Here is my entry for this week's Colorado 4X4 Shutterbug forum "Photo of the Week" Contest. The theme was "Springtime." For this picture, I stayed close to home and shot a picture of a new bud among the Virginia Creeper that is slowly trying to take over my whole yard. It amazes me how this plant will die back to nothing during the winter and then transform into this monstrous entity that will grow on, over and within ANYTHING, including cement and the sides of my house, like some nightmare that keeps getting bigger every time you try to chop it back.
For now, this single bud is very lovely as it appears to cling to life amid almost skeletal remains seen in the background. A wide aperture was able to center the focus of the image on the bud and blur out the background. I did some post processing in Picasa called "Focal Black and White" which isolates the bud even more. I finished up with a "Soft Focus" and did some light touch up. Even though I have Photoshop CS3, I still use Picasa to organize my photos and do some preliminary editing before switching over to the CS3. I've tried Lightroom, and I still don't feel comfortable with it yet, so I'm sticking with what I know for now. I do intend on taking a Lightroom class, because it definitely has features that Picasa doesn't have yet, including manipulation of metadata and embedding copyright information.
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