26 May 2011
25 May 2011
24 May 2011
23 May 2011
22 May 2011
20 May 2011
19 May 2011
18 May 2011
17 May 2011
PAD-16-May-2011
Didn't have the chance to post this, but yesterday's and today's pictures are now up.
15 May 2011
14 May 2011
PAD-14-May-2011
This and the past 2 photos were actually part of a series of practice photographs. I had realized that I did not have any photos taken during a sunset. I'm happy with how they turned out, but they can still be a bit better (color tones/range). Maybe next time I can include a bit more landscape and try my hand at another HDR.
13 May 2011
First Official Timelapse!
Strongly recommend watching this in HD!
This is my first try at making an astro timelapse with my camera. The software I was using somehow changed the ISO halfway through shooting though. Still, everything turned out much better than I had expected.
To Make the video took quite a few bits of software. I used a nifty program called Camera Control from the folks over at DIYPhotoBits.com. This allowed me to tether the DSLR to my laptop and automatically snap a photo every couple of seconds. Afterwards, I took all of the RAW photos into Adobe Lightroom for adjustment and noise reduction. Once that was done, I finally imported all of the photos into Adobe Premiere Pro. That let me use all of the photos (288 in all) as individual frames of a movie. The whole process was very easy to do but definitely took a bit of time. I will fefinitely be doing this again when the weather improves.
For those interested, here are the camera settings I used:
Nikon D70s
ISO: 800 (somehow switched to 1600 halfway through shooting)
Aperture: f/1.8
Exposure: 10s
12 May 2011
PAD-11-May-2011
Today's HDR picture didn't come out as well as planned, but at least I didn't come back from the reservoir empty handed.
10 May 2011
09 May 2011
08 May 2011
07 May 2011
06 May 2011
05 May 2011
PAD-04-May-2011
I've been doing a photo-a-day project officially for one month now while not searching for jobs. All of the past month's pictures are featured in my Flickr gallery. It's definitely been a fun month, I've learned a whole lot.
04 May 2011
Every picture is an improvement
One of the reasons why I love to shoot nature shots is for the sole purpose of practice. Nature has everything that helped me not only get started doing photography, but get exponentially better as well.
Nature has the benefit of being both static and dynamic at the same time. For a nice landscape shot, not much will move over time. This allows someone to spend as much time as they need getting a perfect panorama shot, even practice getting an HDR image. Scenic shots were perfect for me to get the hang of a new camera or lens, play with color settings, get the exposure just right, etc.
When I started playing around with shots of insects and animals, I had to speed up how quickly I could change the settings on my camera. On a good day, this meant just a quick adjustment to the aperture or ISO, but I always had to pay close attention to my camera's metering system in order to get exposure just right. Bug shots helped me take into account composition and making use of different angles. Bumping up the aperture could help bring the background into focus, only too much so and I would need to increase exposure.
Just using nature to practice photography has almost made adjusting the composition and camera settings become a completely subconscious routine.
01 May 2011
New Month, New Method
Yesterday, I did my very first engagement photoshoot. I met a couple through my brother that was looking for photos they could use to send to their families. At first, I was almost too nervous to even consider something like this, there were way too many things that could have gone wrong. For example, I'm antisocial (talking, eew), I needed some equipment to control the lighting, this could make or break my freelancing career, shit like that.
So after a few beers and an unequal reciprocation of dialogue, I was told to put up, shut up, and take the pictures.
The couple decided that they wanted to do the photographs a month after out initial discussion. This spawned a rare and uncommon occurrence in my head; a thought. Why don't I spend the month practicing?
For the entire month of April, I took a photo each and every day. I made it an exercise to practice a specific aspect of photography (composition, exposure, depth of field, etc...) and to get damn good in order to prepare for the shoot. Everything worked out perfectly, but on April 29th, I went through each and every one of the photos and realized I missed one of the most important things a photographer must consider, lighting.
On the day of the shoot, April 30th, I made it a point to wake up extra early and rushed over to the local Wolf Camera store. There I found a 5-in-1 reflector sheet; this was exactly what I needed to make the engagement photos come to life.
I'm going over the photos and doing minor retouching right now, but as far as I can tell, the practice paid off exponentially. It's hard to believe that only a month ago, if I had done the shoot, they would not look anywhere near as professional/refined as the picture above. I also want to thank the couple in the picture for being so fun and spontaneous during the shoot, they were just as helpful as the camera itself.
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