I was browsing through my shots from the night I took pictures at Peter Pan, and I found another keeper. Halfway through the shoot that night, I remembered something I learned at a newspaper conference, during a seminar taught by a local photojournalist: look for the moments that the emotion peaks, and you'll get the best shots with the best faces. He was right.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/2
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 1600
Focal Length: 135mm
Monopod
This was shot with my dad's 135mm f/2 prime. I didn't think it was a particularly practical lens when he bought it recently, but it fit the role of low-light indoor musical shooting lens perfectly. It also has the added bonus of being the single sharpest lens Canon produces, something that maybe is harder to notice when shooting at 1600 ISO.
But I'm very happy with these results. Both of these guys were perfect for the roles. Yes, that is Captain Hook's real hair, although Smee's nose is fake. I'm excited to share these photos with the cast.
I love shooting plants indoors because I never have to worry about wind. And I love shooting plants outside on a cloudy day because the lighting is perfect. So naturally, when I get the chance to take the best of both worlds, I go for it.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/8
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 100mm
Tripod
I'm not sure what this plant is called; it's some sort of succulent my mom is growing on a windowsill. And after I took a few shots like this one, I busted out my friend the spray bottle and tried some water ones... they didn't turn out. I don't think it was the water, just other things went wrong. So I may revisit this one with the water droplets again sometime.
Other than being maybe a little bit too busy, I'm pretty happy with this. At least I can say it was composed pretty well and there's a definite point of interest. The the lighting. Oh, the lighting.
Yesterday I went to see Peter Pan at the high school for the second time. Frankly, I should have been in Peter Pan. I love doing shows, and every single person in the cast is a friend of mine, but I didn't think I would have time once I got a job again.
That aside though, my camera performed admirably in the low-light conditions, with the help of my dad's three fastest lenses: 50mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.8, and 135mm f/2. This particular picture was shot with the 85mm, but I think I used the 135mm for the majority of the 300 photos I shot that night.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/2.2
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 1600
Focal Length: 85mm
Monopod
Good times. I was forced to use 1600 ISO the entire night, but with the speed of the lenses, and using TV so as to avoid continually making aperture adjustments while trying to capture the action, I was getting shutter speeds in the 1/200-1/250 range, which is just right for what I was trying to shoot.
Moral of the story: buy fast lenses. Also, apologies for not posting yesterday. I was helping to run, and performing in, the state Solo & Ensemble festival.
Yesterday I went up to a high vantage point near my house, set up my tripod and intervalometer with fresh batteries, and attempted to time-lapse a sunset.
On the bright side, my intervals seem to have evened out. On the not so bright side, there wasn't much of a sunset last night, and I have some experimentation to do with exposure settings before I'll be able to get this right.
In celebration of Earth Day, I went way out of my comfort zone and took a nature macro photograph. Sadly, I forgot to shoot in RAW as I had left my settings on JPG last time I used the camera. Bummer, especially since this was a planned B&W conversion.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/8
Shutter Speed: 1/10
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 100mm
Tripod
I'm still pretty happy with how it turned out though. Not as much contrast as I like due to the JPG format, but I'm okay with that. Since I used my newest friend, the spray bottle, to take this, I should have no problem going for a redux later on.
One really interesting thing to do is zoom in to 100% on the full-res image by clicking the photo itself. Check out individual droplets. A lot of them have silhouettes of the tripod, me, the camera, etc. in them.
I was heading home from working on my guitar, and I was running a little late for an errand in which I had to pick a couple people up. It was raining. So, despite my time shortage, I busted out my camera and got a few photos of the raindrop-covered leaves on a tree.
There were better pictures in the area, better lenses for the job, and taking the photo properly would have yielded better results by far. Nevertheless, this didn't turn out too bad.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 55mm
Handheld
I'll have to go back sometime with a tripod, a macro lens, and about 10 minutes. Hopefully I'll be able to try some different angles, etc. Also, even if it's not raining when I go back, there's a dirty trick I can use—you just bring a spray bottle of water. It looks very convincing. :)
I mentioned a while back in this post that it's possible to make an intervalometer from a calculator. I actually entered the code listed on the tutorial into my calculator weeks ago, but today I finally got ahold of a 12mm audio jack (link cable). I'm happy to report that it works.
As stated in the guide that showed how to convert the calculator to an intervalometer, I seem to have gotten some slight variances in time between shots. Apparently the accuracy of the intervals is determined by the freshness of the batteries. Unfortunately, even slight variances are pretty noticeable in time-lapse. You'll see that the video above appears slightly "choppy." I'm also convinced that having a video editor that will do 1-frame-photos will also help me smooth out my videos a lot.
I can't remember the last time I changed the batteries on this calculator, and it gets used for Calculus homework almost every day. So before I get too upset about the inaccuracies of the calculator, I think I'll put in some brand new batteries and try again.
This was a test run; from now on I'll try to to shoot time lapses that have more points of interest than clouds moving in the sky and my little brother lounging around on the trampoline.
Ahh, new card reader got here today and I was finally able to unload about 2 gigs of RAW files from my card. Not only that, I was able to finally EDIT some RAW files on my computer and get the best results I'm capable of again.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/8
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 100mm
Tripod
I hadn't realized just how dependent I've grown on using RAW whenever possible. I love it. Anyway, we have a flowering plum tree in my front yard that will probably be cut down this summer, so I wanted some photos. Besides, it looks really good this time of year. Once again I can thank my dad and his macro lens.
Also, I'm pretty proud to say that the thought of cropping this photo didn't even cross my mind during editing. I think I'm finally starting to get better at framing things. The more things I can get right in-camera, the better.
Flowers are finally coming up around here. Today I went out and shot tulips and daffodils. It was the first time I ever used the RAW+JPG setting on my camera, because while I want to keep the RAW files and process them later, I'm currently unable to transfer anything but JPGs to my computer. My new card reader should get here Tuesday at the latest though, so I think I'm in good shape.
So today's photo was shot in JPG, but hopefully the results still look pretty good.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/8
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 46mm
Tripod
I've been trying to get more triangles in my compositions; apparently they're subconsciously pleasing. I fixed my watermark, too, by the way. Also, my apologies for not posting yesterday. I was at a wedding all day, and at a date all night, with little or no time for photography in between.
Turns out that with my transfer cable, I can't actually move RAW files onto my computer. Which is rough. I had to dig through the few JPGs I shot yesterday and pick the best one, which still isn't all that good.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 100mm
Handheld
It probably looks like some astounding close-up, but I cropped that shot majorly. The light is awful, although it's hard to be picky when photographing something like a wasp.
So, bottom line: I can't wait for my new card reader to get here.
As I mentioned yesterday, I did do a number of product shots in a paper light box. I'm happy with how they turned out. Just as in this post, I'm continually impressed with the professional-looking results that you can achieve with 4 pieces of paper to diffuse the light.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/8
Shutter Speed: 0.8 seconds
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 100mm
Tripod
I used the 100mm f/2.8 macro lens and a tripod that belongs to the newspaper staff. It was interesting shooting these, because I knew they all had to turn out really well. I wasn't just shooting for myself, it was a semi-professional job. As I had an odd mix of cloudy window lighting and overhead fluorescent, I had to manually set the white balance. Not a big deal, but it turned out excellent—I wanted to be sure the colors displayed were accurate.
So if you like what you see, head on over and check out my friend's business: http://cuteasabuddon.blogspot.com. Hopefully soon you'll see some of my photos on there, when she has time to update the site!
My friend once again needed a photographer today for her business (shameless bump), so I got to do some more commercial photography, which I really enjoy. First I shot product photos in a light box to make the necklaces and bracelets she displays look professional. Then I took a couple of models out on a shortish shoot to display the product in action. It's nice that I knew the models and "employer" beforehand, but I can conceive of a situation that I might not. And I don't think it would be that bad. Working with models that aren't stuck up is pretty easy, especially if they like the results. Both models asked me for copies of the photos I took of them, which is an easy thing to do.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/4
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 50mm
Handheld
I used my dad's 50mm because the shoot started inside and I desperately needed the f/1.4 aperture to compete with the crappy fluorescent lighting. As we went outside, I just left the 50 on, but shot at f/4 instead. It's a great portrait lens either way. So basically, I got to help out a friend, practice directing models, practice portraits in general, and have some fun that ended with good pictures. So, definitely a cool experience.
A few notes: sorry on the late post today, my card reader is broken and I had to hunt down an old USB-to-mini-USB cable to transfer my photos, which took a while. I have ordered a new card reader, which should get here Monday or Tuesday, but until then, I have the cord handy.
Also, I am going to follow everyone's suggestions in changing the watermark to just my name in a larger font. I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
After reading a DPS post on automatically watermarking your images, I've decided to adopt a watermark. Now that I have full-res photos available on Flickr, it's probably a good step to protect them a little more. I will strive not to make my watermark distracting. Here's a sample. If there are any changes you would recommend, speak now or forever hold your peace.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 300mm
Monopod
Should I just put the name? Just the site? Smaller text? What do you guys recommend?
First of all, an exciting announcement: I finally buckled and bought a Pro account on Flickr. The cool part of this is, (among other things) I can now upload my photos in their original resolution. Woot!
So one thing I learned while reading up on how to take better landscape photos is that you need to consider the foreground of the shot as well as the background. Having one point of interest in each area of the photo allows for a better picture that people are more inclined to look at for a long time.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/11
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 18 mm
Monopod
I'm not as happy with this photo as I was with this one, but it didn't turn out too bad, and it's a good one to illustrate this concept.
Here's a really simple technique that I had fun experimenting with. With film SLRs, you could literally expose your film twice. You would just leave the camera on a tripod, underexpose a photo by one stop, rewind the film, move something in the photo, and expose the same frame again. With digital, it's pretty hard to do that in-camera. But it's really easy to do it in Photoshop (or GIMP, or any other editor that supports layers).
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/3.5 (both frames)
Shutter Speed: 4 seconds (both frames)
ISO: 100 (both frames)
Focal Length: 23 mm (both frames)
Tripod
First, set up your camera on a sturdy tripod. For the best results, you need to keep the camera perfectly still between shots, otherwise you'll end up with ghosting. For this reason, I chose to shoot inside, because it was a rather windy day. It was kind of dark in this room, which explains the long shutter speed.
Anyway, for digital "double exposure" photos, you don't need to worry about underexposing by a frame or anything like that. Just take two photos with the subject (in the example above, it's me) moving between them. Then load into Photoshop. I converted to black and white because the color temperature and stuff looked really awful. The technique would probably work just as well in color. Once you have any corrections done (make sure they're exactly the same for each photo), simply copy and paste one photo over the other in a new layer. The blending mode should stay on "Normal." Then change the opacity of the top layer to 50%. This will make a balance between the exposure of your subject in each frame. If you wanted one to be fainter, adjust the opacity accordingly.
That's it! Flatten the image and crop if desired. I think I will be having a lot of fun with this technique.
This is one of the best landscapes I think I have ever produced.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/11
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 18 mm
Tripod
It really needs to be viewed as large as possible. I wish I could offer more than 1024 pixels wide, but yeah, Flickr. The custom black & white controls in Lightroom and shooting in RAW made all the difference here. I'm seriously considering getting this printed in a large-ish size.
While at Capitol Reef, I decided to try a vertical panorama, something that I had heard of, but never attempted. Long story short, it worked really well. The nature of this image means that when I crunched it down to 1024 pixels tall, it got really skinny, but rest assured that in full quality, it looks nice :)
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/8 (all frames)
Shutter Speed: 1/200 (all frames)
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 55 mm (all frames)
Tripod
The composition isn't spectacular, but this was more an exercise than anything else.
Sorry for not giving you all a heads-up before I left, but for spring break, my family went to Capitol Reef National Park in southern Utah for the last few days. I took about 3.5 GB worth of photos, mostly in RAW, and I've just barely started to scratch the surface with putting the good ones through Lightroom and Photoshop. So don't be surprised if my posts for the next like, two weeks are all Capitol Reef photos!
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/11
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 18 mm
Monopod
I found myself using the 18 side of my 18-55mm kit lens far more often than I ever have in the past. I also found myself wishing for a lens hood on many occasions. Hopefully lens flares that occurred won't be too difficult to take out when it comes down to it.
I have a friend who is starting up a button jewelry business (shameless plug: http://www.cuteasabuddon.blogspot.com/). Yesterday, she asked me to help take some photos of her work for a brochure she's putting together. As most of the shoot was inside, I used my dad's f/1.4 50mm lens for the majority of the photos. One I'm particularly happy about is this one.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/13
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 55 mm
Monopod
Actually, after putting the exposure details down, I realized that this was one I took with my kit lens because I was running out of time before I had to leave, and the kit lens was already back on my body. Which explains the higher ISO.
Commercial photography has proven to me an interesting animal. Even when shooting portrait-style photos that showcase the necklaces or bracelets, I had to pay as much attention to the focus of the product as I did to the focus of the person's eyes. Anyway, there's that. I may end up shooting more for her, and if I get good results I'll be sure to show them on here.
I already know of one person who uses this photo as their background, so I figured I would make it easy on him and throw in a calendar with the deal. Also, this picture suits April more than the weather today. We had a blizzard. Yeah, seriously.
Andrew Broekhuijsen has been living in Utah since the age of -9 months. He enjoys long walks on the beach, and flexing shirtless in the mirror. Oh, and photography. That too.
