Hi Folks:

Well, September descends upon us tomorrow – back to school for those who are so inclined, and the end of summer vacation for most.  On this last day of August I had a look through Lightroom to see that I made nearly a thousand images this month.  In the digital age there are many who make a thousand images a day, but I’m still from the film era, where I would get a dozen images from one roll of 120 film.  Anyway…

I’ve put a lot of thought into what to make my ‘photo of the month’ for August.  We had family visiting at the beginning of August, and while I made several ‘tourist’ shots, I’m not a people photographer at heart.  We went to two different car shows this month and there were some good prospects there, but I profiled an image of an automobile last month.

I met some old friends for lunch today as they passed through town, and in explaining to them what we like about Victoria I mentioned that this is largely a city of villages, each one unique, and yet forming a coherent whole.  We haven’t been everywhere in Victoria yet, not by a long shot, but of the various places we have toured Oak Bay is my favourite.  While a separate municipality from the city of Victoria proper they are adjunct, with Oak Bay covering the city’s southeastern shore.  From our walks there we’ve found that Oak Bay has a sense of neighbourhood and community that we really like.  To that end I thought I’d use one of my Oak Bay images for this month’s selection.

Beach Drive Classics

I made this image while walking along Beach Drive, south of Oak Bay’s main centre.  While the house is certainly a classic (and the gardens are beautiful, but not shown here), it was the combination of the home and the classic car parked near the entrance that appealed to me.  I processed this image in Lightroom 3, using the new perspective correction controls to straighten the frame of the house and the gate, then converted it to B&W and added a slight sepia tone to it.  Finally, in holding with the ‘classic’ attributes of the image, I added a little grain.  I think it says everything I’ve wanted it to say.

Thanks for stopping by… now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
Mike.

P.S. II, the Sequel: You can find more of our posts on photography and Lightroom tutorials here, and you can find links to over 200 other sites that have Lightroom tips, tutorials and videos here.