Lagging

There's one more class left after last night's class but I have been so busy with work and things around the house that I haven't even uploaded the pictures from the field trip to the class website. Last night we covered lighting and manually adjusting the strength of your flash. I have already had occasions where that comes in very useful. I suspect everyone has because just like the auto exposure mode doesn't always give you the look you want, the flash very often also doesn't give you the look you want. What I get to it, I will put up a series of pictures from the airport where I was adjusting the flash strength to balance the exposure in the photograph. But anyway, I am still here, just a little swamped for now.

Morning Commute Getting Dark

For the last couple of months, my morning commute has been my time to pick a location to stop and take photos, practice camera settings, and enjoy some peace before starting the crazy workday. This morning I decided to try my luck at the Narrows Reserve in Beavercreek even though it wasn’t quite sunrise. I was lucky, the gates were open. So I went in, parked, and started down the trail along the river. I found a trail that went right down onto some exposed rocks in the riverbed itself. Squirrels and other animals were rustling the crispy dried leaves, the water quietly but noticeably gurgled over the rocks, and now and then the blurp of a fish jumping could be heard. The water was clear exposing the riverbed in some places, reflecting the trees in others. I could have stayed all morning, but since that is not where I earn my paycheck, I set the tripod up here and took some more shots. Many more shots, lots of manual exposure bracketing. Plus I had a polarizing filter on the front of my lens. It was very tricky to not over expose the sky and not under expose the trees. What I do like is how water strung out over the rocks in the shallow part similar to the waterfall shots from Yellow Springs.



I also found the photos to be more appealing after some cropping. For example, see before and after cropping below.

Tag Team Photography

My sister-in-law is bubbling over with ideas for photographs. On in particular has been trapped in her mind for years. She said she has always wanted a picture of a liquor bottle for her brother. But, despite having a clear vision in her head of what she wanted, she's been unable to recreate that vision in a photograph. A large part of that frustration I figure is her equipment. She has a digital point and shoot that doesn't provide a lot of flexibility. However, when she heard I was diving into photography, she asked me to help her out. With her composition suggestion and what I have learned about the camera settings, we were able to capture the look she was going for. It took some trial and error, but here's how it ended up. She has a glass top end table that we use. We put black fabric over the table top with a hole cut in it. I read about the lighting from below on a website. The bottle was placed over the hole and a lamp under the table to allow some light to come up through the hole and the bottle. The window shades were drawn to darken the room, but left enough ambient light to show the label. A secondary benefit of the light from below is that it emphasized the roundness of the stopper on top of the bottle much as side lighting emphasizes the roundness of a mug or cup. The camera was mounted on a tripod and the black fabric was held up as a background. Lastly, the white balance was intentionally set too warm to "yellow the label and glass", and the exposure slightly underexposed, according to the camera meter anyway. It turned out that slight movements of the lamp resulted in various effects such as the edge of the bottle disappearing into the background or the bubbles in the glass being more or less visible. I really enjoyed this and the next time you want to experiment with your camera on a rainy day, I suggest finding things around the house and constructing your own mini studio. Here is the result.

SNAFU - At my work

So....my employer found out about my interest in photography and offered to print some enlargements of my photos and display them on the walls here at work. What a nice gesture, so I thought. They offered to cover all the costs of printing and framing and even take care of all the legwork if I supplied them with the digital images. Well let me tell you, it became an example of, if you want something done right, do it yourself. The color was extremely saturated to the point of looking unnatural to me, and the print was grainy, almost pixelated. So, first off I checked the math. Sure enough my camera should handle producing an 11x14 enlargement at nearly 300dpi straight up without any fancy photoshop tricks. And the color, what happened to the color? Yellows look orange and the greens are so deep they loose contrast with the shadows. At work I have a high res 13x21 inch monitor and I can blow the photo up to double the monitor size and it still looks sharp and has the natural looking color I remember seeing the day I took it.

Ironically, or maybe not so, the people I work with that have seen the photos think they are great. They like the color, they like the detail. So maybe being the artist that took the photos, I had a look in my mind I was going for, the originals echo that look, and thus my opinion of the prints made for the office is maybe biased by that. After all art is an interpretive and individual subject, what one person casually notices speaks deeply to another. And so I have decided to leave my personal disappointment in the look of these prints behind me, and look on the bright side. The bright side being I was able to capture images that now bring enjoyment to others.

Class 3 is Tonight

Looks like the next chance I will get to stop and take photos is Friday. I will be driving myself to work that day. There was a photo contest that was held at the Spring Valley Potato Festival last weekend. The theme was Americana. I was not able to enter the contest, but I did notice a place I would take a photo if I was going to enter. While I think it would be better to shoot in the morning, I will not be able to go that way in the morning. So I will stop in the afternoon and see how it turns out. There is a red house next to a blue house. I know at least the red house has a star on it too. It looked like Americana to me. So that's what you have to look forward to, a red house next to a blue house.

Ideas......anyone?

I know one person has left comments (and I appreciate it) so this might just work. If anyone is following this yet, I'm in need of ideas for photographic subjects/techniques. I've taken just about every different route to work I can think of looking for photo opportunities. The recent trip to Yellow Springs was great, and maybe I'll be back this weekend for the street fair. But soon flowers will be gone, leaves will have fallen, and nature will be bare. I know there is a lot of potential in winter landscapes, but I'm not feeling that right now. Maybe once it gets here I will be in the mood. But for now, besides the obvious wait for the trees to change, if anyone has some suggestions of something for me to try, I'd love to hear them. I would like to watch people and snap things that catch my eye, but I don't really know the etiquette on that.

Color in Yellow Springs

During the field trip, one thing I knew would be plentiful is color. There was color found in the obvious places such as window frames painted to contrast with the wall and the sale I had seen at BP the week before. But then there was unexpected color. Knit rings in a tree, and colorful bands wrapped around poles. Even a woman wearing fuzzy pink slippers as shoes.

Field Trip

We had a field trip to Yellow Springs Saturday. I had planned some things in my mind that I wanted to photograph while I was there. One was an old gold Cadillac very similar to one Dad used to have. I also wanted to find opportunities to photograph color where ever I see it. It was too warm to see breath on the air, conditions were not right for sun beams (except in the way there), and I didn't take the camera out at the coffee shop. However, in addition to what I had planned, I saw plenty of very neat old doors, I discovered how to get a look I had seen in other photographs of buildings and we went to a waterfall to practice photographing water.

In the morning the clouds made for a colorful sunrise, and even showed some sunbeams through the holes in the clouds.


When I got to Yellow Springs, I parked and started walking to the coffee shop where the class was meeting. On the way, I passed the Cadillac I was looking for.


Our first stop to talk, was in the alleyway next to the coffee shop. The shop was called the Underdog Cafe and they had this colorful mural on the side of the building with an inspiring message.


As we walked down the block behind the cafe, we passed this old door. I noticed many old and unique doors and thought a return trip focusing on the doors as subjects would be a good idea.


After spending time around the buildings, we went into the trees along the bike path and then down to a waterfall. On the way to the waterfall is where I discovered how to make a photo of the front of a building look like it is leaning away from you. Most people would aim the building square in the frame, but a slight turn creates this effect that I like.


Then finally we got to the waterfall. I love taking pictures of moving water like this, it makes it look so mystical.

Class Two

We had our second class meeting last night. We spent the first half looking at sample pictures people had posted to the class website. Everyone in the class had some good photos to share. I also enjoyed the variety of locations and situations people brought. We had photos from Hawaii, night photos, action shots, flowers, water and water falls, pets, and children. The second half of class we talked about lenses and depth of field. Depth of field was the main topic and most time was spent on how to control it. It seemed that people were more comfortable talking and sharing last night. I image that must be partly due to the class getting to communicate some on the class blog to break the ice. Our field trip is coming up on Saturday to Yellow Springs so I will have some more photos to share after the field trip.