One of the main reasons for starting this project to delve into my photo archive was to see what I might be able to learn in the process of evaluating and editing these past photos. I've always been a fan of experimenting with various editing techniques to see what might result, but I have to say that this one is by far the most extensive.

I processed the photo above using my normal techniques and work flow and I'm happy with the results, but this time I decided to go even further and see what I could do with some true experimentation. With the edited photo above as my starting point I dove into essentially turning the photo into a painting. I want to emphasize that this is not like the digital painting I posted a few weeks ago. This "painting" is the photo above, but processed to look like a painting (which is why everything lines up perfectly with the photo and there are no "interpretations"). I doubt this is something I'll do frequently, but I can think of a few specific photos which would make for interesting subjects to apply the effect. This doesn't signify the end of my digital painting efforts, but it does represent another step in the path to widening my photographic ability.

It is nearly time for the annual feast of fried things at the fair. Each year, it's interesting to see what manner of things that normal people would never think of frying will be fried. So far I think my favorites have been the fried cookie dough and the bacon maple cinnamon roll.

All that fried stuff can lead to a bit of trepidation at trying the next new thing.

But one bite of the classic corny dog and it's clear why you can't go to the fair and not get one.

Today I think the colors speak for themselves.

Today I'm hitting the archives from my trip to Spain again. More specifically, I'm revisiting our afternoon in Segovia. The photo above is a view from one of the walls of the castle below.

Of course, as intimidating as the exterior of a castle was to would-be intruders, the lavish appointments of the interior were calculated to bring visiting diplomats to their knees (as the seat of the Castilian . As such, mere windows would not suffice and so most of the rooms for visitors had huge stained glass windows like the ones below.

All in all, the whole experience is calculated to be overwhelming and in the modern day, walking through the halls of a thousand year old castle adds its own flavor of awe to be contended with as well.

The entire practice of photography is about light. All the way from the ancient camera obscura to the wet plates of the first real cameras during the early 1800s to the light field technology from Lytro today, everything revolves around observing and, with the advent of the wet plate, capturing the light.

Even the modern day digital manipulation of photos primarily concerns itself with bending the light to more closely match the vision for the photo. Even minor changes can have substantial differences. Above is a photo of aspens with some of my normal technique and below I've taken a very similar shot (captured within an hour or so of the other) and softened the light a bit, but it was more than enough to give it an almost painterly feel.

Of course, photographers will always follow the sun. The crowd in the photo below walked a mile and a half to see and photograph Delicate Arch at sunset.

But it's all worth it when the light does things like this.

The seemingly magical light shortly before sunset and after sunrise is even termed "golden hour" for the glow that it imparts to pretty much any photo. There's a good reason all those photographers were crowded around waiting for sunset and not noon.

I find it interesting the way that my photo processing tends to enter into patterns. For a while, I'll enter into a trend where I have a particular look that I enjoy and then I look back and notice that many of the photos I processed end up with a similar look. Oftentimes it will change subtly over time (frequently as I get better with whatever processing technique I'm enamored with at the moment), but there is still a very noticeable thread.

I haven't decided yet whether I think it's a good thing or a bad thing or maybe just a neutral part of my development as a photographer. There's certainly an element of finding my voice which comes into play during post-processing especially. One particularly enjoyable aspect of delving back into my past photos has been seeing which pieces of my style remain similar and which evolve.

One style that I used to not use very often at all is more heavily editing to reinforce a particular mood. Some of my first experiments with that were earlier this year when I was working with some of my photos from Point Reyes Lighthouse. I really like the way that desaturating a photo complements what happens when you're looking out into fog.

After being gone all week, I don't have a newly processed old photo to share today. However I do have a new toy so I'm going to share the very first photo I have taken with it. I fully expect to see many more in the future.

Today's photo is a simple one from this winter's road trip. I've been toying around with digital painting a bit lately. I'm working first on colors and overall structure and then once I get that part figured out, I'll start in on learning detail work (I suspect that will take far longer). I wouldn't be surprised to see paintings mixed in during the posts going forward but since they take so much longer than processing photos I suspect they'll never be a weekly thing.

I was sorting through a few of my "to be edited" photos and came across a cluster of photos from my time in Florence a couple years ago. Since Tuscan summers are rather famous I thought perhaps a couple of photos from Tuscany would be appropriate for the summer return to my archival photos project. Of course, there's also the idea that as the progenitor of the Renaissance it's an appropriate way to start the rebirth of my weekly photos.

Either way, I hope to be able to keep up the good pace I had for the first quarter through the rest of the year and there are definitely plenty of photos to choose from. The trick, as usual, is for me to actually do it.

The last two weekends I've taken photos at the birthday parties for a couple of friends' kids. In the course of doing the post-processing for those photos I cam to the realization that I only ever made it through a handful of my photos from this winter's road trip. As a part of that realization I realized that I haven't written anything here in three months either. It is past time for that to change.

So I plan to get back to my weekly photography posts starting tomorrow. In the interest of establishing a bit more of a routine, my intention is to do the weekly photograph on Fridays. I also have a couple of other ideas simmering for some writing I want to do which will likely be posted at some point as well. Whether they'll turn into series similar to the photography one or not remains to be seen.

Now I know that given that the course of the year so far has been half consistent and half completely absent so there is ample reason to be slightly doubtful that I'll keep up. Hopefully I'll keep up and disprove any of you who may doubt.

Last week the weather was a little too nice to stay indoors so a day off to escape to the zoo was in order. I brought my camera along because there is usually the opportunity to take a few animal photos and when going with a couple of munchkins in tow (or to be more accurate, doing the towing), there are almost always chances for a few photos of them as well. Of course, this time there was a bit of a surprise in store for Logan as I'd brought my small camera all rigged up with a lanyard (to prevent drops) so that he too could have a photography outing at the zoo.

As you can see below, he quickly got the hang of it.

The day continued and we all took more photos and even snuck in a couple of good portraits while we were at it.

To my great dismay it seems that the selfie is either an innate human quality (or something so pervasive in modern society that a 3 year old has picked it up) and so it did not take long before Logan was testing his selfie skills. He even checked the results afterward to see how he did.

After the kangaroo was forced to witness this spiral into nothing but out of focus arm length shots by all of modern society, Alexander decided that a hug was in order.

By the time we left, everyone was tired...even the hyenas.

This one is another reach back to my trip to Spain a couple years ago. I remember seeing a few of these carriages loop through the plaza and then trying to time the shot to get the composition I was after. I don't take very many photos in what I guess could be described as a "street photography" style, but I'd like to get more practice with them since I usually enjoy the results. I suspect that part of the reason I enjoy these is that the photos tell their own stories unlike my usual landscapes where there is always a story attached, but the photo does little more than provide the setting for the story.

A windmill and a frog... sounds like the beginning of a fable, but this time it's just the two photos I dug out of the back catalog.

I decided that today I would go back into the collection of photos I set aside at the beginning of this project and pick a couple of interesting ones from there instead of posting more from this winter's road trip (though never fear, there are many remaining from that trip).

The windmill above is the kind that des Cervantes would likely have pictured as he was writing about Don Quixote "tilting at windmills". Conveniently, they also make for fairly interesting photographic subjects.

The photo below is of a tree frog that was resting (or hiding) along the Four C Trail in east Texas. I do have to say that what Texas loses in scenery while backpacking, it makes up for in ease. That trip is the only one I can think of that was quite literally just a stroll through the woods (even wearing our packs).

A couple days ago I was browsing through the photos from January's road trip that I'd set aside for editing and came across this one of a grove of trees. I'm not sure what initially drew my eye to it (so that I set it aside for editing), but as I looked at it I almost decided to drop it back into the big bucket of photos instead of processing it. The initial photo (the one above) lacked any element which to set it apart from the others.

And then I started tweaking the photo. I started by cropping things a bit to improve the overall composition because I didn't like the foreground tree cut in half on the right edge and thought the tracks in the snow were a bit of a distraction. Following that I started playing around with color adjustments and after a little while the photo below popped out.

I always enjoy when a photo that seems to be bland turns out to be a good one after all. Even more than that, I like that it validates my reasoning behind delving back into my photo collection for images to edit. I know that there are other photos like this hiding amongst the thousands I've taken over the last few years and I look forward to finding them so they can be processed and shared.