Author: Jeremy Stratton

Jeremy Stratton "I'm not a photographer. I'm just a guy with a camera." 44 year old introvert with a camera.

Painted Field

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This is what happens when you boost vibrance, saturation, clarity and luminance on an early morning field of Goldenrod.

I decided to have some fun and just play with some extreme settings. At first I just wanted to draw out more color from the sky, but then I saw I was getting an oil-painting quality out of the weeds and kept going – adjusting for an overall pleasant look to that end.

I kind of like it. It’s not typically what I would choose to do and I almost didn’t pick this photograph to upload at all, but decided I liked it enough to include it.

Melting Morning Dew

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Back from vacation

I ended up on an extended vacation of about 10 days. I would have like to have taken my mobile photo lab to continue to post daily, but in a way, it was nice to take a true vacation. I enjoyed seeing many old friends of mine, but am also glad to be back to take and post more photos.

Frozen dew thawing in the morning light

This was take at the Springfield Bog in Ohio. This was on my latest trip before sunrise. That day was cold enough that everything was covered in dew that froze ovenight. It was really cool to see everything coated in frozen droplets of water.

Power Line Silhouette

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Those tricky sunrise and sunset photos

I have captured some great sunrise photos, but my ratio of good to bad is far from my liking. And sunset photos? Part of my brain just doesn’t “get it” yet.

But one thing I have found I love is a nice contrast and silhouette shot.

This was taken at Springfield Bog in Ohio.

The sun hadn’t quite rounded the hill yet and the power line I once bemoaned became my subject. If you look closely, you’ll see three tiny birds sitting in a row on the left side of the photo, on the line.

I’m going to add 2 versions of this to my SmugMug: the one above and a skinny version(mimicking a panoramic shot).

Red Tailed Hawk

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Venturing on to Photoshop and landscapes

I’ve started researching and teaching myself how to use Photoshop and make some fancy landscape photo edits. The results run the gamut from just adding a bit more color to sweeping, artistic renderings that almost resemble paintings. I don’t quite know what I’ll end up enjoying the most, but I can’t wait to learn!

Red Tailed Hawk

I took another trip with my Cousin to Quail Hollow in Ohio. We first tried to park in the Mansion parking lot, but it was full. We turned around, and just started out when I saw a lady walking down a gravel road, but noticed something on her arm. Upon closer look I realized it was a big bird.

My Cousin immediately put the car in park and the lady knew what to expect when two people were approaching her with cameras at the ready.

She was very nice and let us snap a number of photos.

I actually didn’t know this, but Quail Hollow houses a number of birds of prey and during certain times one can actually go view them. I will really enjoy doing that in the future, but I think the better photos will always be had oustide without wiring and pen walls showing up in the photos.

Added Tumblr

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I added a Tumblr, but I really don’t know how much I’ll use it.

My idea was to share those photos I didn’t hand-pick to upload to my Flickr, SmugMug or Blog. There’s tons of photos I take and only a fraction of them I choose to upload. Many others are still what I think are good photos, but just not the creme-of-the-crop that I chose to “officially” upload.

Do you think this is a good idea?

If you want to see my Tumblr to see what I mean, you can click the link below.

http://jeremystratton.tumblr.com

When Nature Drives

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Obligatory ‘Old Truck’ photograph

If you bounce around photography sites long enough, you’ll discover the ‘old truck’ sterotype and it usually gets a bad rap. Well. There are actually lots of stereotypes out there, but they typically all started from some nugget of attraction or grew from an inspiration and positive seed.

It’s not that a photo of an old, rusted car or truck is bad. It’s just that it’s done a lot – ya know? And I think that sometimes bores people after awhile. But, I think there’s still a lot of beauty and ways to photograph vehicles, old and new, that can keep me coming back to them.

Just remember: they aren’t bad – just try and add a new twist to them once in awhile. But if that’s what you love to photograph then keep on truckin’.

Nature Behind the Wheel

There were 3 vehicles tucked way back behind a property next to my Aunt’s home in Mogadore, Ohio. Among some trees and lots of weeds and vines were 2 really old and rusted trucks and a third that looked like it was from the 1970s and possibly had been in an accident.

The two older trucks looked to be possibly from the 1930s. They were pickup trucks, but so different because of the front end and grills being from that very old era.

It was evening time when I went out to get some photographs. I also kept joking with my cousin how they had that post-apocalyptic, end of the world feel to them with nature taking over. They’d likely make a great scene in The Walking Dead or Last of Us.

Among Soft Grass

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Pushing yourself without pushing out the fun

Granted I have developed some kind of abnormal, super-human love of photography that can make almost anything seem trivial by comparison, but I love seeing someone else’s photo and trying to create a similar outcome(even if the subject is different) or coming up with my own wild ideas and pushing myself to see what I can get from it.

Sometimes the outcome is nothing like what I had in my head, the outcome is something like what I imagined but just didn’t look good at all when I actually took the shot or I get a totally new result altogether that’s stunning and makes me smile.

Among Soft Grass

There was a more vibrant green and slightly taller patch of grass with thinner blades among the regular, mowed grass at Wingfoot Lake park in Ohio. Totally ordinary. It was just a slightly different kind of grass that was growing faster in a more moist spot of ground near a small pond. Other than that, it was just grass. I mean it was grass – the stuff was everywhere.

But I had seen some soft closeups on Flickr and wanted to try my hand at it. I found a small flower – maybe a really bright, prettier flower would have made the photo better, but I still love it. I had to get down on my stomach to get this shot. I also kept switching between auto-focus and manual focus.

I finally opted to take a few shots in manual and ever so slightly adjust the focus, hoping that the flower in the center was crisp in at least one shot.

I think I will try to recreate this shot one day with a more colorful subject in the center, but I still really love it.

Delicate Summer

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Never ending experimentation

I believe there is forever an infinite amount of room in experimenting and trying new things in photography. There is something to be said about learning basics, structure and grounded foundations in photography, but there is also so much room to experiment that I think one could shirk the tenants of structured and educated art and photography for an entire lifetime, and produce marvelous views of the world around us.

Shining in the sun

I remember when I took this photo. I was still learning and teaching myself a lot about photography at breakneck speeds. I wanted to try anything and everything and couldn’t click the shutter fast enough.

I snapped this photo in front of my mother’s house with the sun in front(and to my right) of me, lighting up the stems and petals on the flowers.

Not Even Fall

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This was another random plant I took a picture of while visiting friends in Pennsylvania. This was growing wild in my friend’s backyard.

I love the striking colors – and it’s not even Fall yet!

I’ve been pretty pleased with my nature photos of late, but I would like to get some more urban and people photography in soon. I say this, knowing Fall is fast approaching and I’ll be wanting to visit many nature locales to get the vibrant Fall colors. 🙂

I’m putting together a photo album to shop around to local businesses as well, with examples of all my photos and framed versions of them.

A potential business owner could agree to let me hang certain sizes of framed prints at their location, pick out which ones and how many they’d like and I could hang them along with a card-holder filled with my business cards. I think it’s a good idea.

Haunted Flower Garden

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It might be farthest from my most technically proficient shot, but I love it for the eeriness alone.

It conjures up images of Halloween, Nightmare Before Christmas, graveyards and the like.

The small, white flowers all around the colored flowers blurred to the point they seem like wispy, low-hanging fog. As if the three central flowers are people standing in a spooky graveyard.