Did Someone Say Flare?

In Scott's previous post he mentioned sun "flare".
As soon as I read the word my mind immediately went to this scene in the famous movie Office Space.



After that quick chuckle in my brain, I thought about a long lost jacket. A jacket I had circa 1998. I was almost positive I still had my jacket and all my "flare". Much digging through old Rubbermaid containers ensued and sure enough, there it was. The jacket and the "flare".


Nikon d40
f5.6
1/125 sec
ISO 200
34mm focal length
spot metering, natural light

This shot was probably the single hardest shot I've taken for this blog to date. In a perfect world I would have had someone either pose for me or take the photo for me. Fantasy world would had also brought me cooler temps, less wind and a slightly better location.
Alas, I do not live in a perfect world. I live in the real world. A world where it was 93 degrees with huge wind gusts. Talk about sweaty. And let's not forget, I no longer have a wireless remote after dropping it in the lake, so I was working with the 10second timer built into my camera. Not exactly convenient.

Here is a list of what it took to get this shot.
camera (obviously), tri-pod, light reflector (gold for added warmth), kitchen chair (to prop the reflector up), chip clip (to hold reflector in place on the chair), bag of charcoal (to anchor the reflector in place - I said it was windy) and lots of patience.

I spent the hot afternoon standing on the front stoop of my house for 30 minutes, setting and resetting my timer, taking photo after photo while waving at my neighbors as they laughed at me. I would have preferred a different location, maybe one with a little privacy, but the harsh sun today was more than I could compensate for being solo in my mission. So I chose the brick wall under the porch that offered some shade.
Post processing - I didn't do much. I really tried to watch my histogram while I was shooting so I would have appropriate exposure. Using the reflector gave that soft, warm, goldy glow to the photo. So all I needed was a quick sharpen (for web viewing) and a little cropping in Photoshop and I was set.
Lots of challenges for a seemingly simple photo. But, isn't that what this is all about?

Sere's coming up tomorrow. Where will she take my "flare"?

Still More Light Shows!

Canon 30D
Canon 24-70mm f.2.8L
Shutter Speed 1/2000
Aperture f/6.3
Focal Length 30.0mm
ISO 100
Natural Light...LOTS of natural light!

In response to Jay'me's awesome fire pic I decided it was finally time to post a wake boarding shot. I say finally because I have literally taken more photos of wake boarders than anything else. I have probably taken 5000 shots of wake boarders and I honestly haven't had a good one to show until now. It's remarkably difficult to get a good action shot that has interest, unless of course the target is your child or some other loved one. This time out was different.

First, I had tremendous backdrops, full of fantastic clouds and forest vista's. Second, the light was really harsh but plentiful. Furthermore, it often was coming from dead straight ahead and behind the subject, something I'm still learning to deal with (but it certainly was plentiful!). And lastly and most importantly, I had taken 4500 shots before this and managed to learn about a teaspoon of technique. So off we went down the Fox River early in the morning and off I went shooting 5 frames a second in a desperate rush to fill my CF card!

Once I had the images ready for editing, I was immediately drawn to the patterns in the water. I had 4-5 shots that were just begging for some attention. Before I dive into the editing I should share a bit more on the techniques and equipment I employed. Probably the single most important piece of equipment I used was the lens hood. The purpose of the hood is to minimize flare, which happens when stray light (non-image forming) hits the lens and creates artifacts in the image. Sometimes you want flare. It can be a fantastic artistic tool. Other times, you'd rather avoid it because it has a tendency to de-saturate images. I wanted to keep as much detail as possible so the hood was a must. The lens I used has a particularly large hood and top-notch optics, 2 things that I absolutely adore.

The second technique I used was to always keep an eye on the horizon to ensure a level shot. It really chaps my hide when I get a great shot but the image is skewed. You're only option it to straighten and crop and that sometimes leads to unwanted composition. It's just plain best to get in the habit of checking the horizon, and that's especially true on a boat.

Third, I set-up my camera for auto-shutter (5 frames a second) and set the focus to manual. The action happens so fast you just can't time it perfectly. As for the focus, it may be hard to believe, but it's much easier on manual focus for something like this. And it's easy to understand why. The rope is a fixed length and as long as you sit near it's anchor point, you will always be the same distance from the subject. So, focus once and forget about it. And you completely avoid the headache of your camera choosing to focus on background subjects and blurring the foreground (in this case the wake boarders). It's odd to mention this in light of the above picture as I clearly focused on the water. But I only took about 3 of these and the rest were focused on the wake boarder.

Lastly, I had to constantly adjust exposure as the lighting was constantly changing. The in-camera metering is only so good and when you have the sun blazing right into your lens you have to compensate and over expose a bit. It's something every camera struggles with and it's crucial to good images when lighting is tough. I just used the exposure compensation function on my camera and shot in aperture priority. This allowed a certain amount of control but left the shutter speed up to the camera. The conditions were just changing too quick for me to shoot in full manual.

Okay, so on to editing. The back lighting proved vicious in it's intensity and yet the patterns it created in the water were stunning. I knew I had to over expose while shooting but that meant compensating for contrast while editing. So, the first thing I did was convert to black and white. I find blown highlights can be quite dramatic and B&W really emphasizes that for me. Next, I overdid the contrast to bring out the patterns in the water and obscure the detail on the wake boarder. The boarders name is Jim and he's a great guy. But for this image, the star is the water (sorry Jim - next time it's you buddy). After getting the contrast right I sharpened more than I normally do. This works because the water is so complex and fluid (pun absolutely intended) and the artifacts sometimes created by over sharpening get lost. Still, you always have to be careful not to overdo it. Once that was done, I saved it and edited several others. This is the image you get. If you want to see the others, drop us a line and I'll gladly share.

So now, I get to wait 3 days and see what the Chicks' have lined up. Isn't this a blast? Time to rock out Brandi! Thanks for all of you checking out our humble little spot on the web and keep giving your feedback. We just love hearing from you.

light show of sorts

Cannon
1/80
f 5.6
manual
55.mm
no flash
ISO 800


HEY! HEY! HEY! I have moved off of my AUTO setting and started to venture into a world of making it work for me... It's learn as I shoot time. I will really have to pay attention to get efficient at this. (Thank you Brandi for getting me started).
So, I shot tons of things this week. I worked a little on setting some shots up, but in the end something spontaneous won the blog spot.
We were enjoying an evening with family up at our family farm. It was a beautiful evening for a fire. I noticed as My brother-in-law threw logs on the fire the sparks were nicely rising straight up and not blowing towards anyone enjoying the fire. The only staging needed was having my brother-in-law "make the fire angry". He didn't mind stirring things up & like a happy caveman, he made me a firestorm. Thanks to him, I played with settings until I got this.
I could see this blown up huge and hung as mural piece in an edgy contemporary city dwelling.

Below is a quick oops I made before adjusting things on my camera. I could see how even our mistakes can eventually become artistic pieces we can make work for us. I was upset I missed this shot. However; now I see what happens when our setting are too open for our light source.
This was after saturating the photo in shop to see if there was anything in the almost white photo and here she is... It will take work and practice to get a balanced usable shot but it's a fun start.
She was holding a sweet yellow ducking on a beautiful day.


1/80
f 5.6
manual
39.mm
no flash
ISO 800

A Lesson in Lens'

Wow all sorts of stuff going on in my household today. I am writing this blog while checking up on one of my female huskies who is in the process of giving birth to puppies. My wonderful husband just bought, as a combined birthday present, a Nikon D90 and a 18-24mm lens. If you remember I had also received just recently a 50mm lens. Some of our readers might be wondering why on earth you need so many different lens. So for my post today, something a little different, aren't you surprised? I'm probably making my fabulous 3C1D cohorts crazy with my changes. Sorry, well not really.

I wanted to do a quick, little lens lesson for those that might be confused about why we all drool over different lens for our cameras. I did mention that in another life I was a middle school science teacher right? This is something I wish somebody had told me when I first started photography and something most people don't think about so much. It comes down to equipment and uses. You do not use the same lens to photograph the Grand Canyon for example, that you would use for a senior portrait, or to take a picture of a bead of water on a leaf. You can, but different lens work better for different uses.

For my quick lesson here I am going to show you the difference between taking a picture with a 14mm lens and a 200mm lens. As with a lot of photography stuff, it's kind of backwards. A 14mm lens is considered a wide angle lens whereas a 200mm lens is a telephoto lens.

All photos were taken using a Nikon D90, natural lighting and from the exact same spot of our machine shop fire mess
At F-5.6
Shutter Speed of 1/1600th of a second
Using ISO 200

This first picture is taken at 14mm and you can see that at the left hand side of the picture is a red truck and the right hand side of the picture there is an empty hog buiding and a grain bin and excavator in the center.

This second picture was taken at 24mm. As you can see you have already lost the red truck and office and half the building on the right hand side.

This third picture was taken with a 50mm lens. In this picture you have lost most of the left hand side building and most of the right hand side building.

This last picture waken with a 200mm telephoto zoom lens and you can see that in this picture both buildings are gone, along with most of the excavator.

So as you can see if you are wanting to take a picture of a grand landscape like you would at the Grand Canyon or a sweeping forest of trees you want to use a 14mm lens. If you are wanting to take a picture of a bird in flight which is a pretty specific, smaller object you would use a 300 or 400mm telephoto lens. Now, obviously this is simplified to some extent but hopefully you can get a general idea of how to use different lens, depending upon what it is you are wanting to photograph.

Now for the cool thing about my new 14-24mm lens. I can take a close up shot of something as well. The lens is not considered a macro lens but the camera was about two-three inches away from the butterfly when I took the shot and the focal point was great. Needless to say a macro would have done a better job, but it was still a fun shot to take.

Nikon D90
F8, 1/50th of a second
ISO 200
Lens 14-24mm at 24mm
Natural Lighting, taken about 3 inches away from the subject.

Sorry Brandi I didn't really connect to your photo very well at all today. I wanted to play with my new camera and lens. I hope you are okay with that.

As for right now I have to go check on a mamma dog and see if I have any puppies. Yay!!! Later all!!

Sere

Where there's smoke...

there is WATER???



Nikon d40
1/20 @ 38mm
f5.0
ISO 400

Every 3rd day I start to panic. Filling with a wonderful nervous apprehension mixed with a giddy excitement waiting to see what Scott is going to do next. I'm not going to lie, I see Scott enough that I have, on numerous occasions, attempted to thwart his lofty plans. I thought about tripping him down the stairs yesterday but decided that was a bad idea. I don't need any bad karma coming at me.
So, I get by and attempt to prepare as best as I can. I keep my camera by me at all times and I look around taking notice of all the little details. Trying to see things for what they could be instead of what they are.
Today, as I was strolling through Target (I know, I know...it's a problem I don't really wish to solve) I saw this box, perched in the clearance aisle with all the pool stuff. The box had all these cool colors and lights on it and a sticker that said $5.69. Like a child I was drawn to it. I don't have a pool so I'm not quite sure what exactly I was doing in this aisle but I had a coffee and no child so I cannot be held responsible for my actions.
Turns out this beautiful box was a lighted, sprinkler for a pool or hot tub.

Hmmm...
water - puts out fire
bright red and shocking blue - colors of fire
spinning wildly out of control - just like fire

I was in business. Home I went. Decided the big bathtub would work best. Filled it up, turned on the light sprinkler and dropped it in. Took a couple test shots and it didn't take a genius to see that I was going to need to darken the room to really get the colors to pop.
Close the blinds in the big bathroom window, closed the door and turned out all the lights.
At first I slowed the shutter speed way down but found that the shocking brightness of the lights just got blown out. Upped the shutter speed until I found the right balance between seeing the colors and the edges and not blinding the photo with the center points.
I took 90 pictures. Some of just the water next to the sprinkler. A few of the few from the top looking down on the sprinkler from about 2 feet up (straddling a wet bathtub is not advisable). Pulled the card from my camera and threw the pictures onto the computer. I needed to see what I had to work with.
Ended up liking the photos shot from above best. But was still a little to slow on the shutter speed and I wasn't close enough to the sprinkler.
Back to the bathroom I went. This time placing my camera as close to the sprinkler as I could without risking water damage, focusing on centering the orb in the frame.
Another 90 or so photos and I declared enough. Time to make a decision and keep one. (Who came up with this one photo only rule anyways??? Oh, wait that was me...)It was pretty hard to pick from 4 of them. Each having their own unique qualities that spoke to me. In the end a rousing game of "Eeenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe" proved this photo the winner.
My point is... and I do have a point... keep trying, keep learning because maybe in the end you'll have too many too chose from.

Let's keep it rolling, Jay'me.

Where There's Smoke...

Canon 30D
Canon 24-70mm f.2.8L
Shutter Speed 1/1000
Aperture f/2.8
Focal Length 68.0 mm
ISO 100
Natural Light

Thank you Sere for giving me a reason to play with a new toy. Let me explain. A good friend of mine was helping me brainstorm about my previous post (the kaleidoscope one). I mentioned that I would like to play with a prism and asked if he had one. He didn't but he did have 3 lenses that you would find in a projection TV. Furthermore, he said I could have them! I immediately started trying different techniques and ideas but couldn't really come up with anything good. In the meantime, I managed to get this picture of the moon with the kaleidoscope and sort of forgot about the lenses.

At this point I must explain these lenses a bit more. To be clear, these are not the kind of lenses you put on your camera. They are in fact very high quality and include a glass element that is frankly the best magnifier of sunlight this side of the Mississippi! Which brings me to possibly the best part of this post.

Picture this: sitting at a red light (a long one too) with the lenses sitting on the passenger side floor (can't have them on the seat - they might burn up my car!) and an empty envelope on the passenger seat. It's a very bright day and the sun is high in the sky. What do I do? I immediately pick up a lens and the envelope and start focusing the intense sunlight onto said envelope. 2 seconds later (and I'm not exaggerating!) there is a smoking hole in the envelope and the laser this thing is throwing off has gone to work on my shorts! Luckily I managed to regain some level of maturity early enough to prevent the need for skin grafts. However, I was holding a smoldering envelope on RT 14 no less and the light was turning green. So I blew on it which of course promptly stoked the fire...literally! Now I have open flame in my car. FABULOUS! I managed to extinguish the blaze by holding it out the window whilst accelerating to 40 MPH in a 30 for the express purpose of putting out the fire. Yeah, safety first. That's me all the way. I can imagine what my insurance agent would say!

Which brings me to this photo...finally. When I heard about Sere and Johnny's fire I immediately said a prayer of thanks that no one was hurt. By the time she posted pictures of the blaze I was ready to be inspired and immediately thought about how to capture the really cool effects of this TV lens. One thing led to another and I ended up with this photo. I won't say exactly what it is but I want to hear what you all think. It's easy for me to see everything for obvious reasons but I'm curious about it's ambiguity.

I needed my remote trigger and tripod for this. Plus, I used the rapid shutter function, which on my camera allows me to take 5 shots per second. Additionally, it was important to operate in full manual mode so that the camera's metering didn't screw up the exposure. It was a lot of fun and I would encourage all of you to take some time to set-up something that makes you curious. I used to scoff at tripods and remotes and thought it was important to be mobile at all times. Though I still believe being mobile is great, I've learned to love taking my time and really thinking about the set-up and the lighting. I've learned so much by going slow and I think we all could. In the meantime, just remember: do NOT focus sunlight with anything while driving in the car.

Our Fiery Inferno

Yet again I am doing something a little different for my blog post tonight. Our family had a loss last Sunday of my husband Jonny's machine shop. The entire building was destroyed by a fire. Once I realized that all I could do was watch, I pulled my camera out to document.

I know that God allows things like this to happen for a reason, even if we don't understand it. But as in everything in our lives, even in this disaster for our family, we could see his hand in all of it. I have to Thank God for the fact that nobody was injured or killed in the fire. Jonny was not out in his shop working and Colton wasn't running around playing. I also have to Thank God for his timing because had it been a week or two later the combine would have been in the shop getting worked on for harvest. To loose the combine would have been a total disaster for our family as far as equipment and machinery goes. So in all things God is in control and his plan is in everything. I just wish he would send us the memo.

I am going to post several pictures in chronological order with the time above them to show everybody exactly how fast this fire happened. All of these were taken with a zoom lens from my porch. So here it goes.....

7:47pm the fire is going strong, fire engines have been called and already there is not anything we could do. We could feel the heat from our house about 350 feet away.


This next picture is at 7:49pm and already the fire has made it through the entire building and is now coming out the southside doors of the building.

Third picture is roughly a minute or so later at 7:50pm. This will help to show you the size of the flames.

Picture four is at 7:51pm and you can see that flames have gotten bigger and are starting to consume more of the building.
Picture five at 7:53pm you can see the flames consuming the walls of the building. All in a matter of about 6 minutes. Still no fire truck yet either.

Finally shortly after 8pm the firemen arrived. Yep we are very rural. It takes the firemen roughly twenty minutes to get to us. Several of our neighbors showed up before they were able to. In this picture the firemen are beginning to try and put the fire out.

After the fire had been mostly put out the firemen knocked over whatever remaining walls were still left standing. Probably so they would not collapse and cause any injuries. The entire machine shed gone in less then 45 minutes.

Clean up begins with the removal of the walls and then it is sorting through what we can salvage. But I think I will save those pictures for a later time. Until then.

Can anybody tell me what this is? Winner might get something if I can remember to figure something out to give you, haha. Speaking of adorable things in the grass and to show you that I have not completely forgotten the rules of 3ChicksandADude photo blog, here is my final picture of the post for your enjoyment.

Nikon D2x

Focal Length 55mm

F8, 1/60secs.

Natural Lighting

This would be our adorable puppy Nanook. I couldn't leave everybody on a down note now could I? So enjoy all the blessings in life and cute, furry puppies always help, no matter what. I just wanted to thank everybody for all the prayers that have been sent our way and for the help that we have received with the clean up. God is in charge and he knows what the deal is. I am now going to go and celebrate my hubby's birthday with good food and VERY yummy cake.

Scott you're up next!

I've been looking over this.... FROG

1/125
f 8.0
55.mm
no flash
ISO 400
un-cropped

Kermit, Is that you?
So, I found this little guy this morning as I put my kiddos on the bus.
He was tiny and quite hidden. He was such a good sport, letting me move some branches and snap off a few shots. I got some out of focus shots but kept at him and YEAH! Isn't he cool.
Okay, It's a field of green with a beautiful surprise in it, somewhat like Brandi's shot. The frogs eye is round and there are droplets of morning dew on the leaves...
I wanted to include the next shot with my finger tips in it for a size comparison.
Sere, You're it !



1/100
f 7.1
55.mm
no flash
ISO 400
un-cropped

Floating Away

Before I get to today's photo I want to ask you all for some extra thoughts, prayers and love for one of our Chicks.
Sere, as you all know, lives in rural America. Her husband is a farmer and they are a farm family. Working hard everyday to carve out a little (or well, huge) piece of land to grow something for the world to enjoy.

Last night around 7pm CST the machine shop housing the tools for the farm caught on fire and was destroyed. The shop is the closest building to Sere's home. Fortunately, no one was injured and her prized Siberian Huskies were all safe as well.

In a world where your success is directly linked to the tools you have loosing a machine shop is a devastating blow. Please say and extra prayer, send some extra love or just some kind thoughts for Sere and her family as they navigate through the mess that will come.


Now without further adieu,


Nikon d40
18-55 1:3-5.6
1/250 at 46mm
f5.3
ISO 200

I had quite a few ideas on what I wanted to do as a follow up to Scott's post. A few of them were a little more PG-13 building on the "moon" in Scott's photo. Around mid-day I was feeling a little despondent and couldn't quite get my "mo-jo" going. Thankfully I have a wonderful little girl that wanted to play outside in the beautiful sunshine on a gorgeous 78degree evening.
After numerous trips down the driveway on her bike we moved on to bubbles.

Ah Ha! Bubbles! BINGO

Watching them swirl around capturing the light from the sun, casting colors about just like a kaleidoscope.

Perfection

Taking photos of bubbles floating in the sky was pretty tough with the equipment I have. There wasn't enough depth in any of the photos.
As I laid in the grass feeling a little discouraged once again, I noticed a bubble just sitting perfectly atop a few blades of grass.

I knew I wanted to capture only the bubble in focus so I went wide open (f5.3 - sure would have been nice to have the f1.4 but...). My auto focus (the only auto I use on my camera) couldn't find the bubble so I had to do the focus manually. Not my strong suit given the fact that I wasn't wearing my glasses but I feel strong with how it ended up.

A calm, peaceful, delicate bubble, resting on the soft blades of grass in the remainder of the beautiful setting summer sun.

Where are you going to take us next Jay'me? Can't wait for the journey.

Somewhere Over the Kaleidoscope?

Canon 30d
Canon EF-S 18-55mm f.3.5-5.6
Shutter Speed 2.5 Seconds
Aperture f/5.0
Focal Length 39.00mm
ISO 800
Natural Light

This is a photo I'm posting out of resignation. I didn't really have a clear aim other than I wanted to get something through a kaleidoscope. Actually, I didn't know I wanted to shoot through a kaleidoscope until I walked past one in Borders Saturday night. Long story short, I took MANY photos experimenting with different light set-ups and subjects and in the end, the best one was using the moon.

My camera was on a tripod and the kaleidoscope was held with a boom tripod. I used my remote shutter and probably should have tried a lower ISO setting but I was tired and I wanted to go to bed. 800 it is!

The biggest challenge I faced with this was the composition. How do you get enough of the kaleidoscope in the frame without obliterating the subject entirely? It was easy with the moon - it's a relatively small subject when shooting at 39mm. But trust me, it's not always this easy! And that was the source of my frustration with this particular idea. Lots and lots of pictures that just didn't do it for me.

Sere really got my gears turning with her post and her challenge. True to form, this isn't really what I had in mind. But I have a lot of fun shooting. Plus, I'm a little further down the road of learning all I can about photography. I'm sure I'll be pulling out the kaleidoscope again soon!

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.

I got a 50mm Too!

Canon 30d
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
Shutter Speed 1/400
f/1.4
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 400
Natural Light

So yes, I brought this lens out partly to needle Brandi a bit (I'm going to pay for this) but more importantly, it's my connection to Sere's post. This is a celebration of Sere's new toy. Hip, hip, hooray!!!

Now let's get serious. The beautiful thing about a prime lens is it forces you to "zoom with your feet." That is, if you want to view something from a larger magnification, you must literally walk closer. It's a great learning tool. You typically have the additional advantage of better optics. It's just plain easier to make a prime lens hence, you get better quality for your money, albeit without zoom capabilities. You just can't go wrong with a good prime lens.

As for this photo, the subject is part of an abandoned homestead near my home. I was actually hoping to get some photos of the rundown house and barn. Those really didn't turn out so you get faucet picture number 3. I was struck by the fairly bright blue against the dark rust. The contrast was too good to pass up. Plus, if gave me a chance to shoot wide open and show off the depth of field capabilities of a wide aperture. It's a fantastic tool to master and it can make the difference between a good photo and a great photo.

And just because Sere posted 2, I'm cheating again. This is in response to both Sere's second photo and to Brandi and her day in Galena.

Canon 30d
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
Shutter Speed 0.3
f/22.0
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
Natural Light

This is a field near my home that happens to shelter about 1,000,000,000 mosquitoes. You know, I must be an idiot because I keep finding these places to donate blood. It's truly unreal. I'll say it now; my next photo is indoors!

Moving on, I pass this field daily and I've always wanted to set-up my camera after they cut. The rows and the colors are just perfect. Plus, there is something about the smell of a fresh cut field. I can't get enough of it. So I finally put tripod to earth and snapped off about 60. You gotta love digital!

I was hoping the sky would cooperate and give me a decent sunset but sometimes Mother Nature has different plans. So I decided on making the field the real star. I intentionally left out a lot of sky (which was hard because the moon was begging to be included!) and let the patterns of the rows do the talking.

Something totally different from the first photo is the aperture. I used a very small aperture to allow for maximum depth of field. As a result, the foreground is sharp as well as the trees. So all of you bemoaning your lack of a fast lens (wide aperture) remember, small apertures are really cool too! Okay folks, that's all for now. Stay tuned for Brandi - she's gonna knock your socks off!

Scott

Storm Front!!!!

I'm in a bit of a rush today. I didn't get a lot of time to play. I had to make homemade pizza crust for homemade pizza tonight. Yep for all of you out there that have had my hubby's homemade pizza you are missing out on our dinner tonight. My husband's pizza is quite legendary. Tiny people have been known to engorge themselves on it and rumors get around town so that nobody wants anything else but his pizza when they come over to visit. Makes life easy for me.

Today as an early birthday gift for me, my wonderful husband Jonny got me a brand new lens. The "Nifty Fifty" as it is called!! It is a 50mm fixed, F1.8D Lens. I'm hoping to use it more with my portraits and the wedding that I am doing in September. The large aperture (F1.8) is great for low light conditions. It also does a good job of blurring the background which will be useful for portraits as well. Here is my photography geek picture for today of the new lens on my camera for my fellow bloggers to see. I took it with my el cheapo point and shoot Canon so I won't put the specifics down. I know, I know I'm breaking the rules. Whoever said that we at 3 Chicks and A Dude are even remotely good at following the rules? The lens itself as you can see is pretty small, so it will be nice and easy to carry around. I'm loving it!



Now Onward to my "real" photo.

I wanted to go play with my new lens, but..... Unfortunately it was disgustingly warm today and very sunny, but Mother Nature decided to give us a storm this evening. So that is what I practiced on. The picture is nothing fancy or special, but no fill lights or flash were used. Just the large aperture. It goes with Jay'me's cloud shot from yesterday. I saw the front coming on and rushed outside to photograph it. The temperatures had to have dropped about 30 degrees while I was out there and the wind picked up. I would love to have been able to get some lightning. Anybody have any advice on how to do that?



Nikon D2X
ISO-200
Lens 50mm fixed
F1.8, 1/500
No Flash, natural lighting

Until then I am off to have homemade pizza. Yummm!

SO INCREDIBLE... No, not the photo

The Photo is average. The fact that I'm blogging OUT OF THIS WORLD !!! I worked (FOR CASH)all day and I'm now remembering what Brandi so graciously taught me yesterday and TA DA !!!
Yes the picture is from Fort Lauderdale. I loved the "Silver lining" on the thunder boomers and tried to capture a piece. If I could wall paper my ceiling in this I would. Then lay there with my noise machine and relax.

I did play with my settings this week and got a ton of crap that was erased and is long gone. I'll catch on - good things are coming - I can feel it.

Edit to add info -
Cannon Rebel
Shutter 1/500
f16.0
focal length 55mm
no flash
ISO 320

Zzzzzoooooooommmm!!!!

Canon 24-70 2.8L
Shutter Speed 15 seconds
f16.0
Focal Length 40mm
ISO 400
Natural Light

This photo comes with a great story. Those of you that have met me (or heck, even seen a picture of me) know that I wear glasses. Those of you that know me a little better know that I stubbornly refuse to switch to contacts. There is just something creepy about sticking my fingers in my eyes. I know, I know, you get used to it after awhile and you don't even feel them. I don't care. I'm not sticking my fingers in my eyes.

Which brings me to this photo. At this point in the evening, I was wearing prescription sunglasses. You might ask why I was wearing sunglasses. It clearly is dark enough for regular glasses. Well, let me tell you. I started the evening on a bike path in Lakewood. It wasn't even my destination but I saw some cool lighting and pulled over. I set-up my tripod with remote trigger and was promptly devoured by the worst swarm of mosquitoes I've seen since I was in the boundary waters. I cannot begin to describe the ferocity of these insects. I'm lucky to have gotten away alive.

So, as I'm trying to hang on long enough to get a few shots I swipe at a mosquito that's munching on my right ear. I think I got him but I also hooked my glasses and promptly flung them directly to my left into the grass/woods. Expletives followed as I crawled around WITHOUT glasses trying to find them as the gathering darkness deepened. They must have landed in the epicenter of Mosquito Nation. There were plumes of mosquitoes wafting directly into my face, and I swear I heard a war cry! It wasn't long and I started laughing. After all, you can't write comedy this good. I couldn't stay long owing to the utter futility of it all and the fact that I was rapidly losing blood. So I ran back to my car, put on my prescription sunglasses and drove on over to Ridgefield. I figured my night couldn't get much worse.

Anyway, this photo is something I've always wanted to try - a time lapse of traffic. So when I saw Brandi's photo it fit too well. Like Sere, I hadn't even seen Brandi's post when I took this! Eerie I know. The hardest part was waiting for a car to show up. Ridgefield isn't exactly a thoroughfare, especially at this time of night. But eventually, several cars came along and this is what I got. There is a bit more chrominance noise than I like typically (that's a Canon thing - Nikon usually does better with chrominance but worse with luminance noise) but in this case I think it sort of adds to the mood. Click here for a great explanation of noise (I love this site by the way). Besides, anytime you have an exposure this long you are bound to get higher levels of noise. I played with some noise reduction tools but decided against it. I did sharpen a bit , crop a touch and tried this technique, but again, stuck with my original edit. I hope you like it. And watch out for those mosquitoes!

Scott

Objects In The Mirror

Nikon d40
Lens 18-55 1:3.5-5.6GII
1/640
f4.6
ISO 200
focal length 40mm

So I spent the day at the Milwaukee Zoo with my best girl K and my parents. We had a terrific time and there was certainly plenty of things to inspire my creativity. I probably annoyed the daylights out of my parents with my constant camera clicking.
For the first time since we started this I had a really hard time deciding which photo I wanted to use.
I sat down tonight with my 200 photos from my day and went through them. Sorting out the bad from the good (which fortunately the bad numbers are decreasing rapidly thanks to this experience) and trying to find ones that I felt would build nicely off Sere's previous waterfall in motion.
In the end I narrowed it down to 3 strong possibilities. I'm not going to "pull a Scott" and break the rules I forced myself to chose just one. Girls are just better at making tough decisions :) If you're interested in seeing the other contenders in my group you can check them out on my other blog.

I chose this photo because of the motion. Motion just kept speaking to me. Strangely it wasn't the water, it was the motion of the water. So in this photo not only am I moving, doing 70mph down HWY 43 in my parents mini-van, but the photo shows the movement of the pavement and my surroundings. I took about 15 of these photos, this one won out because I was finally able to capture only the objects in the mirror in focus. I've been working hard at narrowing my point of focus and capturing a truly sharp photo. While this photo isn't as sharp as it could be (taking photos through windows is never easy for crispness) it does achieve my narrow focus, at least I think so.

So there you have it... Motion...

Oh and with expection of a small bump in sharpness for better web viewing I made no modifications to this photo.

Water, water everywhere!

Nikon D2X

ISO 400

F13

Shutter 1/15s

Lens 18-70mm at 29mm

Speedlight SB800 with Gary Fong Diffuser on it

I started thinking about what photo I was going to take today, not having seen Scott's post from Sunday so I was going off of the post from Saturday. In any event, crazy enough we both went for waterfalls. Course I went a different direction but still waterfalls.

So my mind was on showing motion and immediately I thought about water and trying to show the motion of water. Of course this idea came to me while I was driving my two hours to Iowa City to return some stuff and check out Eddie Bauer's new fall line. Alas my OCD kicked in and I had to keep pushing it to the back of my mind. Heading home I realized that I still had to go grocery shopping and of course feed my child. The feeding of my child went quick, we pulled into good ole Mickey D's. I hate it but I wanted quick so yes I fed my child junk so I could go and play with my camera. Is that so wrong? By the time all that was done I was running out of light so I packed up my junk and drove to David's Chamber outside of Nauvoo Illinois which is a small, cute waterfall so I could get shots of moving water. Took several shots quickly and didn't really get any shots that I liked. So I chose one of the okay shots to post. I need to get more practice in. Not as beautiful as Scott's picture but hopefully you get the sense of motion, which is what I was going for.

Not sure who is going next Brandi or Jay'me. Looking forward to seeing what either one of them post next.

-Sere-

Anything For a Friend Part Deux

Canon 30d
Canon 24-70 f2.8L
Shutter 2.5, 1, and 0.5
f22.0
ISO 100
Focal Length 24mm
Natural Light

This evening you get another round of Scott. Jay'me is traveling with her family and literally cannot get to a computer. I'm sure she took plenty of photos during her time in Florida and I look forward to seeing them! In the meantime, I'll pinch hit with this photo of the falls at McCormick's Creek State Park in Spencer Indiana.

These falls are magical for some reason. I spent a lot of time here with my family as a boy and again this summer as a father. You can't tell from this picture but you can actually climb right up the falls! I've done it and someday, my boys will too. This time around, E built rock houses in the shadow of the falls and B just tried to stay on his feet. It's just one of those magical places from my life that I wanted to capture and share. Now, finally, I'm able to do that. On to the techie stuff.

The connection is the technique I used in the previous post called HDR or high dynamic range. In technical terms, dynamic range is the ratio between the maximum and minimum measurable light intensities (white and black respectively). The human eye is fantastic with dynamic range. We can apparently see the difference between "cotton white" and "snow white" and 100 other whites (according to Benjamin Moore). Cameras have limitations and it's one of the many reasons one camera is better than another (read: MORE EXPENSIVE!!!). Thankfully, for those of us without money trees, the digital era has ushered in software to enhance dynamic range.

You will notice I listed 3 separate shutter speeds above (2.5 seconds, 1 second, and .5 seconds). This is where the process begins. It's very important to mention that each photo must be as much like the previous in composition as possible. I accomplished this with a good tripod, a remote shutter, and mirror locked in the up position. Even the slightest movement can cause major headaches later. Continuing with the shutter speed explanation, the effect of taking 3 identical shots with different exposures is that I have one adequately showing detail in the shadows (at the expense of the highlights), one showing adequate details in the highlights (at the expense of the shadows), and one average exposure.

The next step is to combine all three exposures with the goal of good detail in both the highlights and the shadows. One can do this with only 2 images but I used 3 this time. You need software to accomplish this and I used Picturenaut, a freeware program anyone can use. There are many others and I'm sure they are great. I'm just starting with this and I find Picturenaut to be both user friendly and highly effective.

Once you've combined the exposures it's time to edit the photo. Picturenaut spits out a TIFF file, which means it's huge. I think this one was 47mb. The good news about the TIFF format is that it's a loss-less file format, meaning you can edit like crazy, save like crazy, and as long as it's still a TIFF, you are not losing information. JPEG's don't do that. They compress each time you save thus losing information - something to keep in mind. Moving on, once I was done tweaking contrast, white balance, and sharpness, I saved it as a JPEG for posting and poof, out comes another HDR photo. It's such a blast playing with HDR! I strongly recommend it.

I should also mention that when taking photos of water a slow shutter speed is often precisely the ticket. This is how you create the smooth effect of the falls and anyone can do it with a good tripod.

Though I simplified the process a bit for the sake of brevity it really is rather simple as long as you set-up well. Like any photo, the best time to do things right is before you take the shot. Alright, that's it for now folks. Have a great week and try to notice something new!

Scott

PS - I broke the rules again...DARN IT! Not going to re-post at this point
PPS - Hope you made it home safe Jay'me! Can't wait for your next post.

My Friend Mike...and I Broke the Rules!

Canon 30d
18-55 f3.5-5.6 (this is my version of "same old lens" - that's for you B!)
1/80
f4.0
ISO 800
Focal Length 18mm
Canon 580ex Speedlight

This is the first thing I thought of when I saw Brandi's post - my friend Mike. So, I headed over to his house with a couple racks of ribs, corn on the cob, zucchini and squash, and my camera. Ribs are a terrific motivator! When I told him my idea he said absolutely and immediately started adding suggestions. We had great fun with this and I'm sure he will end up on here again in the near future.

Something to notice for you fellow photogs are the catch lights in Mike's eyes. With the reflector extended on my flash and a 45 degree angle, I got a better diffusion of light and a bigger catch light. He's also sitting next to a window with a shear allowing great natural light. It's a little funny talking seriously about this photo but without planning this shot, it would have looked rather flat.

Here's where I broke the rules...



This is a photo I took on my way to my Dad's. It's something I've always curiously observed and wondered if there was a photo to be had. It was dark outside but the sign in the background provided nice back lighting. I messed with using my speed light but ultimately I decided on several exposures to be combined later as a HDR image. HDR means "high dynamic range" and I found a great freeware program called Picurenaut that allows for this technique. Anyway, I used a tripod, remote trigger, and mirror lock up on my camera body to minimize movement as much as possible. The result is the purple tint due to the twilight lighting and the blown out highlights of the backdrop. It's almost an accidental shot! It's not at all what I was going for and I drove away thinking I had nothing. Alas, I'm pretty happy with the results.

I broke the rules simply because I'm supposed to post one photo! I promise this won't happen often but I just couldn't pick between the two.

The connection for this was supposed to be the green background. And I suppose there is green. But I'm amazed at the color you can achieve just through watching the clock and shooting at different times of the day. If you find yourself up at the crack of dawn, wander outside and shoot a few of some flowers. You'll be amazed at the quality of light! The same goes for dusk. It's easily my favorite time to shoot.

So, looks like I made it through one post without breaking the rules. Any bets on the next rule breaker?

Scott