Scott Lyerly

Feb 21 Photo

February 21st, 2016

I still really struggle with night photography on the iPhone. Then again, in fairness, the iPhone doesn’t have the full range of capabilities that a SLR camera has (the iPhone has a fixed aperture, which can’t be changed no matter what app you use) and I’m always trying to take picture of the moon (a really difficult subject).

I snapped this one using night mode on ProCam. The thing I like most is that it captured the beauty of the clouds and trees in the moonlight. And Venus. I think that smaller dot is Venus.

The thing I don’t like is that there was just no way to tone down how bright the moon was in the shot. It totally overpowered the rest of the sky.

I’ll keep trying, but for now, this is what I got.
Feb 20 Photo

February 20th, 2016

We have such great trees where we live. I’m not sure what I expected, but such tall pines were a surprise when we moved the New England nearly twenty years ago. The pines in this picture are right outside my front door. The day was stunning, warming nicely and sunny as all get-out. I took this picture up into the underside of the pines, with the afternoon sun lighting the undersides of the branches. I added a filter at the end. It didn’t need one, but I liked ’70s summery feeling it gave the photo.
Feb 19 Photo

February 19th, 2016

I’m running behind tonight. So here’s a picture of some of the books piled next to the desk.

G’night.
Feb 18 Photo

February 18th, 2016

I caught this picture of Maggie when she wasn’t looking. Those tend to be the best times to get pictures of kids, when they’re just being themselves and don’t know anybody’s watching them. We were in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, and she had been reading a book in one of the chairs. She turned to look behind her, and that’s when I snapped. Something about her look and position just suggestion a good picture. I usually don’t post pictures of my kids on this blog, but you can’t really see her face, so I’m good with it.

Shot with Hipstamatic.
Feb 17 Photo

February 17th, 2016

Out for a walk earlier this afternoon. The sun was bright and beautiful through the trees. Sometimes you just need a picture of trees.

This picture is unfiltered, just cropped a little to get the street out of it.
Feb 16 Photo

February 16th, 2016

Lines fascinate me like never before. It could be the drawing course I took at the Worcester Art Musuem last fall. If you’ve ever taken a drawing course, you’ll know that drawing, at its most basic, is nothing more that lines drawn the best way you can. When I find lines and patterns just by walking around, I usually take a picture. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it needs a little help.

This is a standpipe in the parking garage at work. What drew me to it was that fact that it lined up in perfect parallel to the wall and the electric conduit next to it.

Taken with ProCam, cropped and zoomed with Snapseed, filter applied in Hipstamatic.
Feb 15 Photo

February 15th, 2016

Short one tonight. This is the detail from the couch in my living room. It’s one of those microfiber ones that looks like leather, but is better at handling what the kids can throw at it. I took the close up then applied some post-processing using Snapseed.
Feb 14 Photo

February 14th, 2016

My wife and sister-in-law have had this funny Valentine’s Day tradition for years, and that is to give Valentine’s Day the middle finger and go out for sushi. And even though my wife and I have been married for close to twenty years, it’s a tradition that persists. So today we went out to get some sushi with the kids and an old friend of ours.

The picture above is part of an order of crab rangoon (yes, I know, it’s not a sushi, but it’s an appetizer), which itself is seems to be something of a anomaly up here in New England. At least, as far as we’ve seen. Up here, you ask for crab rangoon, the restaurant knows what you mean. Anywhere else, they seem to be called crab dumplings. (Well, at least in Maryland anyway.) Not sure why that is.

These crab rangoon are a little different than what you usually see. Most times, it’s crab and a cream cheese filling in some dough, pinched together and fried. The crab rangoon we had today was crab and cream cheese, along with some additional herbs, wrapped in a thin dough and deep fried. Looked different than usual, but still very tasty.
Feb 13 Photo

February 13th, 2016

I love Scooby-Doo. I remember watching it when I was a kid, usually before school, waiting the time when I would leave to walk to school. Five or six years ago, I rediscovered Scooby-Doo when my younger daughter began to watch the shows.

A month ago, I’m walking through Target, and lo and behold, Lego has introduced a Scooby-Doo line. The Mystery Machine above is a recent birthday present, and maybe the coolest Lego I’ve gotten in a long time.
Feb 12 Photo

February 12th, 2016

My town has, of all things, a dairy. Model Dairy operates out of Main Street. I’ve lived in my town for fifteen years, and I still know next to nothing about this dairy. Their website is a Facebook page. They have a truck that roams around town that looks like it dates back to when Ike was president, and smells even older. They have a building that is down the street from me, yet I never see anyone coming or going. I’m sure this dairy is fully functional, but it must be a word of mouth kind of thing.

This morning, after dropping my daughter off at school, I noticed that the morning light was hitting this mystery building in a way that begged to be photographed. I pulled over, pulled out my phone, and started snapping. One of the results is above.

I played around with this one in Enlight. I’m still getting to know Enlight, to figure out all of its tips and tricks. One of the things it offers that some of the other photo-editing apps don’t is the use of curves. Using curves is essentially just picking a spot on a curve, overlaid on top of the photo, and dragging it this way or that to change the color within the part of the photo the curve falls. Think of curves as a way to alter the hue and saturation of a part of the photo only, and not the entire photo. Using the curves, I was able to enrich the warm color hitting the upper part of the picture, and cool down the lower part of the picture with the snow.

I think the result is okay. It’s not the best picture or post-processing I’ve ever done, but it’s still interesting enough (to me, at least) to post.