Photo Challenge: Colourful

Here is that last one pre colour editing- just for fun- to see what the difference is. 

I immediately thought of my girls when this months challenge came up, they are the bright spots around here for sure, literally and figuratively. The harder part is making the colours pop, and truth be told I did most of that after taking the photos- but boosting the saturation and in all cases lowering the gamma correction (lightness) in the bottom two, also bumping up the contrast a bit too. I usually take my photos on the light side- I prefer a more sunny look, and most of the time up here the sun is really bright, so a slightly overexposed look is closer to the reality. but it really did wash out the colours, and they popped so much more with a darker background, especially in the back lit photos.

Posting along with a personal photo challenge, it's a really nice way to prompt yourself into doing some camera work, stop by to check out the other's work too!

A Personal Photo Challenge: Close up/Macro

This is my first time joining in with The Personal Photo Challenge. It's a monthly challenge- which is just about perfect for the amount of time I have to work on something 'extra'- this month's prompt was closeup/macro- which I haven't done a lot of - on purpose anyways. I usually do get pretty close to small objects- but usually I just get close focus and shoot- and don't really think about the composition.

I think it makes a giant difference when there's something in the background- I took some photos of tiny rocks- and they were great- but they could have been boulders for all you'd see in the pictures. I use Irfanview (it's free and fairly easy to use, plus it's a download so it's more convenient that pic monkey I think- though it doesn't have as many trendy filters) for photo editing, but I'm usually pretty basic with it- I just cropped the first one, sharpened them and re-sized the images.

My camera is a Fuji Finepix S basically a glorified point and shoot-  I mostly use c (custom) setting so that I can control the shutter speed- I used an iso 100 on these to let in lots of natural light- because my camera was mostly blocking the light.  I also used the super macro button- no tripod- just me on my belly trying not to breathe at the wrong time!

I'm Linking up at A Personal Photo Challenge.