1/10 sec @ f/1.8, ISO 400, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) It was getting late tonight and I still had not figured out what to shoot for today’s picture. A few days ago, I experimented with shooting a glass vase. I thought it might be neat to try and shoot through a glass vase for the picture today.
I set the shot up by placing the vase on a TV tray table in our kitchen sitting room. I intentionally placed it in a location where I would have the art hung on the wall act as the background of the photograph. I then experimented with shooting at several different apertures and focus settings. All focusing was done manually. After shooting several frames with the vase turned right-side up, I flipped it upside down and shot some more.
In post-processing, I brought my favorite image into Photoshop and played around with the Topaz Adjust plug-in. I wound up choosing the Psychedelic preset. The resulting photograph was extremely noisy, so I fine tuned it by lowering the detail slider as much as I could in Topaz Adjust before bringing the modified image back into Lightroom 3 (beta).
1/250 sec @ f/8.0, ISO 100, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) This may look like an ordinary tea pot at first glance. But can you find the modification that I did in Photoshop? The title of this post should be a good clue.
The picture was taken using one light. The setup was unique compared to my other one flash lighting designs. I really wish I had taken a setup shot to share. However, I will try to explain it. Two white foam boards were placed directly in front of the camera lens. They were arranged in a V shape, but a gap was left between them so that the lens could see the teapot. Slightly off to the camera right side of the lens, the flash was pointed straight up at the top foam board. This setup allowed the light to bounce off the top foam board, down onto the bottom board, and then hit the tea pot. Why did I light it this way? The answer is….why not? I was just playing around to see how I could control the light in an interesting way.
In post processing, I decided to try my hand at applying a texture to the photograph. This was a first attempt and I am certain that it was completely unnecessary for this particular photograph. If you look closely at the tea pot, you should see the texture that I applied.
Can anyone guess what the texture is?
1/100 sec @ f/14, ISO 100, 29 mm (EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS) This was the scene today at the grand opening of the Wegmans in Leesburg, Virginia. I decided to take a swing by the event early this morning to see if I could get a few decent shots. The manager of the store was expecting “organized chaos” when he was interviewed earlier in the week for the weekly town newspaper.
Upon arriving, I found a parking space with relative ease in the below ground parking structure. I decided to take a walk through the store before it got more crowded as the day went on. Even at 9:30 AM, it was tough to get around inside the huge store. People were everywhere. There must have been at least one hundred Wegmans employees adding to the crowd inside.
I felt strange taking pictures inside the store since it was private property and I did not ask for permission to do so. I waited until I got outside after my brief walk inside the store to take some pictures.
In today’s picture, you can see the line of traffic exiting from Route 7. From what I heard, this line of traffic was there for the entire morning.
1/80 sec @ f/3.2, ISO 2500, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) Today was a jam packedd day. First thing this morning we headed over to George Mason University to attend a Naturescapes photography seminar. Greg Downing spoke for the three hour session in the morning and Rick Sammon was on during the afternoon session. Both my fiancée and I found the day to be very informative and exciting. I even walked away with a few prizes!
After the seminar, we headed back home for a short 30 minute stay to let our “girls” out of their pen. We were then off to my fiancée’s sister’s house to have pizza and birthday ice cream cake, for yours truly. I snapped this picture right after the ColdStone ice cream cake was brought out. I think the expression on my future nephew-in-law’s face sets the scene up nicely.
I cropped this picture down from its original composition to remove several distracting elements. I then pulled it into Photoshop to play around with both Topaz Adjust and Silver Efex Pro. I liked the results that Silver Efex Pro produced the best.
After dinner and cake, it was back home for some coffee and an hour or so of relaxing….until it was time to head out to Vintage 50 for a co-birthday celebration. What a day!
0.6 sec @ f/8.0, ISO 200, 23 mm (EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS) I have been meaning to try my hand at a “multiplicity” type shoot for a while now. Since no other good ideas were coming to mind tonight, I decided to give it a go. All three shots were taken on manual mode so that the exposure would be consistent. After taking the photographs and adjusting the white balance for all three, I exported them into Photoshop CS4. Each image was placed on its own layer. I then used various techniques to mask myself out in the top two layers. The layer masks where then inversed so that everything except me was masked out of the top two layers. When I made all three layers visible at the same time, today’s photograph was born.
I learned a few lessons for the next time I attempt this type of “multiplicity” shot. One, I need to simplify the background by creating stronger contrasts. This will help in the masking process and allow Photoshop to more easily detect the lines which seperate me from the background.
Two, I need to work on making the edges of the masks less harsh. I tried two different techniques to soften the edges. You may notice a slight difference between my left-most self and my center self. The edges of the masks were processed differently.
Lastly, I need to plan adequate time to make the final image. The processing in Photoshop takes time. I did not want to hold up the project any more than I already have, so I did a rush job on this first attempt. Next time I will spend more time on perfecting the image by getting the masks JUST right.
1/80 sec @ f/1.8, ISO 500, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) After taking some pictures of another remote control in our house and not getting excited about the results, I decided to snap a few pictures of playing cards sitting on the coffee table. To make it more interesting, I picked a special poker hand. A few year back while participating in a weekly poker game, one of my friends thought he had won the hand with what we called a “wrap-around straight”. Unfortunately, he was mistaken, as there is no such thing as a straight which wraps around the deck in Texas Hold’em poker. Unlike the picture, he did not have a flush to save him either.
This picture was taken in ambient light in our basement / recreation room. The lighting is several overhead high-intensity incendenscent bulbs. Due to the high-ish ISO and Lightroom’s current inability to process the RAW files from the Canon 7D properly, the picture was quite noisy. Because of this, I made the decision to give the overall photo a surreal look in post processing. I accomplished this by using Topaz Adjust. I find myself bringing each of the last few day’s photos into Photoshop to try out the adjustments from Nik Silver Efex Pro and Topaz Adjust. I highly recommend you give each one a try.
1/50 sec @ f/4.0, ISO 400, 70 mm (EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM) Being sick stinks! You would think that working from home would provide me a better opportunity to get really creative with my photograph for the day. NOPE. This head cold has put my creativity in a deep freeze. After walking around the house with camera in hand and not coming up with any ideas, I finally decided to start shooting random objects in the house at atypical angles. Today’s photograph was the result of this exercise.
I used the available light only in the room. You can actually “see” the light source in the bottom left corner of the photograph. In post processing, I ran the photograph through Topaz Adjust and applied a prest to it. Exactly which preset it was, I do not recall. I keep telling myself that I need to start taking notes on my setups and post-processing. I think this would not only help with my learning process, but it would allow me to share more details with everyone following my project.
1/250 sec @ f/4.0, ISO 100, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) My health has been getting progressively worse over the last several hours. I am pretty sure that I will not be going into work tomorrow. Unfortunately, when physical health slips, so does my creativity. However, I was able to pull together this Lego scene for the picture today. It was lit by a reflective umbrella at camera right. A sheet of the white foam board was used on camera left to fill in the shadows.
1/250 sec @ f/8.0, ISO 200, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II) I have been thinking about setting this scene up for a few days now. Tonight I finally did it. The first several shots were taken on white foam board instead of the couch seen in the final photograph. The pictures with the white foam board did not give the right atmosphere to the scene.
Unfortunately I do not remember if this was a one light or a two light setup. I have been feeling under the weather with a head cold over the past few days, so I apologize for not being able to share the details I usually do.
1/15 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 400, 39 mm (EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS) I pulled today’s shot together while hanging out in the basement watching the World Series with my fiancée. Technically, she was sleeping while I was playing, but I will not split hairs. This shot took a whole lot of chimping in order to just get it set up the way I liked it. First, I set up only one light with a reflective umbrella. I concentrated on getting a composition that I liked with both the TV and Legos in the shot. After getting the angles and placements the way I like them, I turned my attention to the lighting.
The reflective umbrella was not giving me a good even light across the entire scene. It was set up on camera right, directly to the side of the Legos. My next step was to add a second light coming from the opposite side. I did this by adding a flash with barn doors on it. The barn doors were meant to block the light of the flash from hitting the television screen and also from going directly into the lens (creating lens flare).
Unfortunately, the barn doors did not do enough to stop the light from contaminating the television. My next step was to use a grid instead. The grid wound up doing its job so well that I decided to switch the flash at camera right from a bounced umbrella light modifier to a snoot.
With both the snooted and gridded flashes in place, I was able to make this photograph and keep the light of the flashes from contaminating the TV part of the scene.
A self-proclaimed tech-geek, I enjoy anything powered by batteries or electricity. I'm not happy until I understand the full potential of any new gadget I get my hands on....
