Photo Friday – Inspiration

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Jan 062012
 

Whether it is for continuing a Project365 (damn, I need to remember to update my blogroll this weekend- let me know if you’re doing one and I don’t already know about it!) or just for improving your photography skills in general, looking at the work of others inspires me to get out and improve my skills.

Here are some images I found on Ned Hardy, the complete post on that site has 110 images in total, you should check it out!

This is right in my area, I need to get to Fenway Park before we move this summer!

The one place I missed when I was in Paris was the Eiffel Tower, I only saw it from a distance

I did go by the Louvre, but my shots were no where this nice!

Ah, Italy.  Someday….

And a few other misc images from around the world…

 Pictures  3 Responses »

Photo Friday – Intro to ISO

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Dec 162011
 

Intro to Shutter Speed
Intro to Aperture

The third element of the exposure trinity is ISO, which is basically a term that is a holdover from the days of film photography and an indicator of how sensitive the film was to light. Now with digital sensors, the sensitivity can be adjusted from shot to shot. It’s not perfect, but returning to the eye analogy for cameras, the shutter speed is how long the “eye” is open, the aperture is how wide open the “iris” is, and the aperture is how sensitive the “rods and cones” are.

ISO is expressed in whole numbers, 100, 200, 400, etc.  Similar to shutter speed and aperture, halving or doubling the ISO halves or doubles how sensitive the sensor is. For example at ISO 400 the sensor is twice as sensitive as ISO 200 (allowing for a faster shutter speed or smaller aperture).

So why not just always use a higher ISO? Image noise, or grain.  Check out these 2 images, the first was taken at ISO 200 and required a 1.6 second shutter speed.

Contrast the above image with this one. I cranked the ISO all the way up to 6400, which is the maximum that my D90 is capable of. As a result the shutter speed was just 1/20 sec.  See how grainy the figure is? [You may want to click on each photo and view full-sized in a new window.]

Now I will say that a high ISO isn’t always bad, and to some people that graininess isn’t noticeable or important enough to worry about. Here’s a vaguely general guide to selecting ISO

100-200 Daylight and bright indoor conditions
400-800 Indoor conditions
800+ Low-light conditions

High ISO performance is where a digital SLR will out-perform a point-and-shoot and a full-frame DSLR will out-perform a cropped sensor DSLR. Why? Pixel size. And this is why not all 12 megapixal cameras are created equal. A full-frame 12MP camera will have much larger individual pixels than a 12MP sensor in a point-and-shoot, which for technical reasons that are beyond my understanding will yield an image with less noise (and greater dynamic range), especially at high ISO settings. In fact, modern Nikon and Canon full-frame DSLRs are reported to be able to capture relatively noise-free images at ISO 12,800, 25,600 or even higher!

Next week I’ll (attempt to) integrate how to select the right combination of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO in order to properly expose an image AND achieve the artistic results you want.  Wish me luck!

Comments, questions, thoughts? Don’t be shy, there’s a comments section for a reason!

 Pictures  3 Responses »

Photo Friday – What’s Bokeh

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Nov 042011
 

I hope you don’t mind that I use photos of Veronica’s breasts to illustrate this effect :-)

Bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or the part of the image outside of the depth of field. When trying to capture a photo with good bokeh, most photographers will tell you that a ‘fast’ aperture lens (ie with a low f/stop number) is necessary, or at least preferred, and they would be correct.

But there’s another, perhaps more important variable- the distance from the camera to whatever is being photographed. Rather try to explain further, here are 2 sample images. Both were taken with my 105mm macro lens at f/3.0.

In this image, I’m about 10-12 feet from Veronica. Try to take your gaze from her breasts and look at the background. Details are blurry but you can still make out what’s there.

Now check out this photo- same camera settings and Veronica hasn’t moved, but I’ve gotten much closer to her, I’m only about 2-3 feet away from her now. Again, never mind her breasts, look at the background and compare it to the photo above.

 If how-to posts like this are appreciated and interesting, please let me know and I’ll try to come up with some others for future Photo Friday posts.

 Pictures  5 Responses »

Photo Friday – Photo Shoot Checklist

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Oct 212011
 

One of the benefits of a DSLR is the myriad ways you can adjust many many settings.

One of the drawbacks of a DSLR is the myriad ways you can adjust many many settings.

Because eventually you’ll take a photo, or a whole bunch of photos, and realize they look like crap because the camera settings were off.  Here’s what I do to make sure my camera is ready

FYI, this isn’t just for DSLR owners, many point-and-shoot cameras have some degree of manual control.

- Set the white balance. Am I inside or out? Natural or artificial light? Cloudy or sunshine?  For mixed light sources, I really need to learn how to use a gray card to set while balance manually.

- Set the ISO.  The general rule is the lower the better in order to minimize grain and allow for the fastest possible shutter speed.

- I typically shoot in Aperture Priority mode, but I’ll check the mode selector wheel anyway and will also adjust the aperture if necessary, though I normally use the fastest aperture that the lens is capable of, unless I’m shooting landscapes or want a deeper depth of field.

- Occasionally I’ll change the file type. I normally shoot in RAW mode, but if I’m going to be using burst mode a lot, I may switch to JPG. RAW files are much larger than JPG files and my camera can only shoot about 4-5 pics in RAW mode before the frame rate slows down due to memory buffer issues. More on RAW vs JPG here.

- I’ll also double check metering mode, exposure compensation, shutter mode, and auto-focus area if I recently changed any of those, but I don’t change any of those very often.

Fortunately a DSLR battery will last quite a while, I’ll get 800+ shots between charges, so charging it once a month is usually enough. If I’m traveling I’ll make sure it’s fully charged before I leave.

Reading this, it may sound like a lot, but in practice it only takes me 10-15 sec to make sure my camera is ready, then it’s almost as simple as point-and-shoot when I see a shot I want to take.

Any of my photographer friends do anything differently?

 Pictures  4 Responses »

Photo Friday – Getting Started Guide

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Oct 142011
 

I came across an excellent getting started guide from the people at National Geographic.

There is a free 22 page excerpt available, visit this page on PetaPixel to check it out and download if you like it.

If you really like it and want the full 400+ page book, it’s available from the National Geographic site. (I haven’t bought it, at least not yet, but I suspect that I will sooner or later.)

Maybe someday, armed with enough knowledge and practice, one of us might capture a photograph as beautiful as this!

Happy Shooting!

 Pictures  3 Responses »

Clusterfuck

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Aug 182011
 

Seriously, that’s probably the best way to describe the contents of the “Pictures” folder on my computer.

As of tonight, there are 16,466 photos in that folder. Photos of the kids over the years, vacations, stuff from work, downloaded porn, HNT and Wanton Wednesday inspiration ideas. Oh yeah, and if you’re one of *those* friends who has shared images with me, those might be in there too.

Emmy pointed out to me that 16,000+ isn’t that bad, that she has 25,000 (or something like that, I don’t remember, but it was a lot!).  And she’s right, I don’t really have that many photos.  The problem is the organization, or the lack thereof.

Part of my collection is fairly well-organized, all of my Project365 photos since last December, actually ALL of my pictures since then, are organized in Lightroom. But…

Have I tagged photos to make it easy to find them?  No

Have I created separate safe-for-family and not-safe-for-family libraries? No

Are then photos that I could delete and not miss in the least? Absolutely!

Do I share as many photos with extended family as I should? Unfortunately not

Never mind all of the photos taken or downloaded prior to December, that’s where the real clusterfuck is!

I remember reading something about one of the downsides of the digital photography era- people are taking more photos than ever, but we’re sharing less and less. When I was a young kid, I can remember family gatherings and someone pulling out the slide projector to show everyone from the latest vacation, birthday, or whatever. From the pre-digital era Veronica and I have probably a dozen photo albums on our shelves, if someone wants to look at them they’re right there.

Now? I have 1000s of images on my computer, disorganized and intermingled with photos I’d rather dear old Dad didn’t see.  So what am I going to do about it?
- it’s time to ruthlessly delete images I don’t need to save
- I need to import everything into Lightroom and use tags and libraries to organize it all
- I need to create a SmugMug account to share images with family and friends

Now if only I could find the time…

 Misc.  9 Responses »

Good Cop, Bad Cop

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Aug 062011
 

Good cop? No, strike that, this guy is a GREAT cop. He’s on patrol and see’s a guy walking down the street carrying a pistol on his belt. As it turns out the individual is also videotapping the entire time, probably trying to make a cop look like an asshole, instead he’s the one who comes across as the asshole. Watch how the cop handles the situation, it’s perfect.

Now contrast the officer in that video with this guy, trampling on the rights of a citizen, in public, to record something happening in public. I saw somewhere that the charges against the photographer were dropped and the cop was being sent for “media sensitive training”.

 Current Events  3 Responses »

Shooting RAW

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Jul 312011
 

I decided I’d like to write an occasional photography how-to post. Well into year 2 of Project365 it’s obvious I enjoy photography and it seems that some of my readers do as well, so why not?

I’ll tell you one of the secrets to my photos – post-processing.

What that means is that what you see is not necessarily how it came out of the camera. I used to be a bit of a purist, that I had to get the settings exactly right and the only thing I did before publishing was to resize and apply a watermark.

Probably a year ago I became a convert to shooting in RAW mode instead of JPG mode. What’s the difference? This graphic that I found on PetaPixel explains it well (and was the inspiration for this post!)

All those things on the right that the camera does? For the most part, none of those actions can be undone.  SOME editing of JPGs is possible, but no where near the editing that can be done on a RAW file.
- photo was under- or over-exposed?
- white balance settings were incorrect?
- saturation isn’t to your liking?
- should have used a flash for some fill light?
- want to try some ‘artistic’ editing of your images?

These issues and more can be fixed by editing the RAW file, even better use Lightroom and you’re making non-destructive edits, that is the original file from the camera is unchanged, you’re basically editing a copy, making it easy to go back.

So just what is a RAW file? I think of it this way- my Nikon D90 has a 12.1 megapixel sensor. The RAW file contains the original data (for the most part) from every one of those pixels, which is why the resulting RAW file is ~12 megabytes in size.  Every pixel is available for editing, in theory, no data has been lost.

There are some downsides
- large image files, takes a lot of disk space (unless you delete ruthlessly, which I’ll write about one of these days)
- post-processing software is necessary. Nikon has their own program which I think is free, though most people use Photoshop, Photoshop Lightroom, or Adobe Aperture.
- time, probably 50-75% of the photos I post have at least a little processing done, which takes time.
- burst-mode speed is reduced. My D90 can shoot at 4.5 frames per second in burst mode when saving to JPG, which is great for action shots and stuff with the kids. Set to RAW mode and that speed goes waaaay down, due to the large file size and data transfer speed limitations of the processor and the memory card.

Can’t decide which might be for you? Shoot in both RAW and JPG! Most cameras have a setting where both RAW and JPG versions are saved for each image. I did that for a while and unless burst speed is an issue, I’ve switched to always shooting in RAW.

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Confused by any terms?
Have a suggestion for another photography post?
Have other photography technique questions?
Thinking about buying a new camera or lens?

I don’t know where this is going, and I’m certainly not a pro, but I enjoy sharing my experiences and knowledge, so don’t be shy, use the comments to chime in with your thoughts, ask questions, tell me I suck and shouldn’t be doing this, whatever comes to mind.

Have a great Sunday!

 Pictures  1 Response »

Paris, Day 1

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Jul 032011
 

I’ve been back for over 2 weeks, it’s about time I got around to posting these photos! There will be at least 2 more sets to follow this one.  As always, click on any photo to view full-sized in a new window and then click to zoom to full 1500×900 pixel resolution.

The view from my room at the Hotel de Castiglione, just 2 blocks from Av des Champs Elysees.

I started my adventure by wandering to Av des Champs Elysees and saw a big gold-domed building off in the distance that caught my interest, so I started heading that way. On the way there I passed Le Grand Palais and took a few photos. I was continually amazed at the artistry and detail on the exterior of so many of the buildings.

I was walking down Av Winston Churchill which becomes Av du Marechal Gallieni as it crosses the Siene River. At each side of the bridge on each side of the road is a tall stone column, each topped by a beautiful gold scuplture

While crossing the bridge I also noticed the Eiffel Tower!  Sadly this is the closest I got, I guess I’ll just have to go back there someday.

Now I was getting closer to the gold-domed building that originally caught my attention. It turned out to be the Hotel National des Invalides and Napolean is buried directly underneath the doom. The following 3 photos are all from there.

Another view of Le Grand Palais on the way back toward my hotel

I took a slightly different route back to my hotel and passed thru the Pl de la Concorde. The dominant feature is this Egyptian obelisk, which dates from the reign of Ramses II and once marked the entrance to the Luxor Temple.  It was given to the French in the nineteenth century, so it was taken apart stone-by-stone, moved to France, and reassembled.  Pretty cool, huh?

That’s all for now.  I still have photos from the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame Cathedral, Musee de Louvre and other assorted sights.  Oh, and on Friday night of that week I had a personal tour guide in the form of a reader of Veronica’s blog who took mercy on my lack of language skills and offered to help me out :-)

 Pictures  10 Responses »

11 of 12

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Jun 102011
 

I’m spending 11 of the next 12 nights on the road on 2 separate trips.

I should be really excited about it, for starters I get to go on my very first-time-ever-in-my-life-trip to Europe. I’ll be spending 5 days in Germany and then traveling to Paris, France for 3 days!  But right now I’m so incredibly stressed out about the logistics of the trip, my role while I’m there (I’m going for work in support of my boss) that I literally can’t sleep.  It’s 5am as I draft this post and I’ve been up since 3:15, my brain absolutely won’t stop, there are some incomplete details and I’m NOT looking forward to dealing with my boss in a few hours.  We’re scheduled to leave tomorrow yet there are some administrative details that are not complete, that he’ll hold me responsible for, yet are out of my control.

I’m sure that I’ll enjoy myself once I get there. For starters I GET TO GO TO GERMANY AND FRANCE!  I also have plans to see an old enlisted Army buddy of mine, he’s now an officer and stationed not too far from where I’ll be.  I haven’t seen him since 2003 so it will be good to catch up with him.  Once in Paris we’ll be staying in the heart of the city and you know I’m packing my DSLR for this trip!

I’ll get home from Paris next Saturday and then barely 24 hours later will head out again, this time to nowhere exciting at all, somewhere in the eastern US. This will be a purely business trip and there’s nothing to look forward too. Especially after returning from 8 days away from my family, I’m not relishing the idea of turning around and leaving again so soon.

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I would love to have been able to take Veronica with my to Germany and France. Unfortunately the trip came up only a few weeks ago, after she had arranged vacation time from work, a grandparent to watch the kids and bought her non-refundable plane ticket to join me in Denver last week.

She’s turning 40 in the fall and talked about wanted to escape for a long weekend alone in Paris, so I’m just thinking of this as a scouting trip for her!

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We have a public affairs office at work and I’ve gotten to know the staff photographer who works there. I often tease him that if one of his lenses ever goes missing that I’m the first person he should suspect. I was talking with his boss, the head of the public affairs office, about the trip to Europe and about teasing the photographer about stealing one of his lenses someday.

“You know, I bet he’d loan you a lens for the trip if you ask nicely. I’d have no problem with that”

Now I didn’t get my hands on the Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 that I’ve been lusting over, but I do have a very nice 24-120 f/3.5-5.6 to carry with me! The specs aren’t too different from the kit lens I usually carry but it’s much better quality glass and I’m looking forward to shooting with it all next week.

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I’m not too fond of my new boss, fortunately this is just an interim job for me and in mid-July I’ll be going back to my regular job, my own hours, and best of all my own office.  He’s just not very personable, he’s not someone I would want to spend time with outside of the office, we just don’t have any kind of report that way.  Eight days on the road with him will be interesting.

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Can you tell that I have mixed emotions about this trip?

 Life, Work  7 Responses »
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