All the colors of the rainbow....

First before I post my picture today I would like to say that before this blog I would never have attempted this photo. I would have continued down my figurative road in life, looking around to FIND my next picture. I would not have tried to push myself into making my own picture. Having to blog every few days you can't always wait to find your next picture. You are forced(in a good way) into thinking creatively with what is around you. That can be a challenge for me because I don't necessarily think of myself as overly creative. So here you go, my post for the day....




Nikon D2x
Lens 70-210mm
Focal length 210mm
Aperture f4
Shutter 1/2000sec.
No Flash

This photo came about yesterday really. I knew that I would not have a lot of time to play today: I have two rowdy, rambunctious, sleep deprived 8 year olds to contend with. I also have a young family coming by to see my dogs and experience tells me they will want to chit chat, which I really do enjoy doing, it just takes up extra time.
Anyway back to my photo. I was mopping my kitchen floor, isn't that a fun job? When I noticed the morning light streaming through my living room window. At about the same time I happened to turn and spy a vase sitting on a counter. I immediately thought "sunlight, vase, water, rainbow." I knew that you could get that prism of color effect, especially since the vase had a floral design on it which could break up the light spectrum. My geeky science teacher training was rearing its head. Yep in another life I would have enjoyed being a middle school science teacher. I knew I only had a limited amount of time before the angle of the sun changed. So I left my floor half mopped and rushed to set up. I filled the vase with water, grabbed my tri-pod and lens. I moved the vase around several different places before BINGO my colors showed up. But I was still on my carpet, rough ground, so I ran to get a piece of white paper thinking it might help the colors to show up better, leaving my camera and very heavy lens dangling on my tri-pod. I also grabbed several different pieces of colored paper, just to experiment with. The white paper did help with my colors. I also noticed that when I put the colored paper behind the vase the extra color helped with the picture somehow. Off I went taking numerous shots before the light left.

My connection to Jay'me's photo is the vase and floral pattern, kind of loose I know. Also the pink colored paper worked the best like on her flower, with yellow being next.

My photo, I know is not quite as technically good as Scott's water droplet photo, or some of the other photos on this blog, but it goes to the spirit of what we're trying to do here. Both Scott and I used water, light and color to create our effects. This type of a picture also uses a different perspective for me, which actually kind of goes with Brandi's photo. How cool is it that I could make a connection to all three of our last posts?

So my final thought on this post is Go and Challenge yourself in life, see something from a different perspective, try something new that you aren't sure how to do. Even if it doesn't work out perfectly, you will be a better person for it.

You're up next Scott!

Home bound and looking around....

Shutter speed 1/500
Aperture f 5.6
Focal length 52.00
ISO speed 160

Interesting thoughts came to mind, so many disappointing shots got thrown out.
This was taken through our deck railing slats. It's a bit predictable. At first I tried while laying on my back with the clear blue skies as a backdrop. Not cool enough to post. I'm a girl. I love the green back ground and the rosy crown shaped flower. (Thanks Scott) There are always beautiful things to see even if our world is in our back yard. Late bloomers are a gift.



Shutter speed 1/160
Aperture f 9.0
Focal length 55.00
ISO speed 400

Digging deep...
I was trying to get a reflective shot off of my boys eye. Again, not spectacular but worth playing with. Next time I'll align him with more sun and have more time to shine him up and get rid of icky flies. If you look close you can see his own shadow.
Excuse my small photo size. I have changed the Html but I'm having troubles saving the photos at the correct size...

"The World Seen Through..."

..."Rose Colored Glasses"


Nikon d40
1/200
f7.4
ISO 200
31mm


Boy, did I have a hard time following up on Scott's amazing water drop photo. The pressure was really turned on.
I spent the day doing different variations of the rose glasses but ultimately my husband helped me pick this one. To be honest, I'm not completely happy with any of them.
I believe it was about 10am when I texted Scott and cried that I needed a fish eye lens at f1.4. Considering this photo was taken around 745pm that's a long day spent attempting to fill some pretty big shoes.

I headed down to the lake by our house tonight, packing my tripod, my wireless remote, my camera, my rose glasses and some patience. I came home with my camera, my tripod and my rose glasses. My wireless remote and patience are both somewhere at the bottom of the lake.

As always, I had a blast, even when I was frustrated. I learned more taking this photo then I would have in a month worth of photos before starting this blog.

Can't wait to hear some feedback from all of you. I wonder what I could have done differently to really make this photo pop. Please give it to me straight, I have my big girl panties on and can handle it.

xoxox,
B

A Rose By Any Other Name...

Canon 30d
Canon EF 100mm Macro f/2.8
Shutter Speed 1/250
Aperture f/11.0
Focal Length 100mm
ISO 100
2 external Alien Bees flash heads and a softbox/tent

I really enjoyed Jay'me and Sere's last posts. I was tempted to go out and get some macro shots of flowers around me. I've done it in the past and I really enjoy looking at flowers through the lens. It's one of my favorite styles of photography. I decided however that the spirit of 3chicks1dude is to push our knowledge and comfort zone and try new things for the sake of learning. With that in mind, I decided it was time to try my hand at capturing water droplets. It's nothing new - it's practically cliche. But I've never tried it!

The story starts with me trying to capture water droplets using hot lights. For those learning, hot lights are essentially really bright lamps that are on continuously. They are called hot lights because they get freaking hot! The advantage of hot lights is that you see exactly what the light looks like before you start shooting. It can make things a lot easier. Additionally, they are relatively cheap, another big plus when you are trying to learn and not go broke.

I set-up my hot lights and threw a bunch of stuff into plates and glasses and had limited success. I couldn't get the motion to freeze. What I needed were my strobes. So I fired off a text to Brandi (she was borrowing my gear for a bit) and next thing I knew, I'm in my kitchen setting up one heck of an obstacle course. My wife was a sweetheart, knowing I can get a little laser focused when camera gear abounds! Off she went to read while I literally fired off over 300 shots! What a blast!!! You can't believe how much fun this is.

The reason you need strobes (or speedlights) is to stop the motion. The duration of a flash is so short the exposure only gets the merest fraction of a second to capture the scene. For those crying about a lack of strobes or speedlights, use your pop-up flash. It is somewhat limiting but I was able to capture several good shots with just the pop-up. Just remember to keep the ambient light as low as possible to eliminate spillover.

As for the set-up, it is a glass vase filled with water. Then I dropped a few drops of green water into the vase (I took pictures of that). I wasn't satisfied with the intensity of the green so I decided to start dropping pure food coloring into the vase. And that's when it hit me! I had just added green. If I drop some red next, I might get a "rose" with the green water being the stem and the red dye being the bloom! Imagine my excitement when it actually worked! I was going to use the water droplets from Sere's flower as my inspiration. But now I was able to use the water and the flower! I told you it was fun.

When I decided this is what I wanted to try, I warned Brandi I might go neurotic and post as late as 11:30. Alas, I may just beat that time...barely. Thanks to all reading this. I hope you're enjoying this as much as we are. Stay tuned for some fun news coming down the pipeline. We (all 4 of us) can't stop thinking of ways to play and improve this blog. Keep the comments coming and be sure to tell your friends about us! Tag Brandi, you're it!

Scott

Summer's Last Hurrah.....

Last day before school begins so we decided to head out to check out some surrounding parks and prayed we didn't get rained on. I packed up my tri-pod and a few lens, flash and diffuser figured it couldn't hurt. So we're walking around on some trails and I've got my camera out just kind of shooting some snapshots. Trying to figure out what I was going to take a picture of for this blog. Sounds like a nice day all around so far.....

Until I went to set my tri-pod up to get a shot of us together using my timer and realized that I didn't have the thingie that connected my camera to the tri-pod. Drat!!! There goes that idea. Then I went to turn my camera back on and CRAP nothing! Absolutely nothing would turn on. So I'm freaking out wondering if I somehow broke my camera, beginning to hyper-ventilate. I'm sure you guys understand this. On top of the fact that now I'm getting upset because I am without camera to use, which is like losing an appendange you get my drift? And then it started to rain. Off we went running to the car. Taking deep breathes I decided that we would go and get ice cream. I WILL not let this ruin our last hurrah of summer before school begins. So we went to get ice cream and then proceeded to head back out to play in the rain and in the stream, sans camera and had a blast. All that to say that I did not get many pictures today, but this is one that I thought might work for today's blog.



Nikon D2x
Lens 50mm fixed
Aperture F5.6
Shutter 1/125 second
ISO 400
I played with this picture in raw format, zoomed in a ton and put a midnight filter on it to enhance the water droplets on the flower.

Oh and by the way it was my battery, camera is alright. The battery which had enough life in it most have been bad because it just died out of the blue. New battery and my baby is like new. Takes deep breath and thanks God.

I'm kind of a portrait photographer by nature so when I saw this picture I wanted to share it with you all as well.



Apeture F1.8
Shutter 1/160 sec.
ISO 400
Did nothing, straight out of the camera.

Something Organic is FALLing upon us.....

The leaves are turning???

My mums are popping...

My annuals are fading...

& YES, the sky is falling everywhere...

I too have officially broke the rules and lost my mind (insert wicked laugh)
I know quantity never replaces quality, but YOU PEOPLE have pushed my right to the edge. I have been playing with my depth of field, and flash and Holy crap I can't do anything better than the old auto setting on my camera.
Well, I do love leather and work with steel; my heart is in all things growing outside.
Sorry to all of you wanting your socks knocked off. I hope you were wearing flip flops on this wonderful day anyway. I did shoot the moon as she was hanging around all day today but didn't include her in the over populated post.
I'm ready for a group outing....

Scott Likes Metal

I prefer leather.

Nikon D40
f5.6
1/80
ISO 400
Focal length 50mm

Spent a quick bit of time away. It was so refreshing. I went away to my happy place and came home sane once again.
I walked through 30acres of beautiful wooded, hilly, countryside. Taking in all the sites, smells and silence. Pure golden silence.
I stumbled upon a tree bridge. At first glance I was a little daunted by the amount of moss covering the tree thinking to myself "That's a lot of moss and that is a 7foot deep creek bed I could fall into."
Every photographer knows what happened next. I climbed across the mossy tree. Wanting a shot more than I cared for my safety. Of course, the only decent light was more than half way across the tree.
Why can't anything ever be easy?

This photo is straight out of the camera. I did nothing to it. Considering I had the camera perilously balanced on the mossy tree, working with nothing but my auto-timer and some good luck I was pretty pleased.

And Scott, if you're going to take a shot of a field you should try taking the shot from 4000feet above ground, out a small plane window.


f5.0 - I wish I had made this more like f10 but...what's a girl to do
1/2000sec
ISO 200
focal length 24mm

Jay'me's up next ladies and gentleman. Get ready for a real treat.