers. The purpose there will be both the bunkers as a subject, and as a place to hang out quietly, waiting for some wildlife to shoot. In the meantime here is a sort of still life, au natural.

This tree looks quite dead for the moment, but I have hope that there's life in it.  Tree's are pretty crazy like that; what one could only assume is a dead shell miraculously sprouts leaves as long as it still has roots in the ground.

 This picture is taken with the 18-55mm IS kit lens, all the way out at 18mm, and in a "shoot from the hip" style. I used auto focus, and held the camera as close to the ground as I could, then I took some shots with slight adjustments to the angle of the camera.  I had already set the ISO, Aperture, and Speed of the shot from doing some framing of a different angle, but I decided on this one, and needed a short series of shots to get the framing just right.

The other exciting thing is that I started playing around with new Photoshop CS5 to do my final adjustments, and boy is it fast! I don't have to really modify how I handle my workflow, but they put shortcuts right in there for me. Adjustments are automatically paired with a layer mask, so the selective editing of HDR processing is much easier to accomplish quickly.  I may have to bite the bullet and order up myself a new license for Photoshop, since CS2 is 7 years old now, and does not run on my iMac, since it is not compatible for OSX on the Intel chip set. Thankfully for me there is an upgrade license. unfortunately it's still almost $200, and I don't have enough portrait sessions booked to afford my lease, insurance, and a new Photoshop.  Anyways, hire me for a portrait session and I'll buy Photoshop to edit your shots!