Getting Started

I have set for myself April 30th as a deadline to get this website started.  Now it's just five days away and I'm feeling way behind.  So much is going on at this time of the year.  Prom, Graduation, birthday, etc.  Nearly everywhere I turn, more opportunities arise to take interesting pictures, which brings up a great dilemma.  How do I choose when to stop, edit and post?

The choice actually was made for me or I would probably have continued clicking away into oblivion.  The past few days Arkansas weather has turned nastily soggy, keeping me indoors.  It forced me to sit in front of the computer and begin editing.  Of course, the fact the kids were hovering wanting their Prom pictures finished so they could post them on Facebook helped too.

This picture is from that bout of editing frenzy.  I took the original photograph a couple of weeks ago while driving home from a photo shoot in Fort Smith.  I was tired and the clouds promised I would head into a storm soon. 

I have wanted to photograph this particular tree for some time but the background never really made it stand out until that afternoon.  It just seemed to come to life against the storm clouds.  So I pulled into the edge of a driveway (hoping the land owners didn't come home just then needing to get to their house) and started shooting. 

When I got home and looked at the images on my computer, they didn't pop the way I had envisioned.  So I pulled up one of my photo editing programs and began to play.  After working with color and contrast, I finally got to a place I liked with the photograph.

I hope you like it too.