January Challenge

New Year- new things to see.

I have found that sometimes it takes a moment to find a really special image; something that might be hidden to the average eye.  I think these challenges are a fabulous way to get the creative juices flowing and to find the perfect photo that you would not normally see.

1. Today: It’s the first day of the new year, so take a photo of how you spent the day.
2. Something new: Take a photo of something new. Something physical, the sunrise, a new attitude. Be creative!
3. Heart: Take a photo of a heart, or a heart shape.
4. The view from here: With many people around the world on holidays, it’s a great way to see where people are. Take a picture of your view from where ever you are.
5. Movement: Get moving and take a photo. You could take a photo of cars whizzing by, somebody jumping or you could even take a run and take photos as you’re jogging along.
6. Mine: Take a photo of something that’s yours. Perhaps it’s a thing, something you’re proud of or a person you call ‘yours’.
7. Street: Take a photo of a streetscape.
8. Something beginning with ‘T’: Take a photo of something today starting with the letter ‘T’.
9. Paper: Take a photo of something made from paper. Perhaps it’s someone reading the newspaper, or it could be wrapping paper. Think outside the square.
10. One o’clock: Take a photo of whatever you’re doing in the hour between one and two. It could be in the middle of the night {you party animal, you!} or during the day.
11. Water: Perhaps it’s the beach, a river, water in a glass, the bath {keep it PG!} or even the rain.
12. Surprise: I love when I stumble across coins when I’m walking. It’s a lovely surprise. That would be a lucky photo for me. Can you think of a way to capture surprise?
13. Circle: Look as you go about today for things shaped in circles. Is it the tyres on a bus? A big sign? Or something else?
14. Something yellow: Find something yellow in your travels today and take a photo.
15. An ordinary moment: Choose an ordinary moment and capture it. Is it you grabbing your daily coffee? Or playing with the kids? Or something that you do often and consider it as kinda ordinary?
16. Two things: Look for things in pairs today. Is it a lovely old couple that you see from behind? Or the salt and pepper shakers sitting on the bench? Find two things and take a photo.
17. Ready: Is it a photo of your dinner being ready? Or you ready to catch the bus? Or something else. It’s a toughy – but it will get your mind thinking!
18. Shadow: Find a shadow and shoot it. It could be your own, or a shadow of something else. Shadows look great with a black and white filter over the top {just sayin!}.
19. Delicious: What’s delicious to you? Is it the chubby cheeks of your toddler, the hunk at the gym or a cake you plan on eating for afternoon tea?
20. Something you saw: Go about your day with eyes wide open and take a photo of something you saw.
21. What you do: Do you go to school? Train elephants at the circus? Write at home? Play mum to your kids? Act as CEO to a big business? Paint in your spare time? Dance when no one is looking? Take a photo of what you do {something that makes you ‘you’} and share it.
22. Corner: It could be a sharp corner of a building, a corner of an artwork, a corner of your home or something else. Corners are everywhere. Shoot one.
23. Electric: This could be a simple photo of your toaster {but get creative} or something else electric.
24. Stripes: Look for stripes in your everyday. They could be in the zebra crossing on the road, or in your outfit or somewhere else.
25. Landscape: Step back and take a photo of a landscape near you. Or even take a little trip just for the photo. Would be nice to explore your town for a beautiful photo.
26. Together: There are many definitions for together. One is: In or into a single group, mass, or place. Take a photo of together, whichever definition you’d like to use.
27. Sun: Whether the sun is out in full force, or hiding behind the clouds today – take a photo of it. Or you could get creative and take a photo of sunlight or some other interpretation.
28. Through: Take a photo of looking through something – through the window, through the gate, through the trees… whatever you please.
29. Grow: People do it, plants do it too… get creative and take a photo of something that grows.
30. Down: Is it looking down or something that makes you feel down? Interpret it however you like.
31. Yourself: Take a photo of yourself. Or something that represents you.

Wide Angle

My awesome dad gave me his completely unused-like new wide angle lens.  It is a 24mm 2.8.

They exaggerate perspective, making things close to the lens look nearer than they are, and things in the distance look smaller. This stretches the sense of distance and scale. The shorter the focal length, the greater the effect.

They have more depth-of-field at any given aperture than longer lenses. This helps you keep everything within the frame, or at least the most important elements, in sharp focus. It also means that accurate focusing isn’t so critical.

DFS
FOREGROUND INTEREST:
This applies primarily to landscape photography. It’s a good idea to make sure there is something interesting in the foreground for the viewer to look at. Otherwise there may be too much empty space and the image becomes boring

ENVIRONMENTAL PORTRAIT
Wide-angle lenses let you take portraits and include the model’s surroundings at the same time. It’s a technique used by portrait, documentary and fashion photographers to tell a story. The setting is just as interesting as the person in the photo. It’s the opposite approach of using a telephoto lens and a wide aperture to blur the background.

INSIDE
Wide-angle lenses are idea for taking photos in any enclosed space, where it would be impossible to capture an image with a longer focal length.

USING LINES
Lines are a powerful compositional tool. The lines in this image take the viewer’s eye from the front of the image to the back and the mountains on the horizon. The wide-angle lens exaggerates the sense of scale and adds to the power of the lines. Training yourself to look for lines, and exploiting them in your photos with a wide-angle lens will help you create more dramatic images.
CONVERGING VERTICALS
In a similar way to exploiting line, you can tip your camera backwards when taking photos of buildings to utilise the effect of converging verticals to add drama and interest to the image. You can tip the camera back a little, like I’ve done here, or a lot to get a snail’s eye view and really take advantage of the effect.
HUMAN ELEMENT
Wide-angle lenses help you place a human element in a landscape photo, adding a sense of scale and mystery.

DOCUMENTARY
Finally, wide-angle lenses are also useful for documentary photography. I took this photo during a parade in a remote town in South America. The wide-angle lens helped me capture the scene by fitting lots into the frame. The lens was fairly small, so I was able to take photos without anybody taking any notice of me. I stopped down so accurate focusing wasn’t critical which gave me the freedom to concentrate on composition and capturing the moment.

Great link wide angle
                 nature wide angle

31 days to a better photo

31 days to a better photo  LINK

Done and Done for this tutorial.


1-Always take the photo.  You will never get that moment back.
2- Read the manual and learn it inside and out (as boring as it is to read)
3- Shooting fast vs shooting slow
*Tip: If you want children to be sharp, shoot faster than 1/125th second. Children have a hard time sitting still.
Same aperture and ISO in each photo.  Expirement with light and speed.

Wow, shutter speed made a HUGE difference. 
All set at aperture 5, iso 400
Tripod used

1/4000



1/125

1/25



1/10
I like this one the best



1/2 sec

3 sec

4- ISO
Tip: Imagine the correct exposure of an image is ISO 400 at 1/100 sec.
You can halve the ISO and double the shutter and get the same exposure – ISO 200 at 1/50 sec. 

(program mode) take picture and note shutter speed it chooses.

5&6- Aperture
Love this tip: it’s counter intuitive for anyone who has given birth. In the delivery room 10 means push… in camera talk – f/1.2 means push.

All set at shutter 1/125 and iso 400
Aperture changed:

f5

f10



f13
I like this one the best

f20

f32

7-

8-  Exposure triangle.  Think about skin type, sunscreen lotion and legnth of time in sun.

9- Remember piano scales?  You did them so much they became second nature and your fingers just knew what to do without thinking about it.  That is how well you need to know the camera.  So when shooting, you dont think twice about the setttings- you will be able to change them automatically, instictively.
*Tip
ISO stops: 100 200 400 800 1600 3200 6400 etc.
Shutter Speed Stops: 1/1000 1/500 1/250 1/125 1/60 1/30 1/15 1/8 1/4 1/2 1″ 2″ 4″ 8″ etc.
Aperture Stops: f/1 f/1.4 f/2 f/2.8 f/4 f/5.6 f/8 f/11 f/16 f/22 f/32

10- Metering!
       Focus on subject when metering, not sky and shadows.

11- No more auto!
       Turn flash off
        Lowest ISO
        Sunny 16 Rule”: On a sunny day, shoot at f/16 with a shutter speed of 1/ISO#. So ISO 100 at 1/100s or ISO 200 at 1/200s. For overcast days, the rule is “Cloudy 8″. Start at f/8 with a shutter speed of 1/ISO# as a guesstimate

       
12-13 white balance

14- 15 Histogram
      A histogram is simply a pixel count of the amount of dark, light and everything between, presented in a visual graph.     
Good read

16- Exposure Comp.
       Used in Auto mode

17-18  Lenses
        Good lenses often have one job and do it well. They are wide angle OR telephoto OR macro OR portrait.
Good lenses have very large max apertures. f/1.2 or f/1.4 for prime lenses and f/2.8 or greater for other lenses.
 The right equipment makes more things possible in the right hands.
No amount of equipment will make a photographer out of one who is not.

19- When natural light wont cut it.  Learn about my new flash!

20-  The technical aspects of photography are simply tools to make the images you love and plan to take anyway that much better.  But it's about the art.

21-  Composition
        Fill frame
        Simple backgrounds
        Rule of thirds
        Patterns – repetition of lines or elements
        Depth of field
        Framing
        Lines
        Negative space
        Symmetry

22-30  Post production.  I love photoshop. But I will tackle the Photoshop section at a later time!!

White Christmas

Snow on Christmas Eve that actually stuck around.  It was a beautiful Christmas Day!!

Color of sunset

I had to get some pictures two nights ago.  The entire sky was pink.  The first one below is what the colors pretty much looked like (they are still dulled. I hope I can one day do these sunsets justice)  The second picture was taken at the same time and same exact sunset but it turned out orange.  I think this has something to do with the white balance....or something.  I don't know!!  The settings are different for both, but is that enough to make the difference? 

f/4.8, shutter 1/125, iso 1000, 130mm

f/5, shutter 1/500, iso 800, 185 mm

****Brrrrr****

Winter sunset

In all the places I have visited and all the picture perfect sunsets I have seen, I have NEVER seen more beautiful ones that the ones in my very own backyard.  Here is the first of many I hope to take.

f/5.6, shutter 1/2000, ISO 320, 240mm



f/5.6, shutter 1/160, ISO 200, 300mm

A little bit of snow

I am loving driving my daughter to dance.  It gives me 2 hours completely alone to play with my camera.
Today I drove west until I found some inspiration.  I cannot help but snap shots of the mountains!
We finally got a little snow and they are just so pretty.



f/4.5, shutter 1/200, ISO 200

f/10, shutter 1/200, ISO 400

 

f/4.8, shutter 1/200, ISO 200

f/9, shutter 1/200, ISO 400



f/4.5, shutter 1/200, ISO 400

 

 

 

Nice horsey

 

 

f/5.6, shutter 1/320, ISO 3200, 300mm

 

500 mm

On sunday my husband and I pulled out the 500mm lens and the tripod and tried things out.  I kid you not, the first 10 pictures looked like this.....  If you can't see anything it's because they were completely white.  Way overexposed.  The 500 is a lot different than the other lenses and there is still a lot to figure out. 



500 mm.

After finally getting a picture to show up it was cool to see how far the zoom worked.  You can see the frozen trees on the very top of the mountain!

Pink Hippo

Here is an exercise; Put your camera in aperture priority mode, set the aperture to the lowest possible number. Remember, this will let the most light in, since it is opening wider. Now find a room in your house that is dimly lit, one that you would ordinarily use a flash in. Raise up your ISO and take the picture. Are you able to get the shot?
Your assignment this week is to take two photos, one in Automatic mode, and the other either changing the aperture, changing the shutter speed or changing the ISO to make the photo different, better, then the one taken in Auto.

Me and pink hippo went into the back playroom which is a dimly lit room.  I took a bunch of pictures on all sorts of different settings.  I am going to go through and look and choose the best lighting.  Then I will look to see what settings they were taken at. 
Drumroll......



This was the best of the zoomed in.  Still seems too dark.  Setting are:
f5/6
Shutter 1/60
ISO 3200
55mm
*Only thing I changed was ISO to the very highest.



f/5.6
Shutter 1/8
ISO- 800
18mm
*I changed ISO and shutter speed.
 

1- At least the best ones were not Auto ones.  That would have been frustrating.  So working in manual can and will produce better images than auto.

2-  I still don't understand ISO. The whole purpose of this was to play with ISO.  I could not see a difference in any of the pictures based purely on ISO.

3-What NOT to do:

f/36
Shutter 1/60
ISO 100
 

f/36
Shutter 1
ISO 6400

f/36
Shutter 1/60
ISO 6400

f/5.6
Shutter 1/125
ISO 6400

f/5.6
Shutter 1/125
ISO 800

Finally, the first picture is on auto.  The second is manual (same picture as above) In comparing these they look a lot the same, but I think the manual one is better because it is lighter. 
(auto is set to f/3.5, 1/60 and 3200)
(manual is f5.6, 1/8, 800)