Photography – KC in AZ Cooks

Mom’s Guarding the Nest

It’s fairly early this morning and mom Morning Dove is on the nest keeping the eggs warm. It’s 77 Fahrenheit so there is not a lot of morning chill. Carefully I crept up to take a picture and she was tolerant for about 2-3 minutes as I snapped a few images with my iPhone 10. I’m surprised how well it takes pictures. Finally, she lost her patience with the intruder, me, and flew off so as not to bring too much attention to the nest.

Over time she will get used to me and learn to trust my presence. Hopefully, she will. The last nesting mom would let me get very close to the nest without worry. after a time.

Morning Doves Nest

Birds, Photography

It has been a long time since we have had Morning Doves nest at eye level or even close to eye level. This nest appears as though it is in our oleanders but not. The nest is strategically place atop a horizontal 14 foot ladder normally used for painting. Gus is not going to use that ladder this season until the eggs have hatched and the babies have gained their wings for flight. This is such a joy to me as many years back I had a Morning Dove in a tree in the backyard two years in a row with thriving babies. I’ve posted those pictures which are so much fun.

Mom over time trusted me. However, the tree was lost during heavy winds and the dove abandoned the site. If you have not heard Morning Doves in the early morning it is a delightful cooing sound that warms your heart. I hope this new mom will gain trust in me like my previous one.

Grilling Chicken for Dinner

Cabin Called Ironworks, Chicken, Cuisine, Food, Grilling, Photography

Tonight for dinner I’m grilling a simple skin on the bone-in chicken breast. I like leaving the skin on and bone in so that the chicken is really moist. We’re at our Ironworks cabin so we almost always grill. The spice I use is Boswell’s Blends – Fowl-n-Feather Seasoning. I bought it at one of those home shows in Phoenix AZ and use it all the time. The ingredients in case you want to try something similar are:
salt
dehydrated garlic
dehydrated onion
other spices (the secret ingredients)
sugar
dehydrated red bell pepper
dehydrated parsley

Rub the spices into the chicken breast & spray with olive oil, butter oil or coconut oil.

The breast was still partly frozen so I started with a 350 grill and put it in a cooler area to thaw out. Then as it came up from the frozen state the grill was upped to 375.

I’m cooking it fairly slow as we’re enjoying happy hour on the patio. Nothing spectacular…. just a Blue Moon with an orange slice for me and a Malibu rum and Diet Coke for Gus.

When the chicken is done we’ll enjoy it with a good sized green salad with lots of goodies. Internal temperature should be 365 for chicken breast.

It’s done so were hungry and ready to eat.

This is my first post in a long long time.

Restoring a Family Pet Image

Animals, Photography, Restoration

While at Suzanne’s hubby’s birthday party she showed me a picture of their dog, Zoso. This picture was their only picture of him as a puppy. It had been printed on regular copy paper and had a lot of water damage. As she showed me the picture she said, “is there any way you might be able to restore the image”? I seriously had my doubts but decided to give it a try. She had seen the vintage restoration that I did a few weeks ago and she had more faith in me than I did.

Scanned Water Damaged Image

Edited in Photoshop & Lightroom

First I scanned the original as a PDF. Then brought it into Lightroom and did the basic enhancements; bumping darks and balancing whites along with sharpening. Then it was opened in Photoshop so that I could use the various Healing Brush Tools; Patch, Regular Healing and Spot Healing. Then used the Burn Tool to redefine some areas. It was fun using the Healing Brush to build up the puppies hind end. Then the image went back into Lightroom for final touches including a Vignette. Fun project that only took about 2 hours with much better results than I anticipated. Suzanne was pleasantly surprised.

Restoring an Old Image

People, Photography, Vintage

My brother-in-law sent me an old tattered image of his great-grandfather and his family. He asked if it were possible to restore it and so I took it to task. It did take some time to put his great-grandmothers chin back on and patch all the missing areas where the paper had worn. But, the result was much better than I imagined.

Door Knocker

Doors, Photography

My good friend, Susan, has been remodeling her guest bathroom and wanted a long vertical picture to hang over the commode. She brought me a picture of a door knocker that she had taken in Italy. It was roughly a 12 x 18 picture and she wanted it to be 8 x 23. We ended up with 10 x 23 but had to grow the wood area of the picture to do it.

This was done by adding copy paste layers of the wood work at the top and bottom of the door knocker and then merging the layers. The smug tool was used to try to blend in the area where the layers were added, burn tool was used on the knocker itself to enhance it and the colors were enriched.

One Photo Focus – The Cobb by Katie Prior

Ocean, Photography

Katie Prior's Image - The Cobb — Katie Prior’s Image – The Cobb

When I saw Katie’s image it reminded me of my travels, though typically I visit a much warmer location. However, I always enjoy pictures of the ocean as it breaks against a pier. I did my typical small changes to the image in Lightroom where the image was cropped, exposure was edited slightly, vibrance was popped up quite a bit along with the blue and aqua in luminance and saturation. Then the image was brought into Photoshop where mostly I just did a few burns against the mountain area along the water line and then did a new change for me where on a new layer, I used the color replacement tool and picked a light blue to adjust the skyline from gray to more of a blue-gray. Thanks, Katie for the lovely image and to Stacy for keeping the ball rolling.

Visual Venturing Katie’s Image

One Photo Focus – Robin Kent’s White House

Buildings, Photography

Robin-Kent-One-Photo-Focus-July — Robin Kent Image edited by KChengelis – KCinAZ

I didn’t do a great deal of editing to Robin’s already great image. In Lightroom, the image was sharpened and a few changes made to exposure. I tried to bring down the yellow cast in the building and did so a bit. Mostly I cropped the image and removed the people from the foreground grassy area. In Photoshop the blue in the sky was increased using a mask so that the building and grass were not changed. Also, the burn tool was used to deepen the color of the grassy area.

To check out all the other versions, visit Stacy’s One Photo Focus.