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.

Assignment 2 submission - Hana Trees

This photo was taken on a sunny day while we were driving to Hana on Maui. The trees are beautiful with their colorful bark and they are extremely tall. I again chose my 18 - 55 mm lens because I wanted to get as much of the trees in the image as possible. I chose to use a portrait orientation to capture the height of the trees. There was a row of them and I framed them from close to one of the trees looking past toward the others so they would look a little like a row of columns. This photo has been cropped to remove elements that distracted from the look I was going for ~ a little brush from behind the first tree and another overhanging branch from the top that I felt made the photo too busy. It was processed in Lightroom.

Assignment 2 Haleakala Morning

I just returned to Alaska from 2 weeks on Maui and took 1000's of pictures. Many of them are of whales I took with my camera in continuous shooting mode, but even subtracting them I still took 1000's. Much thanks to my very patient husband for letting me take as many photos as my batteries and memory cards would allow! He also did everything in his power to get my computer fixed when I damaged my power jack by kicking the cord. Even after what we hoped was a quick fix he patiently endured my not so silent frustration and tears as my computer then started shooting sparks (the ultimate reason my assignment is late) and I inadvertently erased from my memory card the best pictures I have ever taken of a sunset.....before I had saved them to my hard drive.  This is the first of the four photos I'm submitting. There were 11 finalist that the four were selected from. I will follow this post with the semi-finalists.

This photo, Haleakala Morning, was taken early in the morning. My husband and I left our room at 3:30 am in the hopes of witnessing one of the spectacular sunrises that our seen from the summit of this volcano. Unfortunately, there were too many clouds to see the sunrise. The first choices I had to make concerning this, and all the photos I would take had to do with which lens to use. It was bitterly cold and windy and we were hiking a short distance at over 10,000 feet so I was only bringing my camera - no bag, no tripod. I choose my smallest lens, the 18-55 mm kit lens that came with my camera (I so want a good wide angle lens, but figure if I can't take a descent photo with the kit lenses, having better ones won't make that much difference.)  I chose this over my telephoto lens thinking that I could always crop my images if I wanted to, but whatever is out of the field of view in the telephoto is lost forever. The other reason I chose this lens is that I would be hand holding the camera and I have notoriously shaky hands; the telephoto is heavier and requires an even steadier hand, especially given that I would have to use even slower shutter speeds with it. The fact that this photo is in focus when I hand held the camera and used this shutter speed is a miracle. I chose to shoot with the aperture wide open to be able to use as fast a shutter speed as possible. This worked also to capture the foreground in focus. I chose this photo over others that don't include the foreground because I think foreground adds to the sense of depth the photo has. I had to punch everything up a bit  in Lightroom  because there is a lot of haze in the original image. It has not been cropped.

Environmental Portraits

I took may different versions of this photo. There are 2 sets of stairs  with an expanse of deck between them that I cropped out of the picture. I wanted to highlight the different textures and lines they included, but ultimately I was looking for the vertical element of the door and this crop gave the photo the most impact. I also took many versions from different distances. This is the farthest distance and once I framed it through the camera I knew this would be the best because of the texture and interest from the tree branch. I chose to take this in the afternoon because it is the only time we get good sunlight. I also took this photo from a shaded spot to avoid glare on the camera lens and Romeo (my mini Dachshund) is in the shade.  I chose black and white for this photo because color detracted from the simplicity and lines. Romeo gets impatient about being outside in the winter and will stand with his feet on the door looking through the window for someone to let him in and that is the pose I was hoping to capture with him, but here he looks to me as if he is at attention guarding the house and I like that he is looking off in another direction rather than at me. 

I chose color for this photo because Marcus's (our other dog)  nose got lost in the background when I tried B&W.  I was taking pictures of my husband shoveling our sidewalk from our driveway. That position gives interesting angles because I am looking up toward my husband and it includes the stairs and the long walkway.I had him call Marcus over for a few photos hoping to capture the devotion they have for each other. I chose this photo ( even though I'm not real thrilled with the focus, I wish it was much better) with him petting Marcus  because the way they are looking at each other captured it. Ultimately I cropped out the stairs and sidewalk because they detracted from the mood and my husband still holding the shovel and the little bit of sidewalk I included makes it clear what he is doing. I also had to be careful with the crop so that the photo stayed balanced and struggled with including the tree or not. In the end I included it because I like the texture.

I took hundreds of photos the afternoon I took this. The late afternoon sun casts beautiful light and shadows into the room and I was photographing my dogs and just happened to glance toward the mirror and see perfect shots and since we were encouraged to be creative I thought I would take a few shots of the mirrors reflection. Poor Marcus is never allowed on the furniture, but this is the shot I wanted. I had a hard time getting him to stay put and he kept acting like he was being punished by being made to sit there and at one point ran downstairs to hide in his kennel. This photo is also cropped. The original has family photos on each side of the mirror. I could have straightened the crop so the mirror's frame wasn't off kilter and framed the entire photo, but I think it is more obvious this way that this is photo of Marcus's reflection in a mirror. It also gives it a funky feel. Because through the mirror Marcus is pretty far off I sharpened him up a lot in LightRoom to help him stand out. I also had to lower the highlights considerably to get the what is outside the window to be easier to see.

I chose color for this photo because of the warmth  the photo has in color.  The photo was taken with the light of  a  lamp to the side of her because I like the soft light it gives the photo. I ended up cropping out the lamp in the end because I felt it detracted from the image. I had Rachel (my daughter) hold a book for the photos I was taking and this is the only one of the photos I took where you can see she what book she is reading. I chose this photo because of  Rachel's expression and the soft look of the image. I had to do some sharpening and just a little healing of  some hard shadows caused by the lamp on her forehead. I also highlighted around her eyes and sharpened her eyelashes to make her eyes pop. I used LightRoom for all the photo processing.

Need help

I need some advise. These are some of the photos I am considering for an environmental portrait assignment.    Which of these do you like and why? Is a photo too light, dark, over processed, or out of focus? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks ~ Eva

Butterfly

My husband thinks this is better than the peony photo. What do you think?

Cook Inlet Sunset February 2, 2013

After seeing this my husband insisted that I admit that I was coached by him. He's right of course.....I couldn't have done this without John! :-)

My First Blog

This is my first foray into the bloggosphere and I am stepping out on a limb in making my photography public while I am learning. I guess in reality you never stop learning, but I am just beginning to seriously work at improving my photography. I have learned from my writing that I learn and improve most when I get input from others, so your constructive comments are welcome.

Thanks,

Eva