Photo365-20100129 – Thanks To A Tip, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/320 sec @ f/1.8, ISO 100, 50mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
I received a text message from a friend this morning suggesting that I take a look outside for a picture opportunity. Sure enough, when I peaked out the front door, I saw a beautifully lit sky. I grabbed the camera from inside and spent about five minutes shooting the sky in my pajamas. I love the color in this photograph, especially against the silhouetted houses.
Photo365-20100127 – Photo Pit Shop, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
20.0 sec @ f/8.0, ISO 200, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
On my way back home from New Jersey this week, I took a short pit stop in order to take today’s picture. The Maryland welcome center on I95 is the last rest stop on my now weekly commute. I set up on the hill overlooking I95 with my tripod and 50mm lens. My goal was to capture the streaking lights of passing by cars using a long exposure. This twenty second exposure really brought out the little amount of light that was left in the sky.
Photo365-20100105 – Viva La CI Nation, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/20 sec @ f/2.0, ISO 400, 5.1 mm
My cigar-loving new boss asked if I wanted to take a ride with him tonight out to one of the best cigar warehouses that he knows. I jumped on the opportunity to spend some quality time with him to discuss work, career, and technology. The trip took us an hour and a half to reach Bethlehem, Pennsylvania from Mount Laurel, New Jersey. The store was quite impressive. From the outside, it certainly did not look like much. But the inside was a different story. I am not a regular cigar smoker, but I can imagine the feeling of coming to a store such as this one to a cigar-lover like my boss. He was like a kid on Christmas morning seeing all the presents and not knowing exactly where to start.
While my boss walked around the store trying to figure out what to buy, I circled taking pictures with the Leica point and shoot. Cigars International logo of a cigar-smoking, stubble-ridden smiley face caught my attention several places on the selves. However, it was the logo on the shrunken hand baskets that got my primary attention. With this photograph, I wanted to have the basket, with logo, as my subject. However, I wanted to include the environment these baskets were in. The endless selves of cigars in the background was my way of sharing the atmosphere.
Photo365-20091227 – Wasabi Merry-Go-Round, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/125 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 250, 12.8 mm
My fiancee and I were out and about today with a few missions in mind. One of them was to find the last few remaining presents we need for my family’s late Christamas celebration in a few weeks. The other mission was to find our wedding bands for our wedding coming up in September. We know the date is going to be here before we know it, so we are trying to take care of as many of the details as we can right now. We lucked out big time at Bailey, Banks, and Biddle. They are going out of business and we caught them with only nine days left to go. Almost all of their jewelry was discounted by sixty to seventy percent!
After checking off one of the two to-do items from our list, we decided to grab a bite to eat. As we were walking towards the end of the Tyson’s Corner mall where all the restaurants are located, we stumbled upon this fancy restaurant smack dab in the middle of all the stores. The restaurant is called Wasabi, “Modern Japenese Cuisine”. We did not eat at Wasabi today because both of us were in the mood for food that is more hardy then sushi. However, that did not stop me from whipping out the Leica point and shoot camera and grabbing some pictures from the second story of the mall and down below at restaurant level. We are looking forward to returning to the mall to try out Wasabi in the near future. When we do, I will update this post with a mini review.
Photo365-20091220 – Time to Dig Out, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/500 sec @ f/7.1, ISO 100, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
This was the scene in our neighborhood the day after the big snow storm hit us. The sun was out and the skies were clear creating a beautiful scene that I wanted to try and capture with my camera. Sure, the fence in the bottom of the picture is not ideal, but I was not yet ready to venture out of the house more than a few feet.
There was no “magic” photograph needed to create this image. I applied a slight crop to remove some of the unimportant details on the left and right side. Unlike most of my snow photographs from yesterday, the 7D got the white balance spot on for this scene. The majority of my time was spent tagging and titling the picture in Lightroom.
Photo365-20091219 – Winter Wonderland, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
0.6 sec @ f/8.0, ISO 800, 18 mm (EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS)
This was the view tonight out our front door in Leesburg, VA. We got hit with the “Storm of the Century” today. By my last measurement, we had about sixteen inches on the ground. Believe it or not, this is the view of our street after the plows came by twice earlier in the day. It is going to be a lot of fun digging out of this tomorrow!
I used my tripod to take this “long” exposure. I wanted to avoid using an ISO higher than 800 so that I did not have a lot of noise in the picture. All the white snow caused havoc on the 7D’s white balance sensor. I would not say that the 7D auto white balanced turned all the snow gray like many professionals say a DSLR will. Instead, it turned the picture yellowish. This was quickly fixed in Lightroom using the eyedropper white balance tool. I used the mail boxes on the middle left of the frame as my gray point for the tool.
Easy and flexible white balance adjustments are just two more of the many reasons to always shoot in the RAW format on your DSLR. Sure, there is an extra step of converting the RAW format to a JPG to be shared, but it gives you so much more flexibility in post-processing. Many photos that I have shot would have been trash if I had shot them exclusively in JPG format.
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....
