These days are flying by.  I feel like sometimes I'm accomplishing what I'd hoped to - find my 'eye' again instead of relying on shooting what I know.  Sometimes I do see differently, sometimes I rely on what I know - especially if it's close to the end of the day and I haven't taken a decent shot yet.  But I'm aware of this, so hopefully I'll be more mindful of it and work on it more going forward.  Definitely and interesting exercise :)

Canopy Road

Canon 60D, 35mm 1.4 lens
ISO 800, f/7.1, 1/80 sec
Ambient light

Dawn

Canon 5DM3, 70-200 2.8 lens
ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/800 sec
Ambient light

Gettin' Down

Canon 5DM3, 50mm 1.4
ISO 400, f/2.8, .8 sec
On-camera 580EXII flash at -1 ETTL, Fong Lightsphere 

Five Points of Life Marathon Relay - Team Kickin' Assphalt

Canon 5DM3, 70-200 2/8 lens
ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/3200 sec
Ambient light

(this is kind of embarrassing to share! everyone who has taken my photo classes should know why this is a poor choice for my settings!)

Ford Model A

Canon 5DM3, 70-200 2.8
ISO 1000, f/2.8, 1/320sec
Ambient light

Want to see more? See the second five photos from my 30 day photography project here! All of the 30 Day Challenge photos are also available for purchase here.

Spread the love! Share it on the Facebooks!

Who has two thumbs and some inbox love for you? THIS GIRL.  Sign up! It'll be neat!

Keeping it clean with Tommy and Colleen!  Where can I even start with these two?  I loved them as soon as I heard about their bib idea for the barbeque they would be having at their wedding.  A picture of the Swedish Chef with that wonderful little catch phrase.  They live out on the left coast but came back to Gainesville for an intimate wedding at Colleen's mother's house.  We had a bit of rain during dinner, but it definitely didn't put a damper on the day.  It was sweet, fun, joyful, and totally full of love.  Colleen and Tommy are truly a perfect match and it was an honor to be a part of their day. <3

Want more? It's Lorrie and Victor's first anniversary! See their wedding photos here!

Spread the love! Share it on the Facebooks!

Who has two thumbs and some inbox love for you? THIS GIRL.  Sign up! It'll be neat!

It's that time again!  The next photography class will be on Saturday January 24th.  For all of you that received a fancy camera for Christmas, now is your opportunity to learn how to use it!  Registration is required.  You may register directly through me or via Eventbrite for a small extra fee.

Topics we'll cover include anatomy of the camera (what are all those buttons?), ISO/F-Stop/Shutter speed (take that thing of auto!), lens choice, composition, and more.

Lunch will be included, and I promise that no one is more obnoxious about their diet than I am, so just let me know if you have any special dietary requirements and we'll make sure you're covered.

This past week I decided to get the VSCO films presets for Lightroom.  These presets emulate the look of a variety of specific films.  I've just started playing with them, so there is still a LOT to learn.  I have the standard pack because the color profiles of my camera are not supported with the Pro edition yet, so this is the 'one size fits all' solution.

In any case, I'm finding that the presets react differently on different photos, so it's hard to get a sense of what to expect at this point.  I've had some success trying to feel out how the different presets function while practicing on this photo of Heather.

The first image is the original.  All I did to this was bump the exposure by .15 of stop.  Normally, I would do quite a bit of tweaking to get it exactly where I want it, but I decided to pretty much leave it alone for the purposes of this experiment. :)

For the second image, I applied the Kodak Porta 160 preset with the orange skin fix.  I decreased the contrast a tad and bumped the exposure by .08.

The third image uses the Ilford HP5 preset.  I think this is going to be my new favorite BW conversion... I love that you really get the elegance of the Ilford feel with this preset.  I did knock the preset down one step and then bumped exposure by .15.

The fourth one has the Fuji 800C preset on it.  The only tweak I made to this was the exposure bump by .15.

The last one is with the Kodak Porta 800.  I applied the auto black preset as well and then added a little fill.  I bumped the exposure by .15 on this one as well.

So it's been interesting to see how these presets work.  I'm excited to try them out some more as I have time.  I'd love to hear about other folks' experience with them, so if you use them, please feel free to comment on this post with how you like to utilize them.

If you think this is neat, share it on the Facebooks!

Last night I decided to finally give the digital pinhole thing a try.  For those of you that aren't familiar with pinhole photography, it is the simplest type of photography out there.  You can make a film pinhole camera with a roll of film, and empty film canister, a matchbox and some black tape.  Pinhole images (at least the uber-rudimentary kind) are generally at least a little bit blurry, may have some vignetting (dark areas around the edges), are made with a long exposure (usually at least a few seconds), and have a pretty specific feel to them.  I want to say 'vintage', but I'm not sure that's the word I'm looking for.  Anyway, I think right now there is a trend to create images using old-school technology in conjunction with new dSLRs, and the digital pinhole thing is just one example.  There is a pinhole group on flickr if you'd like to see more.  Maybe I should start one at SmugMug. :)  Of course, all kinds of 'distressed' and old-school imitations can be created in Photoshop or whatever, but that's just cheating :)

So, onto the process: I took the body cap to the camera (it's a 40D in case anyone cares) and drilled a small hole in that then sanded down the edges to make it nice and clean.  Then I cut a square from an aluminum drink can and colored it black on both sides with a sharpie.  I used a pin to make the tiniest hole I could through the metal (next time I'll cut the can, make the hole, then sand it down and lastly color it black to make sure the hole is really even and clean).  At first, I affixed the pinhole to the outside of the body cap, but I decided to put it on the inside of the body cap instead and that seems to have helped the final result in terms of sharpness and light interference (having inside the cap is like having a lens hood and I think helps bring out the vignetting a little bit).  The exposure for the image below was somewhere in the 10-20 second range, I believe.

I know I still have a lot more to learn, but here is the best of yesterday's first attempt.  I did adjust levels/curves and saturation, and yes, that's most likely pollen on my sensor O_o (it's pollen season here, absolutely everything is covered in yellow).  All of the shots came out very limited in tonal range; probably about 1/3 to 1/4 of a normal histogram.  I was shooting in low, even light. I would like to try it with some brighter light and hopefully get a little more tonal variation in there so I won't have to adjust levels/curves.

If you have experience with digital pinhole photography, please feel free to comment!