Foot Fetish Anyone?

My original plan for following Brandi was to get a close-up of a broom. Low and behold, it's about as disgusting as you'd imagine. The dust and dirt just don't need to be seen that close. While I was shooting the broom, I noticed this image just out of the frame and decided it was kismet. So I repositioned (meaning my aim was moved about an inch - no lie!) and shot this guy:



Canon 30D
Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro
Aperture f/2.8
Shutter 1/10, 1/4, and 0.6
ISO 100
Ambient Lighting

Any guess where this guy is? I love that I could make it seem a bit 3D by focusing on the front foot while tilting the surface of the image. You gotta love messing with the viewer.

Anyway, I also chose to do this using HDR. I was hoping to get more detail. In all honesty, I don't think it was necessary for this image. But it never hurts to throw crap at the wall and see what sticks.

My connection is fairly obvious - this guy is walking out of the frame, similar to B's sweeper. I wish I had more time to experiment. Isn't that always the case?

Time to put B to bed - duty calls. Hope you're having a great weekend!

Scott

Friday Feet?

Did you know that when your ? key is stuck you will find yourself asking more questions in a day than you have the entire last week? True story trust me.

I have a confession. I spaced that it was my day today. I will admit I knew it earlier in the week and was looking forward to challenging myself but in the end, I found myself distracted by the other things in my life and the awful rain and didn't quite get things done. My apologies to my team mates.

I have some pictures of my parents new kittens and I could use those but all of them are a little... well.. flat. So no face today. Today you get feet.


Nikon D300s
Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8 *did you know the / key and the ? key are the same sucks when yours is broken*
ISO 800
Shutter Speed 1/640sec (should have turned down the ISO dang changing light conditions)
Aperture f/2.8

As you know, I "work" in the construction industry. These are Dave's feet as he cleaned the mud off the first floor deck of one of our job sites. As you also know, I'm a little obsessed with feet. Specifically work boots. And dirt, I'm also obsessed with dirt.
This picture puts that all together. I wanted to catch as much of the debris flying as possible and I wanted to make it appear that Dave was going to "walk" right out of the frame.
I'm pretty happy with how I achieved my objectives. As usual I could have stayed and played longer. All that debris flying was making me a nervous wreck. I was envisioning having to send the camera in for a cleaning already.

I originally thought I had no tie in. But, that's untrue. I actually have three. The squirrel and Dave both have feet. They are both animals. And both of them are working.
Not bad for pulling something out of my rear end.

The weekend is here. May we all be able to get out and take a picture of something that makes us happy.

xoxo,
Brandi

Yep it's here!

Nikon D40
1/160
5.7
55.mm
ISO 200

Meet Mama Squirrel. She's been busy digging up her winter stash all over our yard. I have some shots of her forward facing that are a little "National Geographic" if you know what I mean? She looks like she needs a nursing bra for Oct-o-mom and this kids is how I know "It's" really hear. BABIES! Spring has sprung for her. Unfortunately for you I think someone needs a telephoto lens... What do you think my fellow bloggers, Could I have set "Nikky Ninon" differently to get her more in focus and better resolution? I gave up and went auto because I was moving and so was she. I'm not good on the fly and moving targets yet.
Originally I was just going for the red squirrel in the grass to tie in the subject matter with Sere's cinnamon puppy with the grass blades. But she has babies and it's that time of year. Do you see our green grass? The mower will be used this weekend! The air around us smells like spring and the weather has been crazily changing. It's hard not to get a little caught up in the excitement.

Have and great Friday!

Goodnight,

Jay'me

Wordless Wednesday with Sere

We are back at it again today with Wordless Wednesday. Yay!!! So here it goes!

Rules

The poster (that's me) will post a picture and its settings. No other verbiage is allowed. The commenter's (that's you) will guess in the comments section below how my picture associates with yesterdays (Tuesday's) picture. It can be a setting. It can be a play on words. It can be a theme. In every photo there are numerous ties, thus creating no right or wrong answer. Just make a comment below and you will be entered into our drawing to be our next guest photographer.

What if I am not good enough to be a guest photographer?

,div> You are good enough. We love all kinds of photographers! That's what makes this so much fun. We believe that everybody has a unique view of this world and we want to see it through the lens of your camera. Any camera goes, camera phone, point and shoot, film camera that has its photos turned into jpgs., high end professional grade cameras, any and all of them! So make a guess and have some fun!

How does this all work?

The contest will go on until my (Sere's) next post. I will use random.org to choose the winner and post the story behind my picture and what the connection is, along with my photo for that day. All you have to do, as our chosen winner, is email us your picture before 10pm on your post day. Usually on a Sunday, but we are flexible. The photo has to be yours, has to tie into the picture from the day before, and 3C1D has to be authorized to use it. Just remember to keep checking back with us to make sure you get the post about who has won.

Only one guess per person. Have fun!

Ready! Set!! Go!!!

Nikon D2X

ISO-100

Aperture F/10

Shutter 1/200 sec.

Nifty Fifty Lens

Natural Lighting, Vignette Blur filter

Distorted Tastes

Today I spent the day outside as much as possible. I started right after E's school day by going to the "kick ass park" in Huntley. If you spend any time with me and my boys, you know of what I speak. A friend of mine and I together corralled 6 kids, fed and watered them, and then tempted each with a Sour Patch Kid. The one caveat was that I got to take their picture when they tasted the candy. Here's the best one:

Canon 30D
Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L at 70mm
Aperture f/2.8
Shutter 1/250
ISO 100
Pop-up flash and sunlight

I was forced to use flash owing to the shade provided by the picnic shelter and the full sunlight in the background. It was the only way to properly expose B's face and still have a background short of completely blown out. Oh, I promise B actually liked these little devils. He asked for another one immediately. So call off DCFS already! All in all, it was a great time and the kids couldn't have been happier. Sunlight does that.

Lastly, I too shoot in RAW and my story is eerily similar to Brandi's (nothing new there really). In fact, I look back at some of my JPEG shots and wish over and over that I'd shot in RAW. Oh well. No sense crying now. Hope your week is going well!

Scott

Love Ya Willie!

A little tune to play while you're enjoying the rather crappy photo below.

Jay'me went to the Dells. I was supposed to join her (and the other 2.9million people there this weekend) but instead was diverted to my hometown in Iowa.
Jay'me snapped her photo from the car window. It inspired me to do the same.

My trusty driver (Hi Mom!) was less than excited at the prospect of me motioning to an over the road trucker and getting his permission to take a photo of his front tire in motion. Sigh. Parents...
So I snapped this as we flew past the oil truck doing 72 (in a 70mph speed zone).


Nikon D300s
Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/2500sec
Aperture f/2.8

I really had intended to change my aperture. I wanted to get as large of a focal point as possible. But, when shooting on the fly you sometimes forget the most basic of principles.

To not make this post totally suck I'm going to include my personal opinion on JPEG vs RAW photos.
As I said, this is just my opinion. As we all know opinions are like.. well.. you know. I'll keep it rated G.

Way back in the day (circa 2007) when I got my first DSLR, I shot in RAW and JPEG format. My computer quickly filled up and I ran out of hard drive space. I switched to JPEG only (circa 2008). Until my recent purchase of the D300s I stayed that way and never really thought much about it.
Right before I got the new camera I also got an huge external hard drive (thanks Mom and Dad). I backed up my 4.2million photos and cleared off most of my internal hard drive. So when the D300s showed up I chose to shoot in RAW and JPEG once again.
Immediately upon downloading the first pictures I noticed a real difference in the quality of the photos between the RAW and JPEG formats. I was impressed. The RAW really did seem to make a difference.
Fast forward to my first major round of edits. I LOVE editing a RAW photo. It's so quick and easy to make any small corrections that might be necessary. Shooting in RAW has absolutely changed how much time I spend editing. I didn't spend much time before but now I spend next to nothing. It's absolutely worth it to me to me to take up a little more drive space to get the better, faster photo.

All that said, get the photo right in camera and you really won't have any editing time. And you might also be living in an alternate universe that I would like to live in with you.

RAW or JPEG? What do you shoot in?

Water - Park

Nikon D40

1/320

f 5.7

55.mm

ISO200

Someone put a fork in me, I'm so totally done. Did you know that the Wisc. Dells is the # 2 family fun destination for the states??? I took a few really fun shots the last two days. I took this as we passed in car. This colorful mess of tubes was what we paid the big bucks for. The kids did enjoy them, thank goodness. The tie is in the title-only. This aught to really change things up. Have fun shooting tomorrow!

Jay'me

Water Droplets!

I loved how both Scott and Brandi used lighting to really make their pictures work. My tie in was supposed to be using lighting as well to create a certain effect in my post today. It didn't go so well and I ran out of experimentation time. I didn't really like any of the pictures I took, but since I had run out of time I had to choose one, so I did.

Nikon D2X

ISO-100

Aperture F/8

Shutter Speed 1/25 sec.

18-200mm at 200mm

Natural Lighting

Without having a macro lens I find it hard to capture water droplets which I so want to practice learning how to do. This is why I use my telephoto and zoom in, but it just doesn't work very well and as you can see the picture gets so soft looking. I love that I was able to capture the droplets on the leaf, but it just didn't quite turn out the way I had envisioned it in my head.

On the plus side I did learn a new way to sharpen an image in Photoshop that I hope to play around with some more.

Off to bed I go, I am beat! Tomorrow is another day!