Sometimes Softly

I'm kind of sort of maybe half-way coming back to this, if no-one has any objections. I was reading an article in Practicle Photography today, and this evening I just felt like playing with a photo, so I made this out of a self portrait I took a couple of days ago. My first Vignette! Personally, I think the image is kind of boring, nothing in particular pops- it's just a nice portrait, which would be considered "nice" by anyone, with no real photographic merit behind it.
I may be being negative- I think I look not-ugly in it, but this was mostly just an exercise in "photoshopping" (quote-marked because I actually used paintshop pro) I haven't bothered to do any post-processing type work on any of my pictures in ages.

I might do a couple of posts in order to make up for that whole 4-month absence thing.

Ok, I'm done with my procrastinating and am returned!

Photos to follow shortly.

I'm taking a few days off- I'm just not in the mood right now. Plus I want to take a couple of days to plan out my novel for this year's NaNoWriMo I have characters and the vaguest of premises, so I just want to solidify things in my brain.

I figure I'd rather wait and give you good images than push on and give you crap. I should be back in on this in a week or so (maybe less, maybe more.)

I've been vaguely remaking some old photographs I made with my old (horrible) camera, just out of curiosity to see if I've improved/the difference the camera makes.  Above is todays, untouched and below is the original:

You probably can/can't tell, but this second image includes a ridiculously large amount of post-work. I maybe prefer the composition though, just because I like the dark-darkness of the bottom. Still, I'm happy to see I'm better with contrast now- aside from the fact that the latter image is b&w (duh) I also upped the contrast/brightness waaay up in Paint Shop Pro- couldn't do that in-camera in those days. I doubt I have the original image :( but I'm sure it was terrible and incredibly bland. I like the touches of blues in the top image. If I were retouching these images, I'd probably edit it up with photoshop (see, even my used-programme has updated :P) by desaturating it to take it to black and white, then use the art history brush to bring back the colour in the sky- i'd leave it totaly coloured, but it might be better without the bush at the bottom in colour?

I like the tighter focus though. Different season so the current trees maybe aren't going to be as cool, so no loss not to have them.