Thursday, July 28, 2011

The Cool Of Glass

I like glass.  I like shaped bottles, I like raised lettering on them. I like the feel of glass, cool to the touch and solid. Better than plastic any day. I like taking pictures of glass even though sometimes with it's reflective surface it can be a challenge. These bottles were on display out front of an antique store in Fort Langley. 

 Taken with the 50mm 1/250th sec f3.2 iso 200

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Do The Tilt And Shift

Sound like a dance? Tilt-Shift comes from the tilt-shift lens. I don't want to try get all technical but the lenses are used for architectural and landscape photography. They can also make a neat effect where a scene will appear miniature or toy like. The unfortunate thing is they're an expensive lens for the casual user like me. The fortunate thing is we have computers and people who like to figure out ways to do things like this. Turns out it isn't all that difficult so I was able to figure it out pretty quick. A scene where you are looking down works best for this kind of photo but you can do other funky things with it too as evidenced by a recent post I did about my camera on my cell phone.

I used the 50mm 1/800th sec f8 iso 200. Shot from this train.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Make A Rule Break A Rule

I recently read an article about taking photographs of flowers. In it the writer said you should have enough depth of field to make the whole flower sharp. I thought about that because it can be difficult to achieve but I agreed it is better. Then I remembered this photo I took recently. I actually wanted to blur the flower somewhat because my focus (get it?) was on the water droplets. I had to work at a balance because I wanted the eye to go to the water drops but didn't want the flower to be unrecognizable. This was exactly what I was looking for.  
 Unfortunately I didn't note the exposure info here, maybe I will look it up at home and add a comment later. Hope you like it.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

If You Were To Imagine

Fort Langley has a lot of neat little shops. On this trip, with a little trepidation, we wandered in to some and asked about taking photo's. Everyone we encountered was friendly and very helpful. We made every effort to minimize our intereference in them running their business and I think it was appreciated. 
I came across this little toy giraffe and this photo came to mind right away. I don't usually try to explain my photo's but maybe in this instance I can leave you with this. Try and think of a child finding this toy and how the imagination might start to work. 

  I didn't note the exposure info here (and I am not home to look it up) but I used the 50mm and took several shots. I had to be mindful of the exposure to keep the giraffe a silhouette, and the f stop to make sure the giraffe was completely sharp but still blur out the background.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Sometimes, You Just Have To Leave Well Enough Alone

When I first saw this photo I thought "This is pretty good. I can improve it". I started using layers, darkened the background, blurred it some, lightened the rosebud and sharpened it. I looked at it and thought instead of looking better it was just looking processed. I could keep going and try make it less processed but in this case, what was the point? So I undid everything and looked again, thought it was fine. That being said I couldn't leave it totally alone. I did adjust the brightness a bit, sharpened ever so slightly, and there was a flaw on the rosebud I fixed that if you look closely you can probably spot.

The 100mm macro 1/200th sec f5.6 iso 200

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Fun With The Fone

After a wonderful morning of lazing on the couch listening to the crows crowing, woodpeckers pecking, hawks......doing what hawks do, I decided I should play with the camera on my phone a bit. I recently downloaded a camera effects program called "Camera360" that Jenn showed me. The camera on a phone is ok but this program makes it fun. here are samples of what I did today. 

Tilt shift


I am going to have fun with this effect. 
 
Black and white
very old film look

 


This won't replace my real camera by any means but it was fun taking the phone out in the yard and looking for photo's with these effects in mind. You may see more here from time to time.

Monday, July 11, 2011

I Love It When A Plan Works

When I go out on a photo day, like the other day with Dar, the plan for photo's doesn't go beyond the location or type of subject matter. Some times the plan doesn't even start until the camera is at my eye and I start shooting. In this case as Dar and I walked up to these flowers I knew what I wanted. Quite often when that happens I will come away with something entirely different than what I saw. That's ok too, the idea is to get a photograph, right?. This time, I got what I was looking for and that's just fine. 

 I used the 100mm macro 1/100th sec f5.6 iso 100

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Out And About

It was a fine hot day for our photo day today. We went to Fleetwood Park in Surrey to photograph flowers. We spent a couple hours there then after a nice lunch we went off to Fort Langley. There we were in and out of antique shops, down by the river and up an alley. Pretty much The same route we took last time. It's interesting revisiting a place gone to before. You go there wondering if you could find something new in what you've seen before. Of course you do, every time. 
Here we stopped at Into Chocolate spending some time taking photo's. It's always interesting to see the different things Dar and see and photograph when we go somewhere. 


 I used the 100mm macro at 1/80th sec f2.8 iso 200


Monday, July 4, 2011

No Rescue

Dar and I are going out for a photo day tomorrow. I am so looking forward to it. I have the camera dusted off and the battery charging. Gonna be a great day. Going to sort of repeat a past trip out to Fort Langley and area. Maybe look for some flowers.
Here is a photo from our last trip. It was our second visit to this boat. The previous time the light was failing and I had to bump up the iso. The pictures would have been great but were too noisey. It was a lot brighter this day. The tide was in this time so couldn't get as close but I was happy with the shots I got. 

I used the 17mm 1/160th sec f8 iso 100 I've come to enjoy tweaking my photos and this was no exception. I used layers and levels for the light and mood. I made the clouds more dramatic, under-saturated the boat and slightly over-saturated the rest. It's fun and I think it takes the photo's up a notch or two.