man…this makes me want an actual camera.
Oh, that was you? Looking forward to seeing more pictures from ya…
I found a new mode on my camera called “color accent” That I really like. The first picture is a self-portrait while walking the dogs today, but despite me looking like a jackass in it, I like how it came out. The second shows how the color comes out even better. Check out how it looks black and white, but you have the green fern and moss showing up in color. I like. In the future, I will have to experiment with this mode some more…
Lucky, i would suggest not playing with color profiles in the camera itself and shoot in a faithful mode.
If your camera can do it, shoot in RAW and then process in a program like lightroom. You can then apply any number of looks to a photo with better results than you can get from even photoshop.
also i wanted to weigh in about this no flash buisness and i think this can be misleading.
On camera flash pointed squarely at the subject isn’t going to give you great pictures. And yes working with natural light can give you good pictures.
but sometimes the natural lighting sucks. If you have a good flash with a swivel head you can usually bounce the flash off something to account for less than optimal natural light.
Even better if you get a flash cable you can do some off camera flash and get some really dramatic lighting that might not have been part of the lighting in the room. So yeah, if you have a point and shoot, its probably best to try to shoot without flash if you can. (unless you just need a fill flash)
but yeah. flash can be awesome.
If you get into shooting with Gels on your flash you can do loads of fun mood lighting as well.
Awesome points, thank you! Swivel head flash…hmmm…I will have to look into that!
both the pictures above were taken with the flash firing somewhere other than the top of the camera. You can tell by looking where the shadows are falling.
right now i’m working with a cheapy 80 dollar vivitar with a flash cable.
but i’ve been looking at one of these:
Thanks for the advice, Tim, but those type of programs are a bit outside my means, after the money I put into my camera. 
I have recently had a photography epiphany that I wanted to share. My brother-in-law also is an avid photographer and his pictures are jaw-droppingly gorgeous. I pulled him aside last week and said,
“It is really hard for me to say this, but you are the better photographer.”
He laughed and said, “No man, we just have a different approach. You take 700 pictures and choose the best 100. I take 700 pictures and choose five and really work on them in iPhoto.”
This gave a moment of pause. Beside minor tweaks I shunned altering images in a program…it seemed like it was cheating. Yet, as I started to think about it I thought back to all those hours I would spend in a darkroom in high school…wasn’t that the same thing? Dodging, burning, changing contrast, etc?
I started to think of the act of taking a picture not as the last step, but as the first. I tried out the approach and was blown away by the outcome. Here are two pictures taken one after the other…you will see what I mean.
What I realize now is that for some select photos you can change them from capturing a moment of time into creating a piece of art. I am really excited by this!
Recently, my younger brother bought a house. As a small house warming gift, I framed this picture here for him:
It is from when we were both cat fishing this year, and you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to figure out how to do this with GIMP. You can probably find some people on here better at this sort of thing, but if anyone ever needs any help giving your modern pic an old school feel, I will help you out.
We both really like collecting older photos of our family, so he liked seeing himself in a similar photo.