Gary - Blog 15

F-Stop: f/5.6

Shutter Speed: 1/80

ISO: 100

I took these photos during my photo shoot for my final project. A random dog who was super friendly came over and followed me and my family around for the whole time we were outside. We named him/her Gary and I snapped a few quick pictures. I had a low ISO of 100 because of all the snow reflecting light it was super bright outside. My aperture and shutter speed weren't too important for this shot except for creating a balanced exposure. I didn't edit any of these photos because I was super busy in the dark room and the photos were pretty decent to begin with.

A missed opportunity - Blog 14

Being stuck at home these past few days I've witnessed the crazy weather. I've had no camera to take pictures but if I had one I would have liked to do long exposures out in the snow. The white streaks created by a long exposure would be really cool, and I could also use a flash to light paint in individual flakes. A high ISO would be used so I could work with the minimum lighting. A low aperture would allow the longer exposures as well and keep the streaks up close in focus.

No tripod.... - Nighttime Landscape

F-Stop: f/14.0

Shutter Speed: 10.0

ISO: 1600

This is the landscape I managed to get when my tripod mysteriously did not have a plate. I went down to the retreat near 5:30 with my mom and balanced the camera on top of the car. The hardest part was getting the camera relatively level. I used a high ISO and a ten second long shutter speed so I could get an even exposure. I wanted to use a high aperture so I could get a star burst on the moon and the lights visible across the lake. I love the orangey-red glow that reflects across the lake and ice. There are a few stars visible and there is an interesting pattern from a cloud in the sky.

A Fellow Photographer - Portrait of a Stranger

F-Stop: f/11.0

Shutter Speed: 1/80

ISO: 1600

This is my portrait of a stranger. I did not get her name but we had a nice five minute conversation about photographer. I asked her what she was photographing and she replied "What ever catches my eye..." I told her about my project studying a photographer in depth and she seemed really interested in Cole Thompson just like me. I recommended that she look him up and she wished me luck in the rest of  my shooting that night. It was a surprisingly pleasant experience because I had expected many more rejections or mean people but she was the first person I asked and I got a great portrait of her while we talked.

I used a high ISO because it was cloudy outside and I used a shutter speed higher than 1/60 so I wouldn't have an camera shake, because I was shooting hand held. The aperture was relatively high because I thought the detail of the bridge and the mountain in the background should be included.

"I threw it on the ground!!!" - Blog 13

F-Stop: f/5.6

Shutter Speed: 1/60

ISO: 1600

I took this photo at the Community Cabaret at NEYT. During an interactive improv skit this actor was told by the audience that his shoes didn't fit, while he was supposed to be forecasting the weather. I took this shot just as he took off his over shoe and was throwing it on the ground, hence the title, which is indeed a reference to The Lonely Island. This is more of an action shot because I captured the action of him throwing his shoe.

My 1/60 shutter speed was a very interesting one because it was fast enough to capture his main body throwing the shoe but his hand and the shoe itself are a blur. I had a high ISO because I was inside and there were only a few stage lights, though they were relatively bright. I had my aperture all the way open so I could just focus on the actor and not even focus on the curtains and backstage. I was zoomed in so thats why the f-stop is 5.6.

Going HAM - Candid Portrait

F-Stop: f/5.6

Shutter Speed: 1/60

ISO: 1600

Sparkling Street - Nighttime City/Town

F-Stop: f/11.0

Shutter Speed: 20.0

ISO: 800

I am really happy with the outcome of this photo. I used a high aperture to create the star bursting effect on the line of street lamps that draw your eye back into the photo. I used a long shutter speed of 20 seconds so I could use a relatively low ISO and so I could do light painting on the snow. I really liked painting with light so I decided to incorporate it into my nighttime photographs of a town. Once I hit the trigger I used a flashlight to crate the streaks in the snow. The snow takes up a large portion, pretty much a fourth of the photo, and it looked kind of bland. Adding this pattern of light also gives shadows to bits of the snow, adding depth, in addition to the cool light pattern.

Smiles - Candid Portrait

F-Stop: f/5.6

Shutter Speed: 1/60

ISO: 1600

I took this photo at NEYT during the Community Cabaret. Johnny a Stephen were singing a folk song and I capture this shot at the very end of their performance. They were just finishing up and were turning to smile at each other while people started to clap. I loved the emotion that I captured in this photo, even though I didn't have time to get the settings perfect. I did prefocus my camera and set up the light meter while they were singing but the bright spot lights produced a lot of glare and clipping issues. I did edit the photo to turn down the highlights so both of them could be more clearly seen.

Mirror Mirror on the.... Tree Stump? - Self Portrait

F-Stop: f/5.5

Shutter Speed: 1/60

ISO: 200

This photo I set up out in the woods behind my house. I positioned a group of circle mirrors on paper, taped them to cardboard square, and set them up on a tree stump in the woods. I focus in on my face in the mirror with a low depth of field, thus the stump is blurry. The mirrors did create an interesting factor of depth because I am in focus and so is the background with the canoe, because we were at relatively the same distance.

This shot was comprised of four separate photos. I posed looking at myself, or where I would edit myself in later on, so it creates and infinite circle of of movement in the picture. I got the help of my brother to pull the trigger after I had focus the camera and made sure the settings were right. I had about 30-60 shots of me in each of the 4 corners at the end of all my shooting so I was able to choose between which faces I liked the most.

I ran into a few problems when editing my face into each section of the mirror. Because of the wind outside, the mirror moved slightly between the four shots, so it was not a simple editing in of my face. I had to closely follow the side of my face on each picture because the background had changed enough that I could just use a giant circle to bring back a particular circular mirror.

Mason - Portrait of a Loved One

F-Stop: f/4.8

Shutter Speed: 1/320

ISO: 800

I took these portrait shots of my brother on the swing set. We hadn't gone over the dramatic lighting yet, so my ideas for portrait shots revolved around creative settings as opposed to creative lighting. There is still interesting shadows created but the effect is subtle because we were outside in even lighting. I focused my camera to where he would be when he swung infront of me.

I used a pretty face shutter speed so I could freeze my brother on the swing. I also used a very wide aperture so I could focus simply on my brother and nothing else. Both of the photos I took included a lot more in the picture but I cropped them both so I had a nice border along the static swing and tree. His body was cut off on the left side in both photos, because I wouldn't have intentionally cropped him in half. I know it goes against the general rule of not cropping off legs but I think given the action of being on a swing and how he is titled in turns out fine.

Glowing Sticks and Glowing People - Light Trails Night Photography

(For all above)

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 10

ISO: 400

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 10

ISO: 800

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 15

ISO: 400

I accomplished these shots with the use of flashlights, glowsticks, and phone lights. I pre-focused in on the middle of the kitchen and then turned off all the lights. Keeping a dark environment allowed only the lights I was using to be picked up by the camera. Using different combinations of glowsticks tied together on strings, we swung them around in circles/ side to side or wound them up and dropped them. I played around a little with the ISO because some lights were brighter than others, but I kept a wide aperture of 3.5 and only changed my shutter speed if I needed more time for the motion of the lights. I overlaid two of of my photos to show my brother holding a rainbow in a vortex of purple and orange.

Another technique I used was reflecting a flash light off of my phone screen onto my friends Quinn's face. This additional light allowed his face to be seen in extra detail but did not make screw up the rest of the photo.

Twinkle Twinkle... - Star Trails Night Photography

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 30.0

ISO: 1600

The above photos are a single frame and the finished product of my star trail shoot. To begin I set my camera up on a tripod and looked into the sky with a f-stop of 3.5, a shutter speed of 5 seconds, and a very high ISO. This allowed me to take test shots to get my focus perfect. After I had taken around 10 photos, slowly dialing in the focus, I started working on bringing the ISO down and and increasing the shutter speed while retaining an even exposure. Eventually I got an even exposure with a 30 second shutter speed at a 1600 ISO. I wanted to bring down the ISO as much as possible, so I could have the least amount of grain, but I still needed a relatively short shutter speed. If my shutter speed was longer than a minute the star would have moved a little bit by the time the picture had ended.

I set up my intervalometer to take a picture ever 30 seconds for half an hour. Theoretically I should have gotten 60 photos, but the camera had to process each photo after it took it. Thus I actually took 31 photos, because the processing time was roughly 30 seconds as well.

I then used Photoshop to layer all of the photos together and apply a blending mode of lighten to all but the bottom one. This allowed the star light of each photo to show through, which created the trails because the starts had moved a decent amount for the half an hour my camera was taking pictures.

Ghosts - Blog 12

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 20.0

ISO: 200

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 30.0

ISO: 400

I took these photos using the light painting technique. Using a long aperture and a dim cellphone light we timed our actions so certain versions of ourselves were more solid than others. I broke my actions into 8, 6, and 4 seconds, to equal 20, and Quinn broke his actions into 12, 10, and 8 seconds to equal the 30 seconds. This made a ghosting effect where some bodies were more transparent than others. This was my friends idea and he said he had tried photos like this in a class he had taken at his school.

Dip - Blog 11

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 1/100

ISO: 800

This was a leftover action shot that I had from my shoot with my brother. I liked this photo because the fast shutter speed allowed me to capture the depression in the trampoline created by my brother back dropping onto it. It is slightly blurry and out of focus so I didn't include it as part of my project but I liked it enough that I wanted to upload it still. If I had pre focused on my brother laying down in that spot on the trampoline, I could have had a much more in focus shot. Also I would have liked it more if I could have seen my brothers facial expression as he was dropping, because that would have added an extra element to the photo.

Splash Splash Splash - Multiple Flash Shot

F-Stop: f/16.0

Shutter Speed: 10.0

ISO: 1600

These multiple flash photos were done in the style of Harold "Doc" Edgerton. Using a 10 second long shutter speed, I was able to drop the ball on the far left and flash to take a picture, then pick it up again and repeat the same process for the middle and far right of the tank. This allows me to freeze the action of the splash of three separate droppings of the ball, all in one picture. I had around 20 shots using this technique and I chose my three favorites. I tried to capture, sequentially, the ball entering the water. Thus there is a clearly shown progression of the splash. The only edits I applied were to crop out the light visible on the right side and to reduce some super bright areas caused by the light. These simple edits allowed the splashes to be seen much more clearly.

Up and Down - Vertical Pan Shot

F-Stop: f/14.0

Shutter Speed: 1/30

ISO: 800

This is a vertical pan shot that I took of my brother. I had already experimented with doing horizontal and rotational pan shots so I decided to try a third type. These pan shots were harder than the horizontal pan shots but easier to do then the rotational pan shots. Using burst mode I held down the trigger as I followed my brother jumping up and down with the camera. Because his vertical movement is minimal, the effect of the pan shot is minimal. There is still a background blur present to the picture and my brother is still in focus. These were interesting shots to try but I preferred the simplicity of the horizontal pan shots and the uniqueness of the rotational pan shots.

Overhead - Blog 10

F-Stop: f/6.3

Shutter Speed: 1/125

ISO: 800

This shot was too blurry to use for the actual project but I liked it enough to include it for a blog post. The idea of this shot was to capture my brother jumping over me on the trampoline. I was laying on my back looking up into the trees and Mason jumped over me. This didn't work for multiple reasons so we moved on to different angles. When I'm in the middle of the trampoline he physically can't jump as high so there is the danger of him kicking the camera or landing on top of me.

To have made this more successful I could have used a longer shutter speed. This would have removed some of the motion blur from him. The reason I didn't get to do this was our first shoot, as stated above, proved it was a bad idea so I got stuck with one set of burst fire pictures with a 1/125 shutter speed.

Drop - Vertical Sequence Shot

F-Stop: f/7.1

Shutter Speed: 1/500

ISO: 1600

This sequence shot captures the water drop move by my brother. These 3 pictures were not actually a sequence of the same jump so this movement is a bit synthetic but they do clearly show three different aspects of the movement. There is an odd sense of depth created when I overlapped the photos. The picture of my brother upright has a sense of depth to it because his arms are spread out towards and away from the camera. This depth is kind of an illusion though because that picture is layered infront of the other two pictures and technically they were all taken in the exact same spot.

Even though this shot is synthetic I still like the range of movement shown. I experimented with making  many different sequence shots out of movements that were not physically linked in time. but rather linked by the movement being created. I basically had three different still images of my brother doing the same movement three different times. I had one photo from each take and I spliced them all together in photo shop. This creates the illusion of the same fluid action even though it was three separate takes of the same action.

Arc - Horizontal Frozen Action

F-Stop: f/9.0

Shutter Speed: 1/500

ISO: 800

This shot is a simple frozen action shot of me midair doing a backflip. Before the shot I focused in on a broom that was held in midair by my brother. This was was to make sure that I would be in focus during the shot. Then I did many backflips while he pressed the shutter at the top of my jump. The normal backflips looked too plan so I intentionally kicked my legs apart to give my body more of an arcing shape. I almost am arcing around the sun in the background, which was unintentional, but the angle is a bit off. Because of the shinning sun I had to increase the exposure of the shot with the camera raw editor because the camera exposed for the direct sunlight and not the soft light I was in. 

Front Flip by Mason - Horizontal Sequence Shot

F-Stop: f/5.0

Shutter Speed: 1/500

ISO: 1600

This photo captures the form of my brother front flipping. There is a slight overlap in the two midair figures but the extra element of depth added by the hood benefits the picture. This sequence shot was especially hard to piece together due to the shift in the trampoline while my brother jumped. When he jumped and when he landed the trampoline shook so I effectively had 3 separate backgrounds, because the two in the air are the same. Because of this I had to be very careful when I was painting back in my brothers body. If I wasn't very up close to his edge the changed backgrounds showed through. This wouldn't have been a hug problem but I had problems like the blue noodle on the post not lining up when it reappeared on the other side of my brother. Because of this difficulty in bringing my brother in, some stages of his flip do look like they were copied and pasted in, especially the last landing shot.

Though it was technically harder to compose, I am happy that I put the effort into it. The final out come is a wonderful shot that shows the full form of my brother doing a flip. If I could go back I would try to get a sequence of 5 pictures. I'd like one picture a third of the way into the flip, one at the apex of his jump, and a third while he was coming out of the flip, in addition to the jumping and landing shots. My current sequence shot is excluding the super peek action shot and the two in-air shots are a little closer than I'd like.

Two Part Flip - Vertical Sequence Shot

F-Stop: f/3.8

Shutter Speed: 1/640

ISO: 800

This sequence shot is two vertical action shots of me put together, one of me at the apex of my flip and one at the very beginning. These two photos are not of the same flip and logically speaking the movement of the two flips don't match. Regardless of this little error, I chose these two photos because they are both shots that I loved and I wanted to show case both of them. I used a layer mask to allow the subject of the second photo to show through the background of the first photo, thus having both subjects present on a single background in a single photo.

They compliment each other very well; the frozen action of my twisting body just about to leave the trampoline and the frozen action of my twisting body in mid air. I absolutely love how you can clearly anticipate the action of flipping from my about to flip and you get to see the final result of that action captured in mid air. The dynamics between these two photos that I merged together is wonderful and it would be my second pick to be printed.

Jump! x3 - Vertical Sequence Shot

F-Stop: f5.6

Shutter Speed: 1/500

ISO: 1600

This shot is 3 photos merged together in photoshop. I didn't take these three pictures with the intent to make a sequence shot so there is quite a bit of clipping between the 3 subjects. This took lots of editing to properly draw each of the 3 bodies into the same picture without harsh edges and lost details in the clipping. The high ISO produced a little bit of grain but the more important aspect of the photo is the frozen action, so it doesn't deduct much from the overall composition.

Cartwheels - Horizontal Sequence Shot

F-Stop: f/5.0

Shutter Speed: 1/640

ISO: 1600

This is my sequence shot with more than 5 frames. I did many other sequence shots but they had 2-3 frames, which wasn't the requirement for the main sequence shot. I like this sequence shot because it does capture the whole action of his cartwheel. Due to clipping issues I had to cut a few pictures so the action is just a bit more spliced then I would have liked. I also now realize that I should have had my brother take a more parallel path to the camera so he could have stayed in focus the whole time. On the right side of the photo he starts to get blurry and thats because my camera was focused for a single distance and his distance changed as he did his action.

Using photoshop I merged the photos together into one document. I then used the layer mask to make holes in each photo, going sequentially down, so the subject of each photo could be visible with the background of the first photo.

Flips within Spirals - Rotational Pan Shots

F-Stop: f/18.0 - 10.0 - 13.0 (respectively)

Shutter Speed: 1/400

ISO: 800

These were by far my favorite shots to take. Between me and my brother with came up with the idea to take pan shots with a rotational pan as opposed to a horizontal or vertical pan. We took roughly 150-200 shots and only 3 of them seemed decent. Because of the difficulty of syncing me rotating the camera with my brother flipping, taking a picture while he was at the apex of his jump, and taking a picture while the frame was relatively parallel to the ground, it was extremely difficult to get a decent shot.

The spiral of leaves created by spinning the camera is quite beautiful and it is also really cool have my brother captured in the middle of it. Though he is blurry in all of the pictures, I found that the effect of the spiralled background makes up for it. Normally I wouldn't be satisfied with the blurry image but given the uniqueness of the composition I decided to be proud of these three photos and upload them.

Blurred Bike - Horizontal Pan Shot

F-Stop: f/22.0

Shutter Speed: 1/30

ISO: 800

This photo is a horizontal pan shot of one of my brothers on his bike. The basis of a pan shot is to use a longer shutter speed and match your camera with the movement of your subject, thus blurring the background and keeping the subject in focus. He rode around the house multiple times and zoomed around the corner so I could get a shot I was satisfied with. Pan shots require many more takes than normal shots, though in this case I had the luxury of repeated sustained action. I sat down on the ground and go relatively low so the angle of the pan was always looking up or at least even with my subject.

 The effect created by the pan shot is really cool in this picture. The haze of vibrant fall colors, enhanced by editing in camera raw, adds a colorfully exciting representation of the movement. The slight blur on the wheels of the bike and on my brothers feet creates another layer of movement. This leaves just the body of both the bike and my brother in focus. I also cropped the photo to excluded extremely bright areas on the left and to place my brother in the composition in a way that complimented the rule of thirds better.

Colorful Action - B&W with Color

F-Stop: f/9.0

Shutter Speed: 1/800

ISO: 1600

This is my black and white with color shot. I captured the action of a basketball going through the hoop and I chose to emphasize it with the selective coloration technique. I applied a layer mask through the hue and saturation menu that desaturated the whole photo. Because the desaturation was applied with a mask, I was able to go back and paint in which areas I wanted to have colored. Using the magic wand to initially apply the mask I was able to already color much of the hop and intricate parts of the net. I then went back over everything and refined the edges because the magic wand had roughly selected them. I also painted in the excluded areas that the magic wand didn't grab. The final product is a frozen action shot that has an added element of drawing your attention immediately to the action because it is the only part of the composition with color.

A Pause in the Action - Journal 9

F-Stop: f/22.0

Shutter Speed: 1/400

ISO: 1600

During my action photography shoot on Saturday I paused for a moment to capture these sun star bursts. Using the maximum aperture I captured the bursting effect of the sun. Flares were also created, which I thought look especially cool. The larger one is a soft blue splotch and the smaller one is predominately purple rainbow splotch. I loved how I captured this more peaceful calm photo in the middle of all the crazy action photography.

Down by the River - Journal 8

F-Stop: f/4.8

Shutter Speed: 1/15

ISO: 100

This photo was a reject for the nature and landscape project. I did use the best photo out of the photo set with the cairn as the subject and but this was another photo I liked. I liked how the rocks that the cairn is set on carry your eye back into the photo and out of the corner. The low aperture keeps just the cairn in focus so the rock patterns in the background are not distracting.

Hogback Panorama v.1 - Panorama

F-Stop: f/22

Shutter Speed: 1.6

ISO: 100

This was the first panorama that I took out of two. I had to fill in spots on the bottom were content was missing with bottom the content aware fill tool and the clone stamp. The fill tool left some areas looking a little funky so I zoomed close in and clone stamped things till it looked natural. The colors of this panorama are not very breathtaking so I enhanced them a little bit and also made the sky more dark. The white balance to this photo is rather cool/neutral when compared to the second one. This effect makes the colors a lot more crisp.

Hogback Panorama v.2 - Panorama

F-Stop: f/22

Shutter Speed: 1.3

ISO: 100

This was the second of two panoramas that I took. Upon cropping there were a few areas near the bottom corners that had transparent pixels. I used the content aware fill tool to fix those areas and avoiding cropping out wanted details. Using the camera raw editor, I enhanced the colors of the trees and darkened the sky so the mountain range was more visible. This panorama has a warmer white balance to it then the first one.

Fall on Hogback v.1 - Vertical HDR Landscape

F-Stop: f/22

Shutter Speed: 1/4th

ISO: 100

This is a vertical HDR that I took on top of Hogback. I didn't pop the colors on this landscape as much as the other one but I still like the shot. It has some of the blur effect that was in my other landscape but it was not as windy during this shoot as it was during the other one. Again I used a high aperture so I could have the greatest amount of detail in the photo.

One aspect of this photo that I really like is how the mountains disappear into the clouds. I wish that the clouds had a more interesting pattern than just the plan white. I was able to edit my photo and pop the details of the clouds and trees as much as I could but still desired more details in the clouds.

Fall on Hogback v.2 - Horizontal HDR Landscape

F-Stop: f/22

Shutter Speed: 1.0

ISO: 100

I composed this HDR landscape shot on the top of Hogback. It was a very rainy day and not the best conditions for making an HDR but I made one anyways as to accentuate the colors of the trees and sky. The mountain range in the background doesn't have as much detail as I would have liked but I am very happy with the colors in the trees.

To take an HDR requires a constant aperture. I used the highest aperture of 22 so my whole picture could have full detail. The shutter speeds varied but most of them were multiple seconds long. Because of this, and the wind, the trees in the front were captured with quite a few ghosts. I really liked the blur effect even though I wasn't deliberately trying to pull it off.

When editing this I tried to make the colors of the trees pop while still retaining the mountain range in the background. It was very hard to see in the first place but this HDR provided a lot more detail than any single shot I took.

Ghost Water - Journal 7

F-Stop: f/11

Shutter Speed: 1.0

ISO: 100

This photo was not one that I chose for my project but still liked. I did a quick raw edit to adjust the white balance of the picture. It was slightly warmer and I found that a cool white balance fits photos of water a lot better. I liked the ghost/soft water effect that was created by the second long exposure. I had a relatively high aperture as to capture the detail of everything.