my journey from pictures to photography
Week 4 is a storytelling challenge, tell a story using a mirror. There is a story behind the shot, but it’s not the story the shot tells. I had pulled over to let an ambulance pass and I ended up stuck in the mud and wet pine needles. Normally, the road is as serene as this shot makes it look.
If there are cows at the beach, you must be in Texas. This is not the best-composed photograph I’ve ever taken, nor the best edited. The challenge for week 3 is Artistic – Land. The juxtaposition of grazing pastureland and tourist beach houses isn’t found just anywhere. We certainly don’t see it in Orange Beach or Gulf Shores.
Straight Outta the Camera means just that — you don’t make any adjustments to the image after you shoot it. Honestly, I positioned the birds in the frame but I didn’t plan on the other guy on the pier tossing a piece of bread at exactly the right time to land in my subject’s mouth. The impression I wanted to convey was how powerful the wind was that day.
At the east end of Galveston Island is a little viewing spot where you and the seagulls, and whatever other birds are around, can watch the ships, tugs, and barges moving in and out of Galveston Bay.
This was the Week 2 photography assignment for my 52-week photography challenge, and yes, I know this is not the 2nd week of the year. I’m playing catch up, and I’m okay with that.
The week 1 challenge is Story: Rule of Thirds; tell a story using the rule of thirds. This is not as easy as it sounds, especially in a Covid world. We can’t really go interesting places like we usually would, with a lot of people around. We’ve also had a lot of issues getting time off to go do things. I’m having to get a bit creative with my locations.
On a gorgeous sunny winter day, we went ATV-riding. I played around with composition on several shots, but this shot really shows the rule of thirds, even if it doesn’t tell much of a story:
It might actually be a good stock photo, so I need to remind myself to submit it to the agencies. I also ran a filter over it that embosses the outlines, and it really illustrates the “thirds.”
Happy new year!
Dogwood Photography presents a year-long challenge every year. I missed it last year and i was late getting in on it this year. I’m trying to catch up but I’m having trouble finding opportunities to just take pictures. Nevertheless, I’m doing photography. I have a goal to print five of my photos, and this is one that I did print. Unfortunately I printed it on a consumer-grade home printer, and the color wasn’t true.
Week 1 was New Year, New Beginning. I selected the image below because it represents my determination to more fully engage with my scriptures this year, as well as with my photography. It looks simple but it was actually pretty difficult to set up and capture so that it said what I wanted it to say.
New Year, New Beginning
Canon
Eos REbel t5
May 7, 2018
Lens EF-S55-250 f/4-5.6 IS II
1/30
F/4.0
Iso 800
It didn’t occur to me to use my tripod and just adjust the legs to the right height. At that time i had two tripods. One is easy to use but not very stable, the other is nice and firm but difficult to use. This image was staged in my dining room, on the dining table, and I positioned the items several different ways and photographed from several different positions. Ultimately I was scrunched down in a dining chair with a throw pillow on my chest supporting the camera. It worked, but I’ll try the tripod first next time. Photography is often about doing what it takes to get the shot you want, but it’s also about using the right tools to get the job done.
I mentioned in the first paragraph that the color wasn’t true, and some of that I attribute to the printer. It’s an okay printer, an Epson XP-310, which does a fine job on most of what I want it to do. It’s evident that it’s not able to read the information about the picture when it receives the print information, so I will have to see if there are adjustments I can make to fix that. The colors looked grayer, but not monochrome.
I’m looking forward to the rest of the year, and I can’t wait to see what I shoot, and to see my photography improve over the year.
In May of this year, we needed a break from our routine. We hastily threw together a trip to Fort Payne, Alabama, where we’ve stayed before. From a rented cabin in the DeSoto Falls State Park, we availed ourselves of the splendor of the woods, the river, the magnificent falls, and time filled with nothing to do. As our departure date neared, we saw that the weather was going to play bad. We didn’t care. If we spent five days on the porch of a cabin watching it rain, that was fine.
As it turned out, we did a lot of that. One day was nice enough to go kayaking, but every succeeding day had some rain in it. The result was that the river, slow and peaceful on our arrival, grew to rapid and rushing on our departure. The day before we left to come back home we hiked out to a waterfall and I grabbed this shot.
It’s a pretty enough picture as it is, giving a sense of the water’s motion. I could have enjoyed seeing this shot as a wallpaper on my computer screen. But then…
the image as shot from the camera
I opened up Topaz Studio, which is a photo editing program I got when I purchased a Wacom tablet (serious bargain – practically a giveaway). It can be used as a plugin for Photoshop or as a standalone program. Topaz is becoming my go-to because you don’t need to know how to use Photoshop to use it. Photoshop is great, but a lot of times it’s just too complicated for what I really want to do.
I played around with the filters in Topaz and settled on the HDR filter. It really brought out the depth of — well, everything. I’ve since tried that same filter on several other photos, but I haven’t liked the results on all of them. HDR is something to apply with caution and great discretion.
Same image through a post-production filter
You can see how much deeper the leaves look, how much more vivid the flow of the water looks, how much clearer the rocks under the flow of the water appear.
Let’s look at them closer together:
the image as shot from the camera
Same image through a post-production filter
The top image captures what I saw; the bottom one captures what I felt. There are some photographers who declare that there is no place for post-production in “real photography.” But photography isn’t just about showing what is there. It’s also about evoking emotion.
I liked it so much I had it made into a poster.
Gear is what makes photography both more fun and more difficult. Lenses and tripods, flash apparatus and hoods can give us a level of creativity beyond just exposing a sensor to light and hoping for something to happen. I only use my iPhone’s camera for quick shots, just to document something, capture a moment to share with others, or in a desperate situation when my “real” cameras aren’t available. Whatever your experience level or objective, you still need to use the right gear and prepare it before your expedition.
Our family went on a service trip in August and September, and on a deep-sea fishing trip in early November. One was a journey into unknown conditions, the other an 8-hour event in salt water. I didn’t want to deal with lenses and filters on either trip, so I chose to take my Canon Powershot instead of the Eos Rebel. For serious creativity I would rather use the Eos, but I’m still learning about how to use it. I wanted to know that I could capture the shots that told the story. The Powershot wouldn’t require keeping up with nearly as much gear. Even so, I learned something significant and useful about checking my gear before an event.
Whatever you use as a power supply for your camera and any other gear. I learned pretty early into the trip that I need to change back to electronics AA’s for my Powershot. I had been using household rechargeable batteries, because I’ve been trying to make myself use the Eos more and depend less on the Powershot. But even fresh out of the charger, they just don’t have enough juice to keep the camera powered for long. I put two freshly-charged batteries into the camera before leaving the house, and shortly into the trip I was getting the low battery indicator. During the 4-hour fishing segment of the trip, the camera would no longer power on and displayed “Change The Batteries.” I put the other freshly-charged set in and got the same message. Evidently, I don’t fully understand how you’re supposed to use rechargeable batteries. I can eliminate the problem by going back to the batteries that are made for high-use electronics. They cost more but they’re worth it.
My Eos has a separate power pack, but I only have one. I always charge it up before every expedition, and I plan to get another one soon. If all your other gear works perfectly but you run out of power for the camera itself, your experience will not be a happy one.
Although you may not want to keep up with another bag, it’s always easier than trying to keep up with individual pieces of gear. Pockets are okay, but if your shirt or jacket gets wet, your gear can get wet. If your pocket gets snagged–which is not unheard of around 30 fish hooks– you could lose an important piece of gear. My Powershot’s case is tiny compared to the case I use for my Eos. All the Powershot needs is a pocket for the cable, a pouch for extra batteries, and a slot for an extra card. The Powershot itself is considerably smaller than the Eos. Also, I was going on the trip to fish, not to photograph the event. If the situation were different, if I was the trip’s photographer, I would have wanted the Eos and its case. I would have needed at least one lens and all the stuff I use to care for it.
I also need to consider getting a bigger or better case for my Eos. It’s a pretty tight fit in the bag for the gear I have. I end up having to hunt for stuff. I’d like something with more defined compartments so I don’t have a lens in the same compartment as the flash gear, and I’d like to have the lens care pieces separate from the SD cards. The other thing I have a real problem with is the outboard pouches. They zip all the way around, instead of meeting at the top with two zippers. That’s not good, because gear can fall out of the side of the pocket while you have it open.
This trip didn’t need one, but for more creative shots, my tripod is an essential piece of gear. I have purchased a couple to use with the Powershot and I got one in the kit with my Eos. Still, if I get more skilled with my camera, I’m going to want a better tripod. It needs to be easier to set up and understand how the pieces fit together and work. I didn’t take a tripod on the fishing trip, because I didn’t imagine how i would find a use for it. That was a good choice; the only time the boat was still enough for a tripod to actually be useful was while it was at the dock.
You’ll get a feel for how much you can put on a card until you get up to about 8 GB or bigger. On a couple of vacation trips, I’ve had to do emergency deletions of some bad shots so i could make room on the card. I was transferring images to the computer every day, too! It’s only recently that I started carrying extra cards, and they are the least expensive piece of gear you’ll buy. Since prices on SD cards have dropped, you can have several in your gear bag, and you’ll feel more confident about taking lots of pictures you won’t feel bad about not using.
Planning your trip, having an understanding of what the conditions will be and what you are likely to see, will give you a good idea of what gear you will need, but you still need to make sure it’s in good condition. What did I miss–is there gear that you would consider essential? What is your pre-trip gear check ritual?
I love equipment. For reasons beyond my comprehension, I could sit and watch road work equipment all day. I could watch heavy construction gear for hours. Since I’m always on the lookout for things to photograph, my eye is constantly scanning my horizon. Yesterday it fell on this piece of farm gear.
Actually it’s not quite “farm” equipment, per se. It’s a grapple from the Bobcat. But sitting out all by its lonesome, it was almost posing. The colors stand out from the greens of the leaves and grass. No, it’s not a fabulous picture, but it can tell a story. Is it out of place in the greens of nature? Is it off doing its own thing, “finding itself?” We have several photogenic farm implements, but it’s hard to get them off alone. They seem to hang out together in groups. I need to remind my hubby to drop one off just slightly remotely from the others one afternoon
Not only did the grapple catch my eye, but you’ll notice that I purposely set it off-center. It works much better as an image than centering the subject would have done. I considered placing it up or down into either the top or bottom two-thirds of the frame, but it just didn’t feel right. By using the center third of the horizontal plane and the rightmost two-thirds of the vertical plane, the subject still holds the focus but makes a much more interesting shot.
I’m still experimenting with the rule of thirds, and I am pleased with the results. By mentally dividing the frame into thirds both vertically and horizontally, the only square that is off limits as a solo resting square is the one right in the center. Center is fine as long as the subject fully occupies at least one adjoining square.
I still need a lot of practice composing with the Rule of Thirds, and Darren Rowse at Digital Photography School does a great job of explaining it here.
I’m always fascinated by patterns. I can’t help but notice them in sight, sound, and concept. So I’ve enjoyed watching our birds grow from baby puffballs into birds with patterned feathers.
As I mentioned before, photographing animals can be a challenge, and even a fairly docile peacock, who should be marvelously photogenic, simply won’t stand still for a picture. But as you can see in the image, his adult feathers coming in form a mesmerizing pattern.
Patterns can make interesting prints, especially without the context of the rest of the subject. Play around with patterns and see what you find. Ripples on the water, fence posts, the bark of trees, birds on a wire, rows of cars, a wall of windows.
On the display of the camera, this shot looked wonderful! But when I put it up on the computer screen, it was horribly out of focus. Lesson learned–don’t be satisfied with the first shot that looks good. Take many more.
Fortunately, since the peacock lives behind my house, I’ll have plenty of opportunities to grab that shot again. If I do, I’ll post it. But I have other birds with fascinating feather patters to get first. He had his chance to be famous.
What are your favorite patterns to capture? What secrets do you have to find them?
Photographing animals is easy only if the animal is asleep. Otherwise all we have is varying degrees of difficult. Part of being a photographer is being ready to grab a great shot wherever you happen to be. It’s as true for hobbyists as it is for pros.
King of the Hill
This guy was the king of the hill where he lived. I don’t know that he had a name. After a campout on the property, during which he crowed all night, I wanted to call him breakfast. He posed for this image just before the festivities began at an outdoor birthday party. It looks almost surreal—almost like a painting you’d see made into a jigsaw puzzle.
Some of my pictures have been just spectacular and some would be described as blah, and that would be generous. I read a lot of photography content, and, as a result, I’ve learned how to be ready to capture that perfect moment. Here are a few of the things I try and do to capture memories and feelings in pixels.
The camera settings were full auto for this shot, and the camera is a Canon Powershot SX110i.
What is one thing you could share below that has improved your photography? I’m always ready to try a new method.
