Fall 2013

Just a little of what I have worked on this fall. :-)

I really like landscape photography and portrait photography scares me. However, I have been really pleased with some of the portraits I've taken this fall and think I will begin to focus a little more on them. I have been taking another photography class this fall that is helping me begin to master my camera. Begin is the key word there, because I have a long way to go. At least it doesn't seem impossibly long anymore. Kudos to Taz Tally; he is a wonderful photographer and teacher. I have learned much from the classes I've taken from him. Hopefully someday I'll make him proud.

Photography Project 4

This is a composite of 3 images from a sequence of a humpback breaching. The basic image editing was done in Lightroom and then the images were transferred to Photoshop as layers where I combined them. I chose to only use these 3 photos from the sequence because they best show the flight and rotation of the whale. Adding the last 1 or 2 images show the splash but it interferes with the other images so I left them out. 

This is my edited image. In Adobe Lightroom I adjusted the exposure, white balance, color, clarity, and sharpening, both globally and using the adjustment brush. The foreground still isn't in great focus, but this went from an image I would have deleted to a usable photo.

 

This is my image before editing in Lightroom. If I was unable to do major editing this image would be trash.

Photography Project 3

This is Marcus, my 4 year old German Shepherd. The inspiration for the shots I took this day came from the wedding shoot of one of my daughter's friends. The wedding took place at an old chapel in Girdwood, AK during a snowstorm and the photographer captured some of the most beautiful portraits I have ever seen with the bride, groom and wedding party out in the storm. None of the shots I took captured the falling snow and my subjects together the way I wanted , but I love this shot with snow all over Marcus' nose. His nose is not in the best focus, but it is still a great photo of him. I had to choose a shutter speed fast enough to capture   Marcus who was moving most of the time and also slow enough to be adequate for the lower light on this day. I hand held the camera. 1/30 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 100, 18 mm. Taken 4/6/13.

I am currently taking an Adobe Lightroom course from a professor who is also a professional photographer. He is using some B&W photos from his portfolio while teaching how to use the slideshow, web and book modules. The shadows he's captured add such depth and beauty to his photos that its inspired me to experiment with B&W and capturing shadows in my photos. I love the shadow of the unseen trees in the snow, but I am not quite sure if it is enough to anchor the photo with so much going on in the background.

It was a pretty bright afternoon, but the sun was beginning to set so I didn't need to use a super fast shutter speed. I hand held the camera, 1/400 @ f/5.6, ISO 100, 30 mm. Taken 4/12/13.

My husband and I usually go swimming with our grandchildren on Tuesday nights, but this afternoon I sent him alone. I bundled up, put hotties on top of my toes in my boots, grabbed my dog and camera gear and took off up the trails in the Chugach forest above Anchorage. I spent hours up there. On one of the narrower trails I came across a lot of clumps of heavy fur and was reminded that the bears should start appearing now, so I skedaddled back to the more well traveled trails. On my way back down I started taking shots of the setting sun and the city. I read in one of my texts that you should over expose sunsets a bit; I have found the opposite to be true. I like the colors and active clouds I get when I set my camera to under expose my shots a stop or two, which is what I did here. I used aperture priority and set my f stop to f/22 because I wanted everything in focus regardless of its distance and I used a higher ISO to compensate for the high f-stop in the low light. I hand held the camera.  1/25 sec @ f/22, ISO 400, 55 mm. Taken 4/12/13.

This is a shot of a dripping icicle. I think it is really cool that you can see my back yard in the icicle and the droplets, but not in the background of the photo. It was a bright sunny afternoon and the sun was starting to go down behind the trees. I had to use a very high shutter speed to stop the action, so I used shutter priority mode and experimented with the speed. This was taken at 1/4000 sec. Taken 4/13/13, 1/4000 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 100, 100 mm (EF100mm F/2.8 Macro USM.

Runners up for Photography Project 3

I grabbed my camera and went hiking up above Anchorage several times in the last couple of weeks to work on my current class project and came across these rabbit tracks in the snow. This is one of my favorite photos from these trips, but had to narrow things down to 4 photos. I processed this in B&W because I like the tonal quality I felt that color distracted from it. I used a low f-stop and high shutterspeed because it was a very bright sunny day and I was really close to the tracks. I wish now that I had taken shots from several different angles. 1/2000, F/4.0, ISO 100, 18 mm (EF-S18-55 f/3.5-5.6)  taken 4/14/13.

This isn't the greatest photo by any stretch of the imagination, but it is the 1st photograph I have ever taken of the Aurora Borealis, so I'm a pretty proud of it. 10 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 400, 18 mm. Taken 4/13/13.

 From the alder bushes in front of my house. I worked a lot on macro shots and didn't have a lot of luck, especially with my macro lens. I didn't use it for this photo. I love macro photography, so I really hope I can work through the issues I have been having focusing with that lens. 1/40 sec @ f/14, ISO 100, 48 mm. Taken 4/15/13.

My Husband love this photo; he thinks the framing is cool. I like it too I only wish the background trees and shadows were in better focus. 1/125 sec @ f14, ISO 100, 24 mm. Taken 4/15/13.

All of these are runners up from images taken of icicles dripping from my back porch. They were taken over several days, until all the snow there melted. I had so much fun doing these :-) Taken 4/12-15/13.

Added this photo to show the context the droplet photos were taken in.  ~ Eva

Runners up for assignment 2

I have to comment about the dog. He was so sweet and you could tell he was just soaking in the breeze and the sight and smell of the waves. I thought about titling this photo "Waiting" because there were a bunch of surfers in the water and it looked as if he might be waiting for his owner. :-) My husband took a photo of me crouched down with him watching the waves that is an even better photo, but alas, I'm only in it, I didn't take it.

I like the way you see how hard the guys in the canoe are working and the breaking wave in the foreground.

I decided against this because I didn't have the whole piece of driftwood in the frame.

I decided against this one because it is heavily cropped and processed, which affected the image quality.

I love the tree and the way it leans into the frame.

Loved the contrasts in this with the green vegetation and the red and black rock against the blue of the water and the sky.

Just a well framed waterfall is what I thought, nothing spectacular.

Assignment 2 ~ Island Dusk

This is my final submission for Assignment #2. (I didn't take into account the order readers would see them, so this looks like the first, oops!) It is another sunset photo. I chose a low aperture setting (f/6.3) in order to have the sand and wave in the foreground in focus. It was getting pretty dark so I used a shutter speed of 1/6 sec. and under exposed the image a couple of stops in order for the land and trees in the foreground to be more of a silhouette. I framed it in portrait to capture both beach and sky and I deliberately framed it so the angle of the water would lead the eye toward the back of the photo at a diagonal. I think this works because the land, mountain and the layers of clouds are all horizontal and framing it with the waves horizontal would have made the image seem blocky. The image is not cropped and was processed in Lightroom.

Assignment 2 ~ Fire & Water

I photographed as many sunsets as I was able to, partly because they are so beautiful and partly because I am fascinated with capturing a spectacular green flash. With the clouds on the horizon there was no green flash on this evening (they couldn't be seen until the sun fell behind them), but they clouds themselves added such a great element to the images. They made it look to me, as the title of the photo suggests, like a fire burning in the distance on the horizon. I used my telephoto lens, which I usually use at least for some of the photos I take of sunsets in order to put as much emphasis on the sun as it is setting and to get the best images of green and/or blue flashes if they occur. I experimented a lot on this trip with shooting in either aperture or shutter priority and in particular I experimented with using as high an aperture value as possible while still keeping my shutter speeds as high as they need to be because I shoot the last moments of the sun falling below the horizon in continuous shooting mode. Because the shutter speeds are falling continuously I always use a tripod, as I did here, because I am unable to hold the camera still for long enough. This photo was shoot in aperture priority mode at f/8, 1/125 sec at 300 mm. This photo was cropped to put as much emphasis on the image where the sun is at the horizon instead of the entire sky. It was processed in Lightroom.