Ocean Grove and Asbury Park

I went to one of my favorite towns this weekend - Ocean Grove. I have shots of the fishing pier in all different seasons with lots of different moods. I have wanted to do some panoramic scenes, but I am still trying to learn exactly how to shoot multiple images for later stitching together in Photoshop. I tried several sets of images and ended up with kind of cool square shapes as I liked the sky too much to crop to a panoramic, but the perspective of the pier on either side made the stitching part difficult. The waves in various spots were also quite a challenge. Next time I go, I think I will try standing on the boardwalk with the pier in the middle and shooting on either side.

More Ocean Grove images are on my website here: http://thrukellyseyes.com/-/thrukellyseyes/gallery.asp?cat=9070

I also stopped in Asbury Park hoping to see Bruce Springsteen as he was in town rehearsing for his shows at the Convention Hall, but no such luck. I did get the old carousel and a corner of the Convention Hall. I love the ornamentation all over this building. Asbury has made an amazing comeback in the past few years and they are really revitalizing this Jersey Shore town that had been so rundown and depressing for so many years. It is great to see the progress.

One of my Asbury Park photos from last summer made the cover of the 2009 Monmouth County Tourism Guide.

More Asbury Park photos on my website here: http://thrukellyseyes.com/-/thrukellyseyes/gallery.asp?cat=15250

Welcome to my new Blog!

I often hear the question "what new photos have you taken recently?" I regularly add new images to my website http://www.thrukellyseyes.com/ but as they are added to the categories where they fit and there are currently around 2,000 images there already, there is no way for visitors to actually see what's new. I recently reconnected with an old friend who has a daily photo blog and I found that I enjoyed visiting it a couple of times a week to see what he had added and to read his commentary about the images. (You can see his work at http://www.paulison.com/) I thought I would give it a try myself and see how I liked it.







So here I am writing my first blog entry on the first day of spring. My bulbs are coming up and the crocus have started to bloom and I have been out in my garden cleaning out the old leaves, pruning last year's dead flower heads, and making room for the new growth. I was itching to take some photos so I tried some different lenses and angles with the crocuses and was delighted to find a ladybug crawling around one bunch.

After awhile a grabbed my funky lensbaby lens which is a completely manual focus lens with a very selective focus area that allows for creative blur on much of the image. As I generally try to get very sharp photos, it is a creative stretch for me to figure out exactly what I want sharp and allow the rest to blur. I took several images but decided during editing that I liked this one the best.


I have been working on my Photoshop skills lately for things beyond my normal image optimization, cropping, contrast, etc. to do some more creative things. I like black and white photos but have never really done much shooting in black and white as I am drawn to vivid colors. I converted one of my crocus images to B&W and used layers to get as much contrast and detail as possible in the black and white image. Here is the color and black and white version.





Thanks for stopping by and checking out the world the way I see it. I welcome your comments. Check back regularly to see what's new! ~Kelly