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Nestled in the heart of the Ozarks is Greer Spring in Alton, Missouri, United States. This area is 4100 acres known as Greer Spring Special Management Area and is part of Eleven Point National Scenic River. This is also part of the large Mark Twain National Forest Area.

Greer Spring is the 2nd largest natural spring in Missouri producing around 220 million gallons of water a day. Isn't that just amazing?! Each year we take a couple fall photography trips and went to see this beautiful spring in Fall 2022.

When you go, make sure to bring your hiking shoes and walking sticks if you use them. It's a rugged .9 mile hike downhill towards the spring. Then it's all uphill after you visit the spring so you'll want to take your time.

Greer Spring flows from two areas which are about 250 feet apart. One area is where it flows out of Greer Spring Cave. The other is just down from the cave in the middle of the spring made river. They sit at the bottom of a steep and shaded ravine. The rushing cold water feeding Greer Spring comes from nearby streams that flow underground along with some sinkholes found to the west and northwest of the spring.

Make sure to bring your bug spray! We like to use natural essential oils. Like many hikes in the Ozarks, the trail is wooded with lots of trees, which you may run across not only wildlife, but ticks and spiders too. When we went, we ran across a large nest of Asian Giant Hornets! They were right above me in several of the photos I took. They were the biggest and scariest looking hornets I have ever seen. Thankfully there had been some cold nights so they were moving around fairly slowly but I sure didn't want to get stung by them! My husband was with me so he kept an eye on them while I nervously took some photos.

Along the creek you'll see many small waterfalls and rapids as the fast flowing water rushes by on down the river. Also along the natural spring river, is a tall rock bluff which I believe extends for about a mile. The spring then flows into Eleven River.

If you love hikes and nature, I recommend visiting this beautiful Greer Spring. Feel free to check out my fine art photos I have taken of the spring. Each image is available as wall art, puzzles, home decor, t-shirts, gifts and more. Hope you enjoy the photos. Greer Spring Photos

To see my full blog along with photos, click here: Blog

Sometimes a photographer will see a beautiful scene, take the photo, then when they view it, it's not as great as they had hoped for. Then there are times where a photographer will see the potential in an okay scene that can be made into a piece of art that makes you say "Wow!".

On a beautiful late summer day, I was taking a walk at Nathanael Greene Park in Springfield Missouri, United States. Everything was still green because thankfully we had a wet summer. I came upon this beautiful willow tree across the pond. I love the looks of these beautiful trees. The way the wind gracefully sways through them... they are so wistful.

I took the photo knowing the landscape scene was pretty, but when it came to the colors it was almost too much green for me. I could see it's potential even though I wasn't 100 percent sure what I was going to do with it yet.

A tip to improve your photography: Before a photographer posts an image to their website, they should ask themselves, "Would I hang this up on my wall?" or "Who would hang this up on their wall?" If you can't say yes or answer who then it's probably something you need to put aside or transform it into something that will change those answers.

As I mentioned above, the photo was just okay, but too much green for me. It didn't really have any drama. I kept the photo and set it aside until I could come up with an idea that would make it art. Finally got some ideas to try something different (about a year later) and gave it a go.

A photographer acquaintance from one of my photography groups had mentioned how he changed the color of some objects in one of his art pieces using colored layers. I thought this was the perfect photo to try it on. I did the color changes in GIMP using different layers of red and orange. Then I used layer masks and brushes to put the color where I wanted it. I loved the transformation it was taking.

I then turned it into a painting using 2 different painting filters. I do this to make it unique. To make it even more artistic, I opened it in Corel Painter Essentials program, added some more painting techniques using my own hand brushes, and some 3D like texture. I wanted to keep the water somewhat smooth so I removed the texture from that area of the photo using a clone brush.

To finalize, I opened the photo in Lightroom, did some extra enhancements to color, hand light brushing, added tags and a description and the unique art piece was done. I believe it went from okay to wow and now I can say, "Yes, I would hang that on my wall."

What do you think of the transformation? Weeping Willow Landscape Painting

If you want to stand out among the rest, you need to edit your photos.

I woke up one morning and remembered a random conversation I had with a lady several months ago. It weighed on my heart so I wanted to talk about it.

I don't remember who this lady was, or why we got into this conversation (I think we were talking about something else other than photography and I mentioned I was a photographer). She asked if I edited my photos. I told her yes and was a little blown away by her response. (I'm one of those that takes a minute to come up with a good answer - this is why I'm not a debater lol). She said, "Well, I have a friend who never has to edit their photos, they come out of the camera as is and that's how good of a photographer they are."

Well, that's perfectly fine, I don't have to edit my photos either. However, with today's technology and the huge selection of photographers and photos, you have to do something to make your work stand out. This is the same for both portraits and fine art.

Just think about it. In fine art you're photo is competing against millions of other photos. In portraits, you need to be creative and keep it from looking like the photo was from a nice cell phone.

.....to read more and see photo examples, see the full blog here: Why Should Photographers Edit Blog

Each week on Fine Art America, they have been doing an "Edit This" contest. This is where they provide an image for free and ask us to edit it to make it our own piece of art. They then have a contest and vote for the best design. This was the first time I had time to enter the contest.

For this contest, they provided a photo of an old Austin of England car. I took the car and edited it into a scene I took of Oark Cafe in Oark Arkansas. This is an historic general store in Arkansas and the oldest, continuously operating general stores in Arkansas. The car windows was a challenge, especially the passenger front with all the reflections, but I was able to make it work to show the background along with still looking like a window. I then turned it into a digital painting and added texture. What do you think of my edit?

(Dec 30th edit/addition: I ended up in a tie with 7th place out of 75 entries. Pretty good since it was my first try in this contest)

Here's the link to the image: Austin Of England Painterly
Here's the link to the contest: Edit This 28 Contest

Another year and another decade have now come and gone. Wow, it's hard to believe it's already the year 2020. I remember as a child hearing my parents and other adults say life is short and time goes by fast. Boy were they right. The older you get, the faster it goes. 2019 was a little different year for us. We went through a lot of changes and it's been a lot of hard work.

In 2019 I made the decision to do my photography business full time and to close my income making business. The other business was stressing me out so much it was affecting my health. I've been doing photography for 10 years and even though it was a full time business, I couldn't put the focus on it I wanted to with the other business and it was getting hard to balance both businesses. Photography is a passion and talent of mine and I didn't want to live with the regret of wondering "what if I could make it living my dream". So I took the plunge and have been full speed ahead and trying to grow my business.

Because of this change, we weren't able to take a vacation like we normally do which is where I get a lot my photos for the year. However we did get to take a couple trips in 2019. Our daughter got to march in the Disney World parade in Orlando Florida in the Spring. I got some good wildlife photos and I did get some great photos of the parks, however, due to their copyrights, those photos can not be posted for sale.

Then in late spring we got to go to Chicago for a concert I took my daughter and her friend too. BTS, a Korean pop group! If you haven't heard of them, they are one of the world largest musicians. It was by far the largest concert I've ever been too and it was great! They really know how to put on a show and they really care for their fans, known as ARMY. I've never seen a group of musicians so thankful for their fans before. While in Chicago I was able to get some great photos. I love to visit that beautiful city!

I also started doing something different with some of my art this year. I started doing more mixed media. That's where I take a photo I took, and turn it into a digital painting. To make them unique, there are a variety of things I do to my mixed media pieces so the process can't be exactly copied including adding my own hand painting techniques to them. I'm really liking how they are looking and they are getting more attention so I will continue to evolve and grow with mixed media.

I hope you had a great 2019 and may your 2020 be filled with blessings and good health. If you have a dream, don't let that dream pass you by because you're scared. Believe me, I'm still scared everyday hoping I can feed my family, but at least I'm fighting to see where it's going to go. If I don't make it, then at least I won't live with wondering "what if".

Happy New Year!! Here is a youtube video looking back at some of my photos from 2019: Look Back At 2019 Video

If you want to make it as a fine art photographer in today's world, you can't just take a photo and slap it up on your website anymore. Technology is changing, improving, and there are more artists to compete against. Photographers have to show their artistic side and provide something unique.

This requires editing every photo. It can be editing a photo just to enhance it and touch it up, editing it into mixed media art, or completely transforming it into a different photo. I'm going to start blogging to show a little bit of what I do to some of my photos to create art pieces.

I'll start with my Milky Way Cattle Moonlight image. This is somewhat a surreal type photo because in order to see and capture the milky way, you need to be in the right area and at the darkest spot possible in your area. Typically the moon is not bright and not in that area. You also have to be away from cities to avoid picking up light noise.

I had taken the three photos; The first one is a capture of the beautiful Milky Way I took just east of Ozark Missouri near Sparta during the summer; The moon shot was taken on a beautiful clear night in Ozark; and the cow silhouette photo was also taken in Ozark at a cattle farm during a stormy spring day. They are all okay photos, but you want to ask yourself if you'd hang it on your wall before you decide to post them for sale. Each of these photos needed a little extra something to make them wall art material.

To start, I picked my photos and opened them in Lightroom. Individually, there wasn't much editing done to them other then a little color enhancement and sharpening. I did this so I could then save them as jpg files. I shoot all my photos in RAW format and I use a variety of programs to edit them. Knowing I was going to be using Gimp to mix the photos together, I had to process the RAW file before opening in Gimp because it currently doesn't have the capability of processing RAW files. However it's a great program! After converting and saving them, I opened them as layers in GIMP using the cattle photo as my main first photo.

Using a combination of brushes and filters, I was able to combine them into one image. I also had to do some color and tone adjustments to each layer so they look cohesive. Most of the adjustments were done with the moon color. To make it a little more natural looking (but still keeping a surreal look), I then reopened the combined image in Lightroom and made some more adjustments. I especially focused on adjusting the light around the moon. Placing the moon as it was, wasn't very realistic so I used a radial filter to add some "glow" around the moon so it looked like it was illuminating the sky around it. Then making a few other adjustments, the art piece was done. The three images look far better together then they did individually. To get a better look of the final edited photo go here: Milky Way Cattle Moonlight

I absolutely love these photos I took of this cute older couple sitting together on a bench at Mackinaw City, Michigan. It was a gloomy summer day with a light rain off and on. We was there on vacation. As I was walking around looking for something to photograph, I spotted them sitting there with their binoculars. They wasn't about to let the gloomy day keep them from enjoying the beautiful views of the Mackinac Bridge and Lake Huron (neither was I).

I just had to capture them and this precious timeless moment.

Every time I look at these photos I think of that classic black and white photo of a navy couple standing in the middle of the street kissing (The Famous Kiss by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt). It's not the same photo, but it has that same classic vibe that never fades away. It tells a love story. I don't know this couple and don't know their story, but it makes me think of a couple that's been married for several years and they still enjoy celebrating life together. They don't let the weather keep them from getting out. So cute! I hope I'm able to get around like that when I'm older.

I think this is going to be one of those classic photos that never gets old to look at. I have both color or black and white options available. Hope you enjoy the photos. Thanks for reading and if you enjoy my photography, feel free to subscribe to my email list. I don't send out that many emails so don't worry about me flooding your email.

Here's a link to one of the photos: Cute Michigan Couple

Back it up, and back it up twice.

Even though technology can be a great thing, it can also be a bad thing. All electronics and anything technical will fail. Just like us, there's only one thing guaranteed in life and that's death. It will happen we just don't know when.

I can't stress enough the importance of backing up your files (data and photos), and not just backing them up in one place but two places. Especially if you're a photographer or business owner.

I learned this from experience myself. I had most of my photos backed up onto an external hard drive (my other files were backed up separately on a flash drive). As time goes by, I eventually clean out some of the photos from my computer every now and then. What's the harm? After all, they were backed up. One day I backed up my files and left my the hard drive out because I had to leave and didn't have time to store it away. I didn't notice it was gone until the next day. I tore the house apart looking for it. To make a long story short, my husband had a friend over while I was gone. That friend brought other friends we didn't know. Turns out one of them stole it. There were approximately 500,000 photos on that box. That's a lot of precious memories.

After feeling so sick from the loss, I followed the advise I've heard so many times before. I went out and bought two external hard drives. I store them in two different places.

Thankfully, about 6 months later, my husbands friend found the box that his friend took and returned it. I can't tell you the relief!! That was a miracle.

This isn't the only thing that can happen. You can loose it, have a fire, or it can (and it eventually will) just flat out quit working on you. I also recommend taking all those CD's that we used to put our photos on and backing them up to a hard drive. CD's fail too. I've had some that have. I've also had clients contact me asking if I still had their photos because either their CD failed, or the computer crashed and they didn't have them backed up. Don't forget to back up your phone too!

So before this happens to you, make sure you're backing up your files in two different places and back up at least weekly. In a photographers case, I back up when I download the photos from the camera, and then back up again after editing the photos. You can always accidentally a file and wish you had it backed up somewhere else before you reformatted your SD Card. Yes, that's happened to me too, but thankfully it was backed up.

Have you had something like this happen to you, or do you have any other suggestions on backing up files?

The great thing about living in the Ozarks, we get to experience all four seasons, however the winter season always seems so long for me.  I'm just not a fan of cold weather (unless there's snow to photograph - which we haven't had too much of that in southwest Missouri the past few years).

I'm always ready for the beautiful colors of the spring season.  I love how the variety of colors pop everywhere.  I think it's like a hint of Heaven, even though I'm sure we won't experience anything close to that beauty until our journey here ends. 

Spring is a fantastic season for all types of photography so get your camera's out before it's too late.  Spring is great for portrait backdrops, landscape photography, macro photography, wildlife photography, fine art photography and more.

There are a few challenges to springtime photography.  The biggest one is lack of time especially for most of the flowering trees.  I say this because they typically only last one to two weeks after they've bloomed.  For example magnolias, pear trees, and redbuds.  Their colorful beauty is short lived.  In other words, you have to work your schedule around mother nature.  

Another challenge for landscape photographers has to do with trees blooming at different times.  There are often still a lot of trees around that have not bloomed yet.  If you're anything like me, I don't always like naked trees mixed in with flowering trees so I try to be creative and look for different angles in order to avoid having signs of winter in the photo.

Then you have the beautiful blooming flowers.  Spring flowers include crocuses, hyacinths, daffodils, iris, tulips, peonies, freesia, pansies, wisteria and the list goes on.  Most of those also don't last long so you have to enjoy them and capture them before they too are gone.  I love macro photography for spring flowers.

Spring decor will also brighten up your home or office.  It's a great time of year to switch out your decor to make everything feel fresh.  I suggest having different photos and decor for the different seasons to keep things different.  You can rotate them out and it's makes you feel like you've updated your decor!

You just can't go wrong with spring photos regardless of the type of photography you're into.  You just have to get out there while the color is alive!  What are your favorite things to photography during the spring season?  Feel free to comment.

To view this blog with photos go to: https://www.jenniferwhitetmphoto.com/spring-is-in-the-air

Not having the correct white balance for a photo or your computer monitor will hurt your chances of selling your photography.

There are so many types of computer monitors, laptops, and computer color enhancement programs out there and hardly any of them have the correct auto white balance.  If you're computer monitor is not properly calibrated, your photos are most likely off on color and you can not always trust your photo editing program.  Rarely ever is the auto white balance correct on any of the programs I use.  Your program doesn't know the time of day, type of light, etc.  For example, a photo taken during sunset will have a naturally warmer tone, but your program is typically going to make it too blue when you try the auto setting.  There are various presets for some programs, and some are better than others, but in my experience they still aren't accurate.

Most photographers have experienced this issue, especially in the beginning of their photography career.  I too have had to learn this especially after getting a new computer.  Not only do we have to be able trust our computer and camera settings, but we also have to hope the color balance is correct on our clients computer too.  You can have an upset client if they think the photos are too warm or cool toned, when in fact the issue could be with their computer. 

Here's a sign your color could be off. If you're a photographer who likes to look at other photographers work and often think their photos look like the color is off compared to your photos?  Well, instead of thinking it's them, you may want to look at your monitor because it's most likely your computer if the majority of the photos you're looking at seem off.  If you only see one on occasion, then you're probably okay. 

Each brand and type of camera will have different color tones.  For example, I upgraded my camera last year (kept the same brand) and even though the white balance for all of my cameras are similar, I've found some color tones are different for each camera.  My newer camera has a tendency to bring out more reds in the image and make them a little more vibrant than the other color tones.  Something you don't want for skin tones.  No one wants a red face!!  I noticed this on my computer with my new camera images and was worried about it so I printed a photo and then compared it to my monitor.  Sure enough, the reds where too vibrant and even though the other colors were accurate, the computer for some reason was muting out the reds on my monitor so the print had even more red to it than I thought it would have.  So I made more calibration adjustments so all my colors match the print and now when I make the manual adjustments in editing program to remove some of the red, my computer is calibrated to show how it should print.

There are a variety of ways to help ensure your color balance is correct.  
- You can start with your camera by setting a custom white balance using either your camera settings or an 18% gray card. However, if you're like me and move around to different areas during a photoshoot or are a location photographer, this can be time consuming and inconvenient. This works well for indoor studio photos where the light isn't constantly changing like it is outdoors. 
- You can use a light meter.  Light meters will tell a photographer what settings to use on their camera.  Once again, if you're shooting outside or changing locations this can be inconvenient.  Works great for indoor photography or studio photography where light remains consistent. 
- If you're a serious photographer, you may want to consider a monitor calibration tool like the Datacolor Spyder5PRO.  It's a cool tool that you place on your monitor and with the combination of the tool and the software it comes with, it will calibrate your monitor to display accurate colors. 
- If you are just starting out in photography, or just do it as a hobby, you may not want to spend the money on these tools. Another option would be to print a photo (I recommend a high quality or professional printer company) and then hold it up to your monitor to match the colors. This can be time consuming and you'll need to do it with a few different photos to get it as close as possible.  Also keep in mind if you have a laptop that you use in different locations, that too can have an affect.

So if you're a professional photographer or looking to do photography, I highly recommend checking your white balance and calibrating your monitor. 

Do you have any tips or advice on how you get accurate white balance?  Feel free to comment.