Delaware Hotel, Leadville, Colorado, originally uploaded by mark.mortensen.

I’ve been trying to shoot with my lensbaby composer more now that I have the mount swapped out to fit my Nikon. A couple weekends ago my wife and I went up into the mountains and stopped at Leadville Colorado. This is the Delaware Hotel that I pixel punished to get a moody photo. The comments has the original image from camera. Do you like this processing?

Technical Ramblings: Hand held from across the street with an approaching thunderstorm. Photoshop and the Totally Rad Actions recipe; Boutwell Magic Glass, Super Fun Happy (Desat Red layer removed, added Cool as cucumber w/mask for sky, masked warming layer to just the building), Troy and Dirty Diana for the texture (with masks to not have texture on the building) opacity 30%.

Uploaded by mark.mortensen on 20 Jul 09, 9.35PM MDT.

Original Image out of camera from Lensbaby Composer:

Tilt-n-Shift!, originally uploaded by mark.mortensen.

In Iowa (North English) for the week and not working. Thus I get to play around with photography all week (unless I’m being hauled off to see my wife’s relatives). I rented a Nikkor 45mm PC-E (aka Tilt and Shift lens) from www.lensrentals.com for the week. I’ve never used one of these specialty pieces of glass and thought I’d go shoot the bridges of Madison county with it. This old Iowa farmhouse is where I’m staying so used it as a model to create one of those diorama looking photos. Comments have the original non tilted image. Also spent most of the evening reading this awesome post from CAMBRIDGE IN COLOUR on how the tilt and shift lens work.

Technical Ramblings: The lens is tilted down 8 degrees and I’m across the street and up on a hill. Had always read that helps with creating the diorama look to be up above the subject. Post work in Photoshop with Totally Rad Actions; Oh Snap! twice to super duper saturate the image colors.

Uploaded by mark.mortensen on 20 Jul 09, 8.53PM MDT.

Original image with no tilt: