Final - Part 1

1/1000 f5.6  ISO100  270mm
Depth of Field
This images is not cropped.  I was standing below a prairie in a park.  I lighted the foreground and darkened the sky.

1/800  f5.6  ISO100  300mm
This is actually a composite, but it's not cropped.  The sky was very blown out in the original image.  This sky is from the same set of photos, same day, same location, same lighting, just a couple of images separate it in time.  I just swapped it out so there was more definition behind the buzzard.  The bird has some ragged wings.  I had to make sure to get the holes when I was editing it. 

1/320 f5.6  ISO400 55mm
Shapes and Depth of Field
Yet another pick of my sister's dog, Anne.  I used the green tone b/w preset and then adjusted the hue saturation to bring out the chain link.  It is not cropped.  It reminds me of a "late night make you cry about shelter dogs" commercial. 

1/400  f5.6  ISO400  55mm
Light
I do not think I like macro photography.  I like to photograph things that move.  This image is actually very clear when you zoom in on it (the original raw file, not too sure about the internet bastardization here).  I took it with my kit lens, which I almost never use. I increased the green to make the gold of the baby mantis stand out more.  Other than than, I didn't really mess with this image too much.  It is lightly cropped to remove a swing set pole.  

1/100  f.45  ISO1600  35mm
This image was completely black in it's raw form.  I adjusted the exposure, contrast, shadows, and luminance.  I used my favorite green tone b/w preset and then adjusted out the blues and greens from this image.  That brought out all the "grit" on the car.  This is in a warehouse full of old military stuff. Everything was green.  

1/4000  f1.8  ISO100  35mm
Lines
This image is not edited.  I took it on a family fishing trip.  My older daughter was chilling on the dock.  I just loved the simple feeling of summer it evoked. 

1/4000  f1.8  ISO200  35mm
Depth of Field
The cliched water drops on grass photo.  I took the highlights and whites way down on this one. I also added to the shadows.  I adjusted the green hue down a little.  It was a very green picture.  

1/1000  f1.8  ISO100  35mm
Shapes
The road at the upper left needs to be taken out of this image.  I also think I'd like to see it a little more contrasty.  I have found I like laying down on the sidewalk and taking pictures.  

1/4000  f1.8  ISO100 35mm
Depth of Field
I gave this image a little more highlights and whites.  I also adjusted the exposure.  If I were to do it again, I'd work to remove the blown-out sky in the upper left corner. I didn't really notice it when I edited this image.

1/1250  f5.6  ISO400  300MM
Portrait
This is a portrait I took of my daughter, Logan, and my sister's dog, Anne.  I love the way they are lost in their own little world. I had to adjust the exposure up and I did crop in a little. 

1/250  f4.8  ISO100  110mm
Portrait
I lowered the shadows, whites, and highlights on this one.  It's not exactly in focus, but I still like it a lot.  The hair in her eyes kind of makes it "blurry", too.  I also bumped up the clarity and vibrance just a tad.  I did not touch the exposure or contrast.

1/4000  f1.8  ISO400  35mm
This image is not edited.  It is as shot.  

1/200  f5.0 ISO100 116mm
I need to replace the sky behind this one.  I've tried a couple of times with not good results.  I'll keep trying.  Otherwise, I really didn't edit or crop this one too much.  It's as shot.

1/2500  f5.6  ISO800 300mm
I don't think I quite knew what I was doing when I took this picture.  I love it, and I only shoot in manual, so I know it wasn't a case of the camera choosing the settings, but I'm not sure why I have it at ISO800 on a bright and sunny day.  :)  You live, you learn.  I did intentionally bring out the highlights of the backlighting. 

1/200  f6.3  ISO100 220mm
This is still one of my favorite, and one of my most popular (if not THE most popular image).  I've had many people request copies of it.   If I were to redo this image I would replace the sky to make it more sinister.  I'd put storm clouds back there to give it a Wizard of Oz feel.  

Final - Part 2

"Majesty"
Add caption1/4000  f1.8  ISO100  35mm.
I love clouds.  I took this picture last week before the big storms rolled through.  You know, the ones we didn't get?  This sky was amazing that night. I really liked the way it looked after I pulled the blue out of the sky through the gaps in the clouds.  Where the sun is shining through is a lot blown out, and because I was basically shooting right into it, I just couldn't quite get it to quiet.

"Solitude"
1/1250  F1.8  ISO200  35Mmm.
I took this picture of my daughter while we were walking around town one night.  (Our town has exactly one square block of downtown.) I loved the way she paused to look inside all the storefronts as we pass by them.  She just looks so wistful, and deep in thought. When I was working on these images I was looking for one where I could pull her reflection out.  I adjusted the red in the brick, and the blue in her dress.  I also desaturated the yellows, and that made the background images in the reflection fade away, to highlight her more. 

"Anger"
1/250  F5.6  ISO400  280MM.
Well, I'm a kind of literal person.  I took this picture of my nephew, Charlie, about a week ago, and kept going back to it.  I guess you can call it a snapshot, but these are the kind of portraits I hang in my house.  Smiling, happy kids are boring.  I love taking pictures of tantrums.  There are about 50 images in this set.  He was fighting with his twin over a big magnet on a stick (the kind you use to find nails you dropped in the grass, etc.)  I adjusted the exposure and contrast, this was taken right after sunset.  Then, I desaturated the green of the grass a little bit, so the image looked a little more solemn.  

"mono no aware"
1/4000  f4.5  ISO100  35mm
This was my attempt at mono no aware. Usually I intentionally underexpose so that I have more to work with as I am generally trying to lighten images.   For this one, I liked the darker background and I used a mask layer to lighten the flower. I think I lightened the flower a little too much and ended up blowing it out,  but I spent a LOT of time and ended up with many versions of this same image.  This is the one the best expressed the solitude I wanted to convey. 

"Justice"
1/4000  f4.0  ISO100  18mm.
The reason I picked this image for my final portfolio was two-fold.  I  love old cars and what says justice better than a police car? (I am a kind of literal person, after all.)  This is one of the automobiles from the Andy Griffith Show - parked in front of where else?  The Mayberry Cafe in Danville.  I took a lot of pictures of this car, but it wasn't parked in it's customary spot on main street. Without having to photoshop out a lot of detritus, I settled on this image of just the bumper.  After I converted it to black and white, I adjusted the blues and greens out of the image, and super bumped up the contrast to make the chrome pop.  I love the old neon sign in the background. 

Day 20 - June 15, 2013

1/250  f5.6  ISO400  300mm

Day 19 - June 14, 2013

1/250  f4.8  ISO100  110mm

Day 18 - June 13, 2013

1/4000  f1.8   ISO 100  35mm

Day 17 - June 12, 2013

1/100  f4.5  ISO1600  35mm

Day 16 - June 11, 2013

1/400  f5.6  ISO400  55mm
"Baby Mantis"

I imagine macro photography is a lot easier w/a macro lens, or at the very least a macro extension tube. I took this with my kit lens.  It's not super clear, but of the 100 or so images I captured of this little guy (or gal), it's my favorite.  I guess a cocoon had recently hatched in my nephews' play yard...

Midterm

"City Life"
Nikon D3200  1/1600  f1.8  ISO100  35mm
This might not seem like an obvious representation of city life, but to me it epitomizes the city.  I've never in my life lived somewhere that has fire hydrants. I know they exist in the suburbs, not in my suburb.

My focus has been shooting better images to begin with so that they need less post-processing. To process this image I initially adjusted the white balance, exposure (-0.07) and contrast (+40).  Then I adjusted the highlights (+100), shadows (+73), and I turned basically turned the whites off (-100).  I bumped the vibrance up a little bit and I adjusted the hue based off of the orange in the fence in the background. I finished it up with a little photoshop to remove a distracting blue stain in the lower lefthand corner.

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"Portrait"
Nikon D3200  1/2500  f1.8 ISO200  35mm
Portraits are not something I have ever attempted before.  Again, my goal was to take good pictures to begin with so there would be minimal need for adjustments. This was taken late in the evening, on an overcast day a little after "sweet light".  I intentionally bumped up the ISO and shot it a little darker so I could lighten it up in Lightroom.  After I adjusted the exposure and  I didn't do much elseI chose this image because I think it captures my daughter's personality perfectly.  She's her own person, and if I say twirl, she's going to lay down and roll around on the ground.  And laugh every minute.

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"Still Life"
Nikon D3200  1/80  f1.8 ISO200  35mm
This was the hardest picture for me to take.  (All of them were hard - there is just something about being "assigned" a picture to take that makes it extra difficult for me.) I don't see any reason to photograph plants, vegetables, or fruit.  No reason at all.  BO-RING.  But I do love old stuff, and this is my grandmother's fabulous old Adler typewriter.  It was new in 1950. I set it up in both natural light and I also took a series of pictures using a lamp to light it in various ways.  Of the 30+ images I captured, this is the angle that I like the best, with the natural light coming in a window from above.  I don't know why I liked this one best. Usually what appeals to me is the exact opposite of what is considered good composition.  Antiques are all "warm" to me.  They are comfortable and inviting, so I used LR to adjust the exposure and contrast and then I used a Lightroom Preset B/W filter (the green filter) to make it feel more austere and rigid. I adjusted the contrast, shadows and highlights to make sure there was some level of detail available in the shadows. To me, the image of this old typewriter is now about as cold and uninviting as I could make it. I very much like how it turned out, especially the "grunge" and dirt that came out on the keys.  Years of use and ribbon changes - this is a well-used machine.

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"Nature"
Nikon D3200  1/160  f1.8 ISO200  35mm
I'm a fan of b/w photography, but I try not to overuse it.  The reason I ended up turning this picture b/w was because of the subject matter.  These baby cardinals are in the rose bush about 6 feet up.  They are so ugly, and they were so alone, I thought b/w would emphasize that starkness.  After I switched to black & white mode in the Hue and Saturation panel, I began adjusting the hues.  I found that there were a lot of purples and blues and oranges in this image, specifically in the bird coloring, and I really liked the affect I got when I moved those sliders far to one direction or the other to get the maximum contrast. This is a dark picture, but I like that I can still see detail in the nest.

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"Action"
Nikon D3200  1/250  f5.3 ISO400  240mm
Action shots.  I have a hard time getting those that don't need to be cropped.  In my experience, action is best shot from a distance.  But if you don't crop in, you include way too much of what is (or in this case) isn't going on around the action. I take lots of action shots (like close to 12,000) - mostly animals, sometimes children.  I picked this one because I took it expressly for this assignment, and I loved the exuberance.  To me this image conveys unbridled joy.  Anne is a  rescued dog.  She was found abandoned at an old farmstead in a very rural area. My brother-in-law was discing a field stopped to urinate behind the barn.  She was a big, clumsy puppy.  Extremely dehydrated, in addition to starving. She scared him to death as she ran out from the bushes, where she had been hiding - watching him plow, to drink his urine.  Being a drought summer, it was the only liquid around. He brought her home and she's spent every day since trying to please them.  Everything she does is to please her family.  She is a well-trained obedience and agility dog. This picture expresses everything about her personality.  My sister made her run and do tricks for me for about an hour.  This was literally one of the last images I captured. Exhausted, she still gave it everything she had.

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Day 15 - June 9, 2013

1/1250  f1.8  ISO200  35mm

**snake skeleton**  I'm still not happy with the way this one turned out.  I wasn't planning on using this picture, I just took it because my kids asked me to, but I've had a lot of fun playing around with it. I'll probably keep at it until I turns into something I really like. If possible...

Day 14 - June 7, 2013

1/320  f5.6  ISO400 55mm

Day 13 - June 5, 2013

1/4000  f1.8  ISO100  35mm

Day 12 - June 4, 2013

1/1000  f1.8  ISO200  35mm

Day 11 - June 3, 2013

1/1000  f1.8  ISO200  35mm

Day 10 - June 2, 2013

1/4000  f1.8  ISO200  35mm

Day 9 - June 1, 2013

iPhone 4s

This probably shouldn't be included in this photo blog as I used my phone to capture it, but I really, really like this picture.   I picked this huge slug  out of my recycling bin.

Before & After...

Canon T3i 1/320 f3.5 ISO100 18mm

*note, this image IS cropped, there is a junk pile to the left of the barn in the foreground.

Most of the examples I watched online for adjustment layers used over-exposed images.  I was wondering how much could be restored from an under-exposed one. I used Lightroom to manipulate this photo. The "After" image actually has 4 adjustment layers, but before I did that I made some adjustments to the image as a whole. First, I bumped down the exposure for the entire image (-2.70). This started to bring out the amazing blue in the sky, but it did make the barn in the foreground very dark, so my next step was to adjust the contrast from 3 to 10. Then I adjusted the overall vibrance of the image to 37, or, until I thought it looked good.

The barn in the foreground was still very dark, so I used the dodge adjustment brush to lighten the barn.      Then I grabbed a new adjustment brush, this time the exposure brush, and I just painted the sky, and then I bumped it down just a little more to enhance the color.  Next, I grabbed a new brush and I used it to burn the foreground, the actual ground, and the trees on the horizon, as well as the background, because I didn't want that to be a focus. Then I fiddled around with it for about an hour and I finally decided the tree trunk needed to be a little lighter, so I used a final adjustment brush to dodge only the tree trunk.

Day 8 - May 29, 2013

1/1600 f1.8 ISO100 35mm

I adjusted the contrast, exposure, and applied split toning to this image.

Can anyone tell me what kind of bush this is? It's about 12 feet tall and has thorns.

Day 7 - May 25, 2013

1/640 f1.8 ISO100 35mm

I love this picture because it pretty much convey's my dog's personality.  She's very much an "up in your business" kind of gal.