June 20, 2005 — A couple of days ago, Kelly and I went to a talk given by a photographer we know. Bill Ellzey has been a professional photographer for over 30 years, and his eye for natural beauty is vivid. One of his photos has even made the cover of National Geographic, something of a pinnacle for photographers.

We both got inspired from the talk. I love playing around with photographs in Photoshop Elements, which is the much cheaper, simpler, and user-friendly version of the venerable program Photoshop. So yesterday I decided to do have some fun.  Earlier this month  I posted a photo of a waterslide at a hot springs in Ciudad Camargo, Chihuahua. Here’s what I ended up with after cropping, applying a filter, brightening the picture, and adding a frame:

One thing Bill said was that if you have a strong horizontal line, putting it midway between the top and the bottom of the picture is almost never the best choice. I hadn’t thought of that, but I tried different places for the line and could see it for myself.