Sweet Home...

Dan is so good at capturing Chicago and providing real insight to the history and breadth of the Windy City. I can't speak for you all but I really enjoy it every time Dan graces these pages.

Seeing his shot I had no choice but to post my version of The Bean. Everyone (and I mean everyone) has a shot of the The Bean. And perhaps mine isn't all that special. But I like it and so here I post!

One of the things I like most is that you have to search just a little bit to find me. All too often it's the shooter that is the subject. My aim (pun intended) was to really let the reflection of the city be the subject and for the impulse to find me become secondary. Did I pull it off?


Canon 30D
Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L @ 24mm
Aperture f/13
Shutter 1/160
ISO 100

One of the biggest challenges when shooting in this type of light is achieving the depth of field. When you have so much light, a large aperture is often out of the question simply because you can't achieve a high enough shutter speed combined with the large aperture. For this shot is wasn't a problem because I wanted a large depth of field. However, I ended up seeing exactly every spot of dust my poor little camera sports. And believe me, there are many. Such is the trade-off with a small aperture. So the editing was a bit intensive.

That's it from this wannabe. Hope you all had a fantastic weekend and thanks so much Dan for joining us.

Scott

Crystal Ball

Okay, so blogger just ate my entire post and I'm sufficiently pissed that I'm not going to write it all over. Dammit dammit dammit!!!

Okay, that's done. This picture is a figurine from a series that I used to collect. The crystal held in the tail is my connection. I played a bunch with the depth of field and decided I liked the cystal out of focus best. I hope you enjoy! Thanks again Amanda for joining us!

Canon 30D
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8
Aperture f/6.3
Shutter 1/80
ISO 400
Light tent and 1 hot light

As American As...

Jay'me tossed up a batting-practice fast ball yesterday. I thought "this is awesome! I can do this one in my sleep AND be creative!" See, I love baseball. It's something I truly enjoy and of course it's very American. There are so many things you can do with that as a theme. And yet, today conspired to make it very difficult for me. So I ended up going completely obvious and borderline creative. But man did I have good ideas!

Canon 30D
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro
Shutter 0.5 seconds
Aperture f/6.3
ISO 2oo
1 hot light at 3200K

My tie-in, aside from being beat-you-over-the-head obvious, includes the limited DOF. I once again broke out my macro and a single hot light. Because I was so close to the subject I didn't want to go wide open. You can see that even though I used an aperture of f/6.3 the focus remains quite shallow. It's exacerbated by the angle of the bat. I also chose to focus on the 'O' as sort of symbolic of the ball.

You may be wondering why I chose such a specific aperture. It's really simple. I used my DOF preview button (most dslr's have them) to preview the results. It just happens to be the one I like best. Plus my sensor is crazy dusty and if I get too small an aperture I spend 30 minutes cleaning the image! The DOF preview button only works when you have ample light but it can really minimize the guess work and cut down on waste if used correctly.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to tell you all that I finally have a new tripod (and there was much rejoicing)! Thanks to a lucky Superbowl pick it cost me only my winnings! WooHoo!!! I used said tripod tonight with my remote shutter and felt at home once again. I promise to put it to better use next.

Also of note, I only took 12 shots before stopping. It's part of my New Years Resolution. I'm thinking I need to think more before shooting next time. Anyway, pitchers and cathers reported to camp and spring training had started. Let's hear it for summer time baseball games!

Scott