8/29/10

Night.

Night photos can be very tricky. They require the right combination of light, ISO speed, a stable camera, and the ability to forego the flash. In the case of the following photos, the manipulation of exposure compensation was a must as well (they were taken at an average of +1.7 EV). Using a tripod meant that shutter speed wasn't an issue (higher EV can result in a slower shutter). And while I gave the ISO1600 a test run, there was no discernable difference between it and ISO800, so I settled for the lower speed.

To get a photo of our city skyline from across the river, I just used my usual Program Mode presets with ISO800. Plus traipsed up a steep hill and stood in a veritable swarm of aggressive bugs. The flood wall was another issue; it meant I couldn't see the river. But, you do what you can with what you've got.

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I headed back downtown and took the following photos, of Kiener Plaza and a new park called City Gardens.

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Graffiti.

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There's a wall downtown, right off the river, where people are allowed to practice the art of graffiti.

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It wasn't the sporadic, hurried graffiti I was hoping it would be, but then again, I'd probably have to travel to the not-so-nice parts of town to really get that. There are a lot of interesting things on the wall; sadly, they get spray-painted over inevitably to make room for the new.

8/26/10

Fun with Photoshop.

Back when I was teaching, the English teacher let a few of us download a trial of Photoshop onto our computers. I had a blast playing around with all the editing options. Yet somehow, I completely forgot about them when I got Photoshop Elements 8. Guess what? They're still there!

Although I can't see at this point what I would need them for beyond the occasional playing around on a rainy day, they're still cool to see. And so, a very brief perusal of the stylistic filters offered in PSE 8.

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In order of appearance:

- poster edges
- pastic wrap (plastic wrap!! even the shadows!)
- glowing edges
- mosaic tiles
- stained glass
- colored pencil
- charcoal

8/25/10

!!!

As this is my last day of unemployed freedom (hopefully forever!), I decided to head to Barnes and Noble and check out a few photography magazines. Popular Photography is obviously a major one, and I even caught sight of a little monthly photo contest I might one day consider. So, I came home and googled the magazine's website.

And there, on the front page - the Nikon D3100. O_O

Although it won't be released till mid-September, they wrote up a little review of it here.

Okay, seriously. I just got the D3000. I know that it doesn't have video and I guess they were anxious to rush out an entry-level DSLR that did have video, therefore upgrading the current one--but sheesh.

Whatever. When the day comes that I do upgrade, it will likely be to a camera in their professional line. Right now the one I have serves me just fine, even if I do get a little self-conscious seeing how every winning photo in these contests was taken with a "better" camera than mine. Which is a whole other blog post.

Sioux Passage.

On Monday morning I committed to my pseudo-35mm experiment, and traipsed through Sioux Passage park with a limitation of 48 pictures, and no looking at the LCD screen or erasing any of them.

I've always been partial to sepia, and I think there's just that extra oomph when monochromatic photos have a little tint to them. I used one of the lowest sepia settings as to not over-saturate, but I couldn't commit to straight black-and-white. Maybe next time. :)

The photos aren't life-changing, just a review of some of the better shots.

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As I figured, reigning in my shutter finger resulted in a host of meaningless pictures not being taken. (Assign meaning to the above pictures at your discretion) It was nice, to just wander slowly and look for things that truly caught my eye, rather than just snapping in general directions and hoping to become inspired after the fact.

In the end, I actually only took forty-five shots. Pretty neat, I guess. :)

8/24/10

Bokeh.

Bokeh is "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light." It is a Japanese word meaning blur or haze. It has become a popular creative tool of late.

There are some who interpret bokeh as any out-of-focus region in a photograph. This, to me, would take out the creative/artistic aspect of it, because simply, most out-of-focus regions are boring. As an example, the background in this picture is not focused, but it also adds nothing (creatively) to the photograph:

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The next example gets a bit closer to what I would consider "good" bokeh. Using a macro lens to get close to the fake rose petals rendered the Christmas tree lights as slightly indistinct circles, rather than points of light:

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Still, in my opinion the bokeh could be better. In the next picture, I focused on the drops of rain on the window pane, which made the street- and headlights from the world outside go all bokeh on me:

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Some people actually use special lenses to get particular shapes with their bokeh, like heart or star shapes, for example. I will never go that far. But, I do concur that bokeh is more interesting when it's not just the same old blurred-out lights again and again. In the final example, the bokeh created behind the butterfly is made up of random patterns caused by the leafy background. I think it rocks:

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I suppose it's alright for a photographer to use bokeh to describe any out-of-focus region; I just feel that bokeh is something that is meant to stand out, to create interest.

Here are a few more sa-weeeet images created by photographers who have definitely put in the effort:

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(photos courtesy of www.lemonsandcoal.com, www.lullaby.homepage.dk, www.digital-photography-school.com)

8/22/10

A new commitment.

While doing a cursory search for photo essays on the net, I came across this beautiful, beautiful three-part collection of photos by Herman Krieger, "Along the Riverbank Bike Path." (It kind of weirded me out because I'd been to a similar place, and one photo in particular could easily be mistaken for Spanish Lake)

He used an Ansco box camera (read: seriously old), and I can't get enough of the gorgeous sepia quality of the photographs. Every photo is near perfection. It's possible he weeded out the clunkers before posting them online, but I like to believe that this very intelligent and interesting man really just knows (and loves) what he's doing.

The photo essay reminded me of two things: 1) that I need to do more work in black and white, and 2) that there was actually a day when digital cameras didn't exist.

Although the great benefit with digital is being able to see what you're possibly doing wrong right away and fix it, even I was once a slave to 35mm and had to follow basic rules. I had to take my time composing a photo, instead of just getting closer and closer to the right composition by trial and error. I had to be judicious in my subjects; with only twenty-four or twenty-seven exposures available, I didn't have the luxury of capturing every single thing that piqued my interest. And, I had to get the photos developed, be mortified by what I'd done wrong, pay for another roll of film, and get back out there and do better.

So, I'm going to commit to a project. In the morning I'm going to head out to a scenic locale yet to be chosen (I know, I'd better hurry up and figure that out). I'm going to set my (one lonely) camera to black-and-white and only take a total of forty-eight shots, as though I had brought two rolls of film with me. I will not look at the LCD screen, and I will not erase any of the photos during the process.

Then I'll come home and see what I've captured--still free of charge, thankfully. :)

Photography is about to get serious again.


(if you'd like to see any of Mr. Krieger's many other photo essays, click here)

8/21/10

Photo Essay.

Okay, it might not qualify one hundred percent as a photo essay, but each time I thought about posting these photos that's the phrase that came to mind.

A couple of weeks ago, the same time I took the Cathedral Basilica photos, I ended up cruising down one of our major roads, Kingshighway, taking about a billion photographs. (Someone else was driving this time) There are plenty of homes and buildings that intrigue me in the city, because they're not the same old suburban architecture that I see every day. They have a history, a style.

Because Kingshighway is so long, you can start down by the cathedral on Lindell and drive toward the highway, and watch how the economic lay of the land changes. If my alleged "photo essay" doesn't necessarily tell a story, it does follow a path and chart its overall change.

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As the buildings began to show signs of disrepair, I caught this one and noticed after I uploaded it the strangeness of the side facade: the windows were bricked over. I'm sure it's not uncommon, but there's something almost spooky about it. Why did they do it? Also, how cool are the patterns created by the weeds/vines/ivy (I don't claim to know plants) crawling toward the roof?

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Have I mentioned I love brokedown buildings?

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Things began to get colorful:

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I only noticed again after the fact that inside the doorway of this building, someone has painted a likeness of a man (I say, Tupac):

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As I try to branch out from doing solely nature photography, I'm thinking architecture has caught my interest the most so far. I can't get enough of seriously run-down places, but beautiful structures--like palaces or cathedrals--are just as fascinating.

The key, now, is to find those cool places and then stop taking pictures from a moving car...