Monday, April 5, 2010

Clouds

Clouds are by far the most difficult thing I have ever taken a picture of. To our eyes they look amazing but when you put them onto film they look, well, boring. It's hard finding a photogenic cloud. And for now, I have only one picture out of almost 100 that I'm a bit happy with. It's a challenge or at least it is for me.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Water Drop

Water Drop photography is very time consuming yet very easy. Just get a bowl and fill it halfway with water or really any liquid. Now you need a zip lock bag and fill it with water and hang it about your bowl. Then poke a hole in the end and let the water drip. To focus you use a pen or pencil. Stick it in where the drop of water is hitting the bowl, then focus and put it on manual.

Night Time Photography

        Night time photography has remained largely untouched by many photographers. There are many reasons for that though. It can be, weather, patience, scared of the dark even. Though my biggest problem was focusing on something I couldn't see. Now night time photography is pretty basic. Have a long 30'' shutter speed and actually, you want a really narrow aperture. This will make is more forgiving in the focusing area. Now what you see in this pic is a photograph of power lines taken at night at around 9:00 p.m. You will want to use same composition rules as in the day time but just with longer exposure times.

Icons

      Themes was first introduced to me through an iPhone app by Nikon. I wanted to do something that captures the essence of what being a 15-16 year old kid was. First thing I thought of is, I walked. I walked everywhere. I would walk miles and miles just to buy the same coke I had in my fridge. So I decided on shoes. Next was what type of shoes? Well I could of for the cliche Converse. But in today's society, Vans lace ups or vastly more popular now. And plus I wear them so I would be easy for me to shoot them. Now days usually girls write on the white parts of your shoes or something of that nature so I wanted to make that my focus point. Now to include some elegance and mix old with new I went for Black and White, called monochrome in my Nikon d3000. This also made it very dramatic and immediately appealing for its simplicity yet the complex design of the shoe yet we never see that.

Plants

I love shooting plants as they are all unique. We never stop to look at close as we can to them. If we did, we would see how much detail there really is. These are some shots I took in my backyard during "golden hour".






Saturday, February 27, 2010

Lakeshore Park

I was taking a ride today and I had my camera in my car. I suddenly thought, hey, I really want to do wildlife photography. Well I didn't have hours to hike into the woods and wait for a deer or bird to come by. So I thought, how is the easiest way to do this? Then I quickly remembered Laskeshore Park. Its a park located on the Ross Barnett resevoir. The sun wasn't exactly giving me "Jesus Light" but it's all good. I'm happy with what I came home with. Enjoy.
















Creative Solutions: Reflectors

Reflectors are cheap, around 8-16$ but if you can't find one around your town or need something quick, try this creative solution. Get some card or card board or if you don't happen to have that, grab about 10 sheets of copy paper, enough to make it thick.

(1)If you're using copy paper, first tape those sheets together.

(2) get tin foil and take it out, try not to crease as much as you can, this can make crazy lighting (though feel free to play with that) and just tape it on to the front side.

(3) you're done with the reflector. Now go out and learn how to use it. A reflector will open up tons of new lighting possibilities for you.
As you see below, I have a set up for some macro photography. I couldn't use a flash straight on because the barrel of my lens made a shadow. So I used an off camera flash and angled it at my reflector. I was able to really bring out the color of my orange.