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