| In Photography, Surprises are Great! | 2005-02-14 16:30:51EST |
| This is from my previous photo jaunt up to Seattle. This is one of those shots that looks okay in the camera's LCD (and okay in the thumbnail view here) but looks great when it's blown up to the size of the screen. I desperately want to go back downtown when it's busy so I can get some great shots of all the hubbub when it's crowded. I also wonder how a few morning shots would work out. The only problem is that I unwittingly set the camera to underexpose by a third of a stop. Crap. Oh well, that can be solved in Photoshop and I'll know better in the future. |
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| Sometimes you've just got to go take some pictures | 2005-02-10 14:34:45EST |
The winter weather around the Northwest is typically pretty crappy. I guess that goes a bit too far. It's never all that cold, it hardly ever snows, and it's green all year round. But if you're in the mood to get shots that don't have a grey monotone aspect to them, if you want some vibrant colors, you have to be very patient and take advantage of every opportunity you get.
I just happen to know that in the winter the sun sets far enough south to light up Pike's Market pretty well. So I left work early yesterday to head downtown to see if I could get some good shots. I made the right choice. This is my favorite image of all from yesterday. I dig all the vibrant colors, I love the reflection in the window, all the neon, and the sunset. The fact that the coffee girl was cleaning up right then was a nice touch as well.
I'm learning that not every shot you think will be good ends up being good. In fact, a lot of shots that I have spent a lot of time thinking about and picturing in my mind have ended up prety horribly. It can get very frustrating. But when you get a shot like this, you kind of just forget all the other crappy shots.
Good thing I'm not paying for film! |
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| My latest Photo Friday entry. | 2005-01-31 15:30:57EST |
So when I saw that this week's theme over at Photo Friday was youth, it was this image that immediately came to mind. I took this at the Skagit county tulip festival last March. It is simply one of those shots that you have to be in the right place at the right time to get. I was amazed that the girl's shirt matched the color of the tulips almost exactly. The weather was fairly cooperative that day although it was cold. The overcast clouds let the bright colors shine through really well. My Mom had this image blown up to a 30'x40' poster and she said it turned out great.
Let me know what you think. |
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| Long time no post. | 2005-01-27 18:03:12EST |
I should really try to keep this journal thing going a bit more regularly. In fact, I'm thinking that I should make it a point to find a favorite image and publish it every single day. So far I haven't done much of that.
So this image is Beth's favorite from last Friday's photo adventure. It was the first day that Beth and Reid were out of town on a trip and the weather was nice so I decided that I just had to go out and get some pictures. I took well over 100 images and came out with about 5 or so that I liked a lot.
Oh, I did have one interesting experience earlier that day. I went down to Point Defiance park and was taking some pictures and I heard some kind of bird and looked up and to my great surprise I saw a bald eagle! It was so cool. It was a little far away from me to get any kind of good shot with the lens that I have unfortunately, but it was awesome to see. |
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| My first Photo Friday entry | 2005-01-14 03:08:39EST |
| The topic this Friday is "signs" and since it is pretty much Friday already, I need to post something from what I already have (I should have looked before I went on my photo trip today). Anyhow, this should work although there is no sign there. See, there should be a sign. Get it? |
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| Man I love night photography. | 2005-01-13 22:27:20EST |
So this is my first chance to do some night photography. I was out for hours after work on Ruston way in Tacoma taking various pictures. Nothing really tripped my trigger though and I must have taken 150 pictures too. I drive over the bridge just after sunset and this is the first picture that I take and I love it. The clouds glowing orange from the city lights with the faint blue of the sky poking through rules. The reflection of the cranes on the water. I just love it.
The bad news is that during this photography session I found out that I have a dirty CMOS sensor on my brand new Canon EOS 20D. Damn. I looked online and aparently this is kind of a well known problem with the 20D and other Canon cameras. Bad show Canon, you should make sure that I don't have to go get my sensor cleaned right off the bat. Oh well, I'm sure the camera store downtown is open tomorrow and they already told me they do CMOS cleaning. I just hope it isn't too expensive.
I'll be posting more pictures shortly. I want to try a bulk upload to see how well that works. |
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| More testing of the journal... | 2005-01-13 14:44:16EST |
A previous journal entry ignored my carriage returns, so I thought that I'd try to force them.
Did that work? If not, this is yet another runon paragraph. This is an image of our newest member of the family, Cat Stevens taken with the newest gadget in our family the Canon EOS 20D with EF-S 17-85mm lens.
I hope the paragraph thing works. We shall see. |
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| Possible Bug? | 2005-01-11 23:16:08EST |
| Why doesn't this image show up as a thumbnail? Maybe because it is portrait rather than landscape? Very interesting. That would be a major reason not to use this site. |
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| Learning process... | 2005-01-11 18:47:57EST |
There is going to be a definite learning curve to this whole photography thing. I saw this building gleaming in the sunshine on S. 9th and Broadway in Tacoma, WA and I knew I had to take a picture of it. Actually, I was testing the 20D's ability to take a raw and a .jpg at the same time. What I'm thinking is that the .jpg could be the proof and the raw (.cr2) file will be the one that I process in photoshop and sell. That, however, is a long way off.
This site will suffice for low-resuolution images that I don't intend to sell. First off, the images are free (hence the name openphoto) and secondly they take a while to load since even the thumbnails reference the full sized images (and even at the lowest quality setting an 8.2 megapixel camera has really big images). It'll be perfect to help me learn.
Also, I just found out that Ft. Lewis has a photographer that teaches private lessons in photography. Awesome! Also I'm going to be taking a matting/framing class at McChord. Given that and the ability to get large prints from Snapfish or some other place, I should be off and running ultimately. Nice. |
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| Still wondering how this is supposed to work | 2005-01-11 18:29:48EST |
So I'm a believer in this openphoto.net thing for some reason. It appears to be up my alley if I could just figure out how to use it. Still wondering if this is how I want to photoblog.
More to come. |
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