White Balance

In the readings for class I learned about the different effects of White Balance. I then decided to do my own little study on the effects of each White Balance setting on a particular scene.

I placed my keys on a desk under an incandescent light bulb. Set the camera to Shutter priority at 1/40. I started with the Auto White Balance. With out changing any other settings on the camera or in the scene, I took one shot for each different preset White Balance settings. )Looking back, I do wish the image was a little bit brighter, but it works well enough for my experiment.)

White Balance : AUTO

White Balance : SHADE

White Balance : CLOUDY

White Balance : FLASH (W/TTL)

White Balance : FLASH (NO FLASH)
White Balance : SUNNY

White Balance : FLUORESCENT

White Balance : INCANDESCENT

I like the "FLASH, w/TTL flash" the best, however the "INCANDESCENT" looks more realistic. If I were to use the Incandescent image I would probably do minor adjustments with the color saturation just to warm it up slightly, but that's just me.

STATS
Shutter : 1/40

Aperture : F5

Exposure : Shutter

Focal L. : 135mm

ISO 400

Roller Skate... yes again...

Ok so I really could not leave this picture alone. Here is one more style I had to learn... and try to master... This time I think I did a much better job then the Orange (October 25th)

Roller Skate Re-Shoot 2

So I just could not leave the skate photos alone. Looking through all the takes I found a few where I had pointed the flash up to the ceiling. This produced an interesting effect. The background was darker, harder to see, and the skates had an eery glow to them. I wonder if a different white balance setting would have made the whites whitter.

Roller Skate Re-Shoot

I wanted to re shoot the Roller Skate photo with more light. Problem... I did not have my remote lighting kit with me, and my external flash does not "talk" with my new camera. I attached the flash, pointed it at the skates, and hoped for the best. Wow. What a difference. By total accident I managed to get this "ghost" like feel from the photograph.
The Flash was set a little too bright for the distance I was from the skates and the shutter speed was at 10seconds. I was not using a tripod.
I looked at the first image... Ugh, the flash did not go off. Take two... The flash fired this time Surprise! I achieved the exact image I had originally visioned. I wanted the skates to look ghost like, or smokey like in a dream. I feel I accomplished this well. If I had not used such a bright flash in my dark garage, I don't think I would have achieved this "old memory/dreamy" like effect.

Fall Leaves

Ahhh... Rainy Fall days.

I deterred from class work today to grab some great shots of the rain. There is this metal tub in my back yard that was filled with water and leaves from all the rain we've had over the last few months. The rain was just steady enough to show rippling in the water but not too much to disturb the calm of the water. I love the richness of the fall leaves. And I love how the water has no reflection. You can see down to the leaves under water and you can see the rippling on the surface. I played with my angle to avoid the sky reflection, however I wonder if this would have been avoided with a Polarizing filter?

Self Portrait 2

I took a bunch of pictures of myself, with the smaller front camera on the Nokia N95 phone. They resemble the pictures I normally get from a cell phone camera. Grainy, lack of color, horrible, only good in a pinch. However it ended up being a great study on lighting effects. I stood in my living room near an opening to my dining room. It was around 4pm and the sun was still up. I held the camera up in front of my face and clicked away as I turned around in one spot. I was originally hoping to get a blurry background with a "in focus" face, however that did not happen.

I did manage to get an array of photos showing the effects of different light sources. There is sunlight, and ambient light, and incandescent light. In the end I found it a great study in color temperature. (pics to come soon)

Orange 2

Looking back I think I will retake the shot of the Orange. This time with a bounce light, or a stronger front light, to light up the face of the orange. This could have a more professional look, and maybe even give more detail. I do need to make sure I don't over light the front so it doesn't wash out the details inside the orange.

In the mean time I did play with it a little in Photoshop. I've always found those black and white photos with the one spot of color really creative. So I thought I would give it a try. I see that I pushed the colors a bit too much and it seems softer then I would like it to look. But over all I do think it is a great first try. However next time I would not pick such a LARGE item in the photo to colorize. It almost does not have the effect I was looking for. The orange is so big that you really don't realize that it's the only thing in color in the photo.

Ooops

Last night we had class... Oops I thought we all were supposed to hand in our homework from last week, this week, even if we had stuff or not. I guess I could have worked more on my romance assignment, but I really did like how the swans came out and the heart pendent. Hmmmm I'll continue on working on some of those other assignments as I go along.

I am really having fun with Structures. I have some great Ideas. But we talked about our next assignment.... Memory. I wanted to take a picture of my hand print in some memory foam... but the professor brought it up as an "example" in class. Hmmmm I'm thinking... Maybe I can take my hand print in a whole bunch of different mediums. Sand, Foam, Water, Mud, Snow, Paint, etc.. this could be interesting.

Orange

Orange slice

Thinking a head to my "structure" assignment I thought about photographing a slice of an orange. If I get it right, it will look like the orange is glowing and you can see the lines the "structure" of the orange. I went to a location where there would lots of light and propped up the orange slice. It looks great. I played with the settings in the camera and found that the best one actually came from the auto settings in "macro". The shot is just what I was looking for, a nice balanced shot with the subject centered and the focus on the orange.

STATS

Shutter : 1/320sec
Aperture : F9

Mode : Macro

Focal L. : 32mm

ISO : 100

White B. : Auto

Flash : No

Edits : Color push, added slight bit more contrast

Roller Skate Rethink

I've been looking at my last posting, and as much as I love the shot of the skates..... I think some changes could have been made. First it's a bit dark, I like it, but maybe it could have been slightly brighter. Second, I think it's a bit flat. There is an akward shaddow on the wall behind the wheels, where a "fill" light would have been helpful to soften up the shaddow. And it would "brighten up" the image as well.

Memory Ideas 3

Poking around in the garage I found my old roller skates, hanging right there on the wall where I left them years ago. Wow, that brought back memories. MEMORIES !!! This could not have been more perfect. I grabbed my camera and shot away. It was a bit dark in there but I think I did a decent job with the built in flash. I worked hard to get all 3 sets of skates in to the shot. When I finally finished I couldn't wait to edit them for class.

After reviewing the shots I took, I found that the one shot I liked the most was one where the skates over take the image, hanging out of frame. The image gives a interesting perspective of the skates. Normally your not looking at the skates from below. Again I centered my subject, however I feel that there is a lot to look at to keep your eyes moving around the frame.

Memory Ideas 2

Keeping with the Black and White theme I found an old barn like structure to photograph. I set the camera to Auto and snapped away at different angels. I feel that I could have taken some more shots at different angles, however, I do like the way it came out. With the added effect of the B&W the photo looks like a step back in time.

Memory Ideas

Working on my "Memory" assignment I started looking around for things that provoke memory. Passing a cemetery I thought... easy, but we'll see what I can find. I really didn't have enough time to get out and walk around, so I drove the car around the path and found a spot with some American flags. So I snapped a few shots. In post production i found that this shot actually worked better in Black and White. I did no other alterations to the image.

Playing with the Shutter

1/400

1/125sec

1/20sec

I did this little practice to learn about the effects of different Shutter speeds on the same image. I set the camera to Shutter priority and took a sequence of shots speeding up the shutter a few clicks at a shot. Here I have picked the 3 most extreme of the group.

Structure and Power

I looked a head on the syllabus since I was having issues with the last few projects I thought I would leave them alone for a bit and put my mind on something else. I walked out to the front of the SHU library and started snapping shots of the building. The building can look so different if you photograph it correctly. Some shots i took work well for "power" and others work well for "structures". Pointing the camera up gave the building strength and power and dominance. I'm not sure which picture shows off the "power" stronger. The vertical pictures shows height, however the horizontal picture shows more of a presence of the building.

Image 1

Shutter : 1/160seconds
Aperture : F6.5

Mode : Auto

Focal L. : 18m

ISO : 100

White B. : Auto

Flash : No

Edits : color push for sky

Image 2

Shutter : 1/160seconds
Aperture : F7.1

Mode : Auto

Focal L. : 18m

ISO : 100

White B. : Auto

Flash : No

Edits : color push for sky

This photograph of the cross, a decoration on the side of the library, was perfect for "power". I positioned myself to where you can see the sun light reflecting right across the center of the cross. I felt this added some impact to the image, and a focal point. I found using the reflected light on the metal cross gave it a "higher power" effect.

Shutter : 1/320seconds
Aperture : F9

Mode : Auto

Focal L. : 26m

ISO : 100

White B. : Auto

Flash : No

Edits : color push for effect

Crunched Up Cars

From the reading in the book, i was inspired by the effect that you can get by using a long-focal-length lens. When you use a long focal length lens at a distance from your subject, the subject will "smooch" up close to each other. Giving the telephoto effect. So I thought I would give it a try. I went up to the 2nd floor of a building and looked across a parking lot. I put on my telephoto lens and zoomed all the way out to 200mm. The photos came out just as i hoped. The cars look like they are packed in the parking lot. Now I need to find a crowd of people to test this on.

STATS
Shutter : 1/800sec.

Aperture : F5.6

Mode : Auto

Focal L. : 200mm

ISO : 200

White B. : Auto

Flash : No

Edits : none

Containers in the woods

This random find in the woods caught my eye as a perfect photo op. It was just so random to see them that day. And to top it off the colors were amazing. Here were these bright blue container in the middle of a Fall wooded area. The yellows and random reds in the bright green grass frame the bright blue containers so nicely. I'm still not sure why they are there, other then some sort of storage.

This was going to be entered as one of my "Ecology" pictures, however that project had been dropped. I still think I did a great job of capturing the colors. I could have taken more shots at different angles. but I liked the way this came out, so I only took a few.

STATS

Shutter : 1/8sec

Aperture : F13

Mode : Exposure Manual

Focal L. : 18m

ISO : 100

White B. : Auto

Flash : No

Edits : Slight color push

Self Portrait

I'm not really the one to jump in front of the camera. But I figured I would take a self portrait. I found this really large window with a dark curtain behind it. Standing with my camera I took my picture... Cheesy I'm sure... but here it is.

New Sushi Photo

Finding myself back at the sushi restaurant where I took my first sushi photograph I thought it would be a good idea to compare my old camera phone photo to the photo from the new photo.

STATS
Camera : Nokia N95

Shutter : 1/17seconds

Aperture : F2.8

Mode : Auto

Focal L. : 6m

ISO : 400

White B. : Auto

Flash : No

Edits :

Prompt to upgrade your N95 - Do not do it

(This is mentioned in the SHU Mobile Blog)
I decided to DL some of the applications that were mentioned in class. I picked one I was interested in and started the process. The first thing they ask you to do is to upgrade the software in you phone. So I did. I checked my files to make sure they were saved to the memory card and my contacts to my SIM card. After all was good, I preceded the upgrade. When it was finished I noticed that my settings had change. I poked around some more and found that the phone had been reset back to almost factory settings and I had lost everything relating to Seton Hall. To make it worse it looked as if I had erased all the contacts off my SIM card.

After checking the SIM card in a different phone I was relieved to find out that all 230+ contact numbers were still there. However this upgrade erased all SHU settings. I then had to bring the phone to telecom., here on campus, to reset every thing. I would advise not to do this this upgrade.

Lawn

Lawn mowing day at my house. Now I have not mowed the lawn in about one month. I just didn't feel like it nor, in my opinion, was the grass long enough for me to be bothered mowing it. I looked out in the yard and it was long. Ugh. Really long. No more slacking on the lawn, it had to be mowed. I pushed the lawn mower out to the back yard. I went to get gas and came back around and looked over at the mower. There it was buried in long grass. (light bulb turning on over my head) Perfect, there it was looking right back at me my PROTEST assignment. I had been protesting mowing the lawn. Perfect. So I ran in and grabbed my camera and started shooting. I like how changing the aperture adjusted the darks in this shot. It pulled the green color out and have every thing a deep shadow and bright highlights.

STATS
Camera : Nikon D40x

Shutter : 1/200

F-stop : f/13
Max Aperture : 3.6

Mode : Manual

Focal L. : 19mm

ISO : 100

White B. : Auto

Flash : No

Edits :

Protesting the assignment

So I've decided that the "protest" project was harder then I thought it would be. Maybe I didn't think about "protest" deeper then a... well... Protest. I looked around and I asked friends and I came up with nothing. So being as frustrated as i was I told my self I was protesting the assignment, and thought it fit very well. I decided to go on line and look for pictures of my camera and then draw a big red X over the image. There I was happy with that. Probably not going to get the best grade for this "idea" but it was all I could think of. So here it is... my protest home work.

Outside Range

Outside Range compared to inside range.

Photographing the inside rifle range seemed to have it's limitations, and I wished I could have had more light, more room, and more time to compose the shots. Today I went to an outdoor shooting range. I was excited. I had lots of space and lots of sun light. Issues I found today was the sun. The sun was so bright. I then realized that I still didn't have a lot of time between shots and my turn at shooting. The sun light helped a lot, and I tried to play with the aperture readings in the sun light and in the shade. I believe I took a few good shots where the "shooter" was in the right light, not in Shadow. However I do need to work on controlling the bright sunlight in the back ground.

I also used the video camera option on the phone to capture some video of my day at the range. The video came out really well. Only thing I noticed is that any REALLY loud noises too close to the phone while recording tend to become distorted. For example, the pistol I was shooting has a very distinct "bang" however the microphone recorded the shot sounding like some futuristic laser weapon.

Nokia N95

Class was great yesterday. We received our camera phones. T hey are a step a head of my cheesy camera phone. There are so many things this phone can do. Now I just have to remember to take pictures with it along with my Nikon. The photos my N95 takes are very sharp. I finally started to play with it and took this interesting shot of my desk. To be honest, this shot was done by total accident. However it actually came out very interesting. I love how the glass reflected every thing, and yet you can still see through to the computer below.
STATSCamera : Nokia N95
Shutter : 1/200
Aperture : F2.8
Mode : Auto
Focal L. : 6m
ISO : 100
White B. : Auto
Flash : none
No Edits : none