Too much post processing?

This is the image straight from the camera. It's OK, a little under exposed maybe.

This is the image after what was probably too much editing.  It's been sharpened quite a bit. There was a lot of dodge tool used in the foreground. And the careful observer may even notice the clouds in the sky are different.  I used the sky from another picture because it looked more interesting.

When it comes to editing, I've learned sometimes a minimalistic approach is best.

Additional pylons

I'm still trying to figure out what I like to photograph.  So far I've really only been taking pictures of stuff that "looks cool".  When I took this picture I thought "hey, that looks interesting", but seeing it now, I question why I even bothered to take it.

Not that majestic

A seagull was nice enough to take off from the water in front of and pose for an action shot.

Terrible composition and boring subjects

I wasn't standing on a dock or anything when I snapped this. I was laying down, hanging over the side of wave barrier.

I'm starting to feel comfortable with the technical aspects of photography, but the creative bits aren't coming to me as easy.  I never exhibited any kind of artistic talent during my school days.  I didn't really like the composition of the whole picture, so I went mad with the crop tool until I found something I was Ok with.


I like the final result. I think the water kind of looks like glass.

Familiar angle

I'm starting to like this angle of putting the camera low to the ground and getting a perspective shot.

Bokehlicious

The 50mm f/1.8 from does a fantastic job of isolating the subject from the background.

Comparing lenses

Had some crap weather today, so I stayed inside and played with the cat.  I thought it would be a good idea to compare my niftyfifty the the kit lens that came with my camera. 

I used both lenses at their maximum aperture. I had to shoot a bit lower shutter speed to get the right exposure with the kit lens.  The niftyfifty produced a very shallow depth of field, but theres a bit of aberration around the whiskers.  The kit lens produced a much sharper image with a larger aperture and also eliminated the aberration around the whiskers.  I think I still need to do a little more testing to become familiar with the nuances of both lenses.

More mountains

I really enjoyed taking these pictures.  I shot the second picture from a moving car.  Fortunately, there was enough light to shoot with a low ISO and fast shutter.  The sharpness of the 18-55mm kit lens leaves a lot to be desired. 

Peripheral vision

The 50mm f/1.8 lens from canon is pretty amazing, considering its extremely low price.  Its wide aperture makes for good depth of field shots, and allows me to shoot at a lower ISO in poor light.

This the view in the periphery of my left eye.  It is my work area for one of my other hobbies, Gundam model kits.  One of the reasons I bought a DSLR was to take good pictures of my finished kits to share online.

Also, with this post I am now caught up after not posting during the road trip.

Trial of tilt-shift

Waiting around in the airport for my flight home, I killed time digging through the menus of my camera, trying to familiarize myself with my new hardware.  I only took a few pictures, as to not look too suspicious.  I wasn't planning anything malicious, I just didn't want to look suspicious.

The tilt-shift effect in this photo was done with the built in photo filters of the canon t3i/600D, and ISO noise was reduced in post, along with a little color correction.

Street photography in Hollywood

While I was in LA, my friend was nice enough to give me a tour of Hollywood. There were definitely some interesting characters, and I would have like to stay a little longer, but I'm still glad I got the photos I did.

Bokeh test

 

 I used a 55mm f/5.6 lens to take the picture. The aperture wasn't ideal for getting good bokeh effect but it still worked.  After a lot of shooting on that day, I realized I was quite fond of the 50mm focal length, so I went out and bought the 50mm f/1.8 canon prime lens.

Pictures of people taking pictures.

After this post, I'll only be 3 posts behind, so I should be caught up by January 16th. For this entry, I made a collage of people taking pictures.  It's all there, phones, compacts, DLSR, and even an iPad.

After picking up photography as a hobby, I've started notice people with camera more often. It used to be something I took for granted. I guess this is what people feel like who are really into cars. I used to only see people driving expensive cars, or shit cars. But now, when I seed a 5DIII or a some L glass driving down the road, I stop to appreciate it.

Road trip part 4

I'm still catching up from the missed days.  In LA I picked up a new 50mm f/1.8 lens. I bought the lens for its big aperture.  I had a chance to test it out later that night, and I'm really happy with it's low light performance and the bokeh it produced.

Road Trip part 3

This is definitely my favorite photo from the trip. It was taken in Utah somewhere along I-70, while the sun was setting.  I didn't bring a tripod with me, so I held down the shutter release while I rotated my body.  I took around 20 pictures, and used 8 of them to make the panorama in Photoshop.

I never thought I would describe a view as breathtaking, but I had trouble breathing when I stepped out of the car.

Road Trip Part 2

I missed a few days, but I'll make it up. Driving 3000 miles really takes a lot out of you.  I'd like to post a picture from the second day of driving, but there's nothing. We drove from Chicago to Denver, and it was completely flat the entire way through.  1000 miles of nothing.  Well, not exactly nothing, more like cows and corn fields.

During a short stop on the way out of Denver, I found it was quite fun taking pictures of people taking pictures.

I'm staying in LA for two days before flying home. (I'm actually leaving tomorrow morning) I had plenty of opportunities to photograph strangers taking pictures with every manner of camera, from iPad to DSLRs with huge lenses. I will try to update this post with those pictures when I get home.

Road Trip part 1

My friend, who is not too good at decision making, asked me to help him drive his new car back to California on his way back to college.  We left Rhode Island yesterday around 6pm, and arrived in Chicago today around noon. 

 

During the ride, I tried out the long exposure setting on the Canon T3i. With the aperture closed to about f/8-f/10, and the iso all the way down to 100, I was able to get some pretty cool long exposure shots of the street lights and cars while driving.

 

It was really cold outside, and while we stopped for gas, frost started to form on the inside of the windshield.

 

A new camera

I got a new camera today! My very own DSLR, Canon T3i. 

So far I only have the kit 18-55mm lens, but I'm hoping to pick up a 50mm prime soon.  I also need to look into getting bigger SD cards.  The continuous shooting makes it so easy to fill up 4GBs, especially if im shooting in raw.

The snow melted off and I decided to go out and play with my new camera. It was so cold I couldn't manipulate the manual controls, so I set the camera to shutter priority, and opened the aperture all the way.  I was still able to manipulate the focus, so I tried shooting in auto and manual.  I also decided to shoot in RAW, in order to have more control over the final image.

I'm quite satisfied with the depth of field the lens achieved.  I also used the flash, because I wanted to use a low ISO, and a fast shutter speed to negate the wind.  The flash made the background really dark, but that's OK, it looks nice. Then I played around with the adjustments on the raw file file until I had a picture I liked.

Thats not drift wood!

Walking on to the beach, I saw what I thought was a large piece of drift wood in the sand.

Wait a minute! That's a telephone pole, destroyed during hurricane sandy most likely.

Fun in the (overcast) sun

I was able to make it down to the beach today. The best method I have for controlling the shutter speed on my camera is to manually change the ISO.  It was cold and windy, and I didn't have a tripod.  I played with the ISO around 400-800 because anything higher is just too grainy with my little camera. 

The wind had blown the sand through the snow drifts, carving out a tiny canyon and leaving stripes of sand in the snow.

 

I think this picture came out pretty good, It would be better if it was more in focus though.

Ive been hoping it would snow soon, so I could get some nice winter shots.  As luck would have it It snowed about 6 inches last night, and I had the day off from work. I would have liked to head down to the beach and photograph the snow shore, but I had a feeling the roads wouldnt be plowed that close to the beach, and my car could probably get stuck.  I settled with photographing the backyard instead. I was glad I didn't head to the beach, because I was only able to stay outside for a few minutes in the cold weather.  It's also quite difficult to manipulate a compact camera with gloves on.

I had a little bit better luck getting a depth of field shot this today.  Most likely because there was about 10 feet between the branch in the foreground, and the trees in the background. In the photo from yesterday, there was only about a foot between the closest object and the farthest one.

I ventured deeper into the back yard and a nice landscape shot.  I tried to get the widest shot I could but there was a line of trees against my back.  The only post processing I used today was cropping and straightening of the pictures.

I did play with the last image in Photoshop a bit, and adding some contrast seemed to improve the photo

A simple game of chess

I thought it would be fun to play with perspective today.  I wanted to get a shallower depth of field so the pieces in the background of the shot would look blurry.  I had a bit of trouble getting my camera to focus on the king piece, instead of the background subjects, but I think that's because there was such little contrast between everything in the frame.  I also would have preferred to used black and white chess pieces.

The idea that I was trying to recreate in the photo was one of hopelessness, and impending doom, but at the same time, loyalty and courage.  The lone pawn stands, in front of his king, standing against an impressive force.

Here is the photo I chose. It looked too flat, so I brought it into photoshop to make it look a little more sexy.

This is the same photo after adjusting the levels, contrast, and sharpened slightly.  I also cropped the image rotated it slightly anti-clockwise I am very pleased with the way it turned out.

Starting with today, I will be adding water marks to my photos. Should someone find them elsewhere, they will know where to look for more.

Lime Kiln Burn at the Avondale Preserve

In early November I had the opportunity to tour an antique house that was undergoing restoration.  In order to keep the restoration authentic, the builders had to make plaster in a manner true to 1700s.  Apparently, colonials made plaster by burning huge piles of oyster shells, then mixing the cooked shells with water and sand.  The restorers collected about one ton of oysters shells from bars over the summer.  Unfortunately, the oysters had already been burning for a couple hours by the time I got there.

Seeing as how the subject I was photographing was on fire, I figured this would be a good opportunity to experiment with the exposure settings on my camera. 

Standing from about ten feet away, the heat coming off this flaming heap was intense.

This is my favorite picture taken from that day.  I love that the tool marks in the beams are visible.   It really shows just how serious these historians are about authentic restoration.  The omnidirectional position of the wooden beams are almost disorienting and invoke ideas of the works' of M C Escher

One Small Step...

In an effort to increase my skills as a photographer, I have started a photo blog. I will post at least one photo per day.  At the moment I'm a total photography noob. A lot of these early photos will be taken with a small canon point-n-shoot.  Sometime in the next couple months I plan to buy my first DSLR.
I will also be following the guides on the reddit photo class sub-reddit. If you want to improve your photography too, go check out reddit.com/r/photoclass2014

I noticed a flash drive sitting on the edge of my desk. I thought it would make for a good photo because the scene is composed of relatively few colors.  The desk, flash drive and back ground are black and white, with the only color being the purple band on the back of the drive.

Happy new year! Be sure to come back tomorrow for another photo.