lAsT PoSt!!??!!

A final requirement of the photography course is that we demonstrate that we are able to upload to YouTube. I put my "Shadow" video up last night (and immediately received an email saying that I "may" have infringed on copyright laws by having used the "These Boots are Made for Walking" music made popular by Nancy Sinatra way back then...). SO, maybe, if you hurry and look at it NOW, HERE, the music will not have been removed yet (thus leaving a perhaps-strange series of pictures when not accompanied by music)!

Tonight I will show [part of] one of my more recent slideshows -- the one that uses my Hawaii vacation pictures with some really cool music performed by Hawaiian artists -- as my final project. It runs 18 minutes, and so only the first 3-5 minutes will actually be shown in class. I am pretty happy with it, and think it shows MUCH growth and improvement over the first "Boots" slideshow... the only thing is that, somehow, the lead-in screen with prompt "play video" shows up at the END of the slideshow, instead of at the beginning! (??) It was made using iMovie.

I've also been working on a "Sienna's First Year" video at home using Windows Movie Maker. This one is ALMOST done, and is, of course, much more the "labor of love." I will be able to share it with Jim and Carolina and the rest of the family by (or very soon after) Christmas. It will easily run 20-25 minutes... contains three full-length songs, plus "Happy Birthday to You" -- which (of course) is necessary to end up Sienna's first year, AND mark the place where the SECOND YEAR video will start!!

I haven't thought at all about whether I will continue this blog, now that the photography course is over... I will need to decide if there are possible future uses for it, or if maybe I'll start a new one, instead... or...

I'm No Laser Artist

Okay... LAST assignment (well, last regular assignment before the FINAL assignment is due)! I set my long shutter speed to 5 or 10 seconds, and the ISO to 80. With the flash disabled, I first used a tripod to try some laser art using a regular flashlight(I don't own a laser pen, or even a penlight-style flashlight)-- and then went outside and moved the camera about while taking long shutter shots of cars' tail lights and other peoples' outdoor Christmas decorations.

There is nothing too art-y about any of the images I produced, but, on the up-side ... it worked!

Here is the link to use to see the rest of the photos!

Are We Having Fun Yet?!?!?

Last week I blogged that I was finally in the thick of the old photography class
-- that my camera could both take videos and continuous still shots. I didn't know when I wrote that (because I'd missed the class in which the continuous motion assignment was discussed) that when the teacher talked about cameras that could *take* video and shoot continuous pictures, what he really meant was that some cameras can be set to automatically take photos every couple of seconds... and that some cameras can then reorder those photos in order to use them to *make* a video!

So you see, I was still so NOT in our class' group of in-the-know amateur photographers when I downloaded the shot-as-video sequence I'd taken of my grand-daughter on her first birthday with my point-and-shoot... and that my photo sequences, although continuous, could only be obtained with my constant depression of the camera's shutter (in other words, not as the result of having engaged an automatic timer)! BIGSIGH. How's that learning curve going?!?

This week's assignment was to make a slideshow/movie that incorporates music and tells a story. While I am pleased to finally have completed the assignment, my pleasure has been dissipated somewhat over the last 4 days. On each of those days I tried at home to make the Picasa program for movies work on my computer and with music I'd downloaded from the internet. I was able to import and sequence the pictures without problem, but my music file would not attach. The audio file and the slideshow played well independently of one another. But (grrr) the audio would not play when imported to the slideshow to accompany the pictures! Though it is an .mp3 file, which supposedly is compatible with Picasa, I got messages saying that the music could not be uploaded because its format was not supported by the program. As best as I can figure out, maybe I do not have the version of Windows Media Player that is compatible with Picasa -- OR perhaps I do not have the most recent version of Vista Home Premium for 64 bit systems, or... (who knows)??? I am definitely going to need to figure out what is going on with that if I am to do my final slideshow project at home.

I finally completed the slideshow in the school's photography lab after work today. Here is my slideshow uploaded to Picasa (but I notice that its quality for on-line viewing is much reduced from the quality of the file as it exists on my hard drive).

Videos and Continuous Picture Sequences

This week's assignment was to upload short videos, if your camera can record videos, or continuous picture sequences (if it does not). For once, it is MY CAMERA that can do both things (last week I learned that, plain and simple, my camera does not "do" raw files. So just forget it.)!

I've uploaded a couple of videos that I'd made earlier this semester. But it was SO MUCH MORE FUN to make the continuous photo sequences, and I spent a happy day at work (and after that, at home) coming up with some fun ones -- one longer, and also several shorter ones.

Here are the video uploads.

The shorter continuous shot sequences are here. To get the feeling of the motion that exists between pictures, it works better to quickly click through the individual shots (instead of watching the progression as a slideshow).

You can view the long photo sequence here. Again, to get the feeling of the walk, I recommend clicking through.

Paint It Black (and White, w/Selective Color)

This week's assignment was to use some of our color shots to experiment with modifications using black and white -- and even to play God by allowing shots of color to show up in and accentuate select aspects of otherwise black and white photographs.

I had fun with this exercise. I do not have Photoshop software,* so used the photo editing tools online at Picasa to make my changes.

*(YET!!)

You can view the results of my whimsy right here.

A Different Way of Looking at Things

Our assignment for this week was to use the Macro settings on our camera to take some very up-close pictures. I took my camera to work and got some shots both indoors and out. I took photos in my work space, during my lunch break, and on my way to the car after finishing my work shift for the day. It was fun to notice and photograph all of the "little things" that are always there and yet usually go unnoticed.... and fun to see how little a thing I could get a clear image of with my camera's settings.

You can view all of my Macro shots here.

3 Point Lights, Camera...

I actually did this assignment TWICE -- and it required quite a good chunk of my (AND my husband's!) weekend time. First I worried about having no model except my faithful hubby... but then it turned out that I would have models for TWO sittings, which I scheduled for Saturday night and Sunday morning.

It all started on Friday night when Irv and I went to Walmart to buy shop lights. On Saturday morning, I bought a tripod. Preparations followed on Saturday afternoon when we set up the FIRST studio, which was in the living room (lamps moved from family room to living room, sheet ironed and hung over curtain rod at window, couch and tables pushed towards dining room, and etc.). After we'd returned from church and had dinner, our neighbors Dave and Laurie came over to model for me. I served wine with cheese and crackers first, to loosen them (and myself!) up a little bit.

It was a really fun time, and Dave and Laurie were such good sports, going along with and even furthering my suggestions for poses. I used all manual settings on my camera, though, and was less than satisfied with the quality of my pictures even as I was taking them. They were terribly grainy at the suggested 1600 ISO, even while using the tripod, and though this improved some at 800, it was still not quite right. I kept flipping between the various exposure compensation positions and kept the white balance on tungsten (I didn't think to try the auto white balance setting until after the fact).

On Sunday morning, my husband had to relocate the studio to the basement. This was necessary since the class had been instructed to "start [the set-up of lights] in a dark room" -- and since my first studio had been set up in front of the living room window! Again too late, I wished that I would have thought about this on Saturday afternoon so as to save Irv all of his extra effort... but it never occurred to me then that the living room studio would not work for a morning/almost noon sitting on Sunday. Live and Learn!

Before my friend Evgenia arrived for my second portrait sitting, I took the time to review the on-line materials about three point lighting. As a result of that review, I made several revisions to the second studio. Specifically, I reduced the wattage of the bulbs in the fill and the back lights. On Saturday, I'd had 150 watts in the main light, 150 watts in the back light, and 100 watts in the fill light. On Sunday, the main light was 150 watts, the fill light was 60 watts, and the back light was 60 watts. This time, I used automatic settings for the white balance, ISO, and exposure compensation and disabled the flash function. Each time I turned the camera off to stage the next series of photos, however, the auto flash was re-enabled when I turned the camera back on... and sometimes I did not remember to take care of this until AFTER I'd taken a picture or two... (SIGH!)

My results during the second portrait sitting on Sunday were, on the whole, much better than those from Saturday night. I regret that Dave and Laurie's shots didn't turn out better because I'd really wanted to give them an 8x10" print to frame. I spent quite a lot of time editing their pictures and organizing them to contribute to an entertaining format, though, and I'm hoping that the photos will look okay as 4x6" prints. I plan to make a small photo album to give to them as a gift, instead.



You can view my pictures of Dave and Laurie here.

The pictures of Evgenia are here.

Down at the Station

We hurried down to Saint Louis Union Station right after work on Friday afternoon in order to get some pictures of the building's exterior architecture before it turned dark. Having accomplished that, we walked the interior at our leisure ... and even had a cocktail in the Grand Ballroom!

The rest of this series can be viewed here.

A Walk with Sienna

Our son, DIL, and grand-daughter Sienna are visiting from California to celebrate her first birthday on October 2. All of us took a walk last Saturday morning to enjoy the fresh fall-ish air and to view the first peeks of red foliage.

You can see more of Sienna, and the very best landscapes I could find in our neighborhood, right here.

Reasons for My Discontent

Last night, after posting some pretty underwhelming photo results for my "flash experiments" assignment, I signed onto the class' blog site so I could show my husband some of the really creative photo journaling assignments of my classmates from last week. While watching those slideshows for the second time, I wondered how Robert was able to get the red lightning-like lines to originate exactly at his Superhuman's eyes. I again admired the artistry of Kacie's composition and the action that her still shots were able to convey. Amy's assignment was just pure fun -- a labor and delivery in surreal black and white. And Allison's picnic... I love the way she sees things! The black and white cat on the blue step... the way she photographed the spreading of the blanket from a vantage point somewhere underneath it... thinking to take a photo of the weave of her picnic basket... and on and on.

When I'd returned to Allison's blog, I saw the very cool drum shot that was her teaser for this week's assignment... and so I had to look at that. I was completely blown away by the clarity of her shots as compared with my own run-and-jump attempts from Sunday night... and so I began shooting more photos(the first one a blatant plagiary of Allison's water idea, I admit!).

As well as shooting the water in the drain, I tried taking a swoosh shot of the TV (that's Jay Leno) -- and a whole lot of moving fan shots (these ideas, also, a-la- Allison). What else could I photograph while it was moving? I took pictures of a basil plant on the kitchen table (it's uppermost leaf was quivering in the breeze of the fan overhead). I took pictures of my own foot while it was tapping time to music (it looks like it was still) -- and of my husband swinging an orange stuffed cat by the tail (two of these look like still shots; the third one is swooshy, but blurred).
SIGH... you can view the results of these second efforts here.

I ended my second flurry of photography feeling a bit disconcerted. I guess I just need lots more practice... and I definitely will not quit my day job!

Jumping Jack Flash

Our assignment for this week was to experiment with the camera's various flash settings. I took three sets of pictures. The first set used manual settings and the long shutter feature -- without benefit of flash -- at about 7:30 p.m. -- with a different ISO and length of exposure for each photo. The last shot in the series allowed 15 seconds of exposure and is completely white because it was shot at 1600 ISO.

The second set of photos I took used the camera's Night Photo scene mode. These were the best quality shots that I got the whole evening (but of course, the settings are entirely automatic!).

The last set of pictures was taken with the long shutter feature again, but this time with the flash on. It was about 8:15 p.m. Some were taken with the camera held still, and the rest were taken while moving the camera a little bit. For this last set, I again varied the ISO but held the exposure time constant at 1 second.

I was a little confused about this assignment (that is, what all I was trying to accomplish) and am not entirely certain even now that I did it correctly. I did achieve the various effects -- freezing the [jumping] action; creating the swoosh-y continuous action illusions of jumping/running; and getting the lightning-type effect of the camera moved slightly while taking a picture. But I didn't catch on to a rationale for using these effects deliberately, and I am far from feeling I have any kind of control over the results I attain while using them. One thing that I do know for sure is that my use of the techniques in this assignment did not result in the art-y effects that were shown in the links posted to our course's Blackboard page!

You can see my very patient hubby jumping from a retaining wall in the back yard -- and then sprinting past me in the front yard -- (over and over and OVER again!!) here.

Schafley Bottleworks' ART OUTSIDE

The assignment for this week -- Photo Journaling -- was to "capture" an event with a collection of pictures that would tell a story of sorts. Since I had a lot of other things I needed to do this weekend, I wanted to get my pictures taken on Friday. At work that day, I checked the Entertainment section of the Post Dispatch on-line to see what was going on.

Late on Friday afternoon, we went to the Alternative Art Fair at Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood. It was the first day of the weekend-long event, and we arrived about 1/2 hour after the fair opened. This allowed me to get some relatively un-crowded and not-quite-ready-for-prime-time shots early on. If you have frequented the Clayton Art Fair, you would understand better why this show was billed the Alternative Art Fair. But I liked it -- and found the artists and the art patrons to be often as interesting as the art being displayed.

The problems I encountered with this assignment had to do mainly with lighting -- how to avoid the glare of bright sunlight on the faces and clothing of my human subjects at 5:45 p.m. -- and at 8-something, what I could do (if anything) to prevent the reddish tint on the faces of band members photographed under the cover of a performance tent that was lit from within. On the plus side, I am becoming more accustomed to the shortcomings of my camera's telephoto capacities, and this week was able to make changes between settings for ISO and white balance with more of a rationale and less guesswork, overall.

I'd like to learn something about photo composition, and plan to do some reading on that. It was easier, though, for me to feel I had a little bit of an "eye" for composition this week -- as opposed to last week, for the portrait photography.

You can view the rest of my photographs for this assignment here.

And a Good Time Was Had By All

I could say so much more about this wonderful weekend... how great it was to see my brothers, sister, sister-in-law, nieces and nephews again... how nice it was to meet the guests of some of these family members, as well as Jeff and his family and friends... how touching it was to see Kelly come up the long aisle of St. Rita's church, flanked by her mom and dad and beaming ear-to-ear... and hearing Kelly and Jeff exchange their vows, and be introduced as a married couple by the priest... and at the reception, seeing them ride the carousel... and watching Kelly dance with her dad, and Jeff dance with his mother...

How much fun we all had at the reception! I'll end this long post now, with one happy video!

The Newlyweds

As I mentioned in the very first installment of today's post (and someday I MUST figure out how to have the first post show up first, and last post show up last, instead of just the opposite! Ideas, anyone?!?), Kelly is my oldest niece, was my parents' first grandchild, and is my god-child (she was born when I was a senior in high school, and boy, was I proud to be named her godmother!)

Today, Kelly is a really wonderful woman with many interests and many friends. She is an athlete: a starter on her wheelchair basketball team, the Connecticut Spokebenders (and the first woman to be one, at that!). And as of Saturday, September 5, 2009, she is a married lady! Her husband Jeff seems to be a wonderful man, and what we could all tell for sure is that Mr. and Mrs. are very much in love... Congratulations, Kelly and Jeff!!

You can view more of my wedding portraits of Kelly and Jeff here.

Lighthouse Point Park, New Haven, CT

Kelly and Jeff's wedding reception was held at Lighthouse Point Park in New Haven, Connecticut. The park, as its name suggests, is home to a lighthouse -- one that is octagonal in shape (a Connecticut lighthouse trademark) and completed in 1847. Its exterior is made of sandstone that was hauled by horse-drawn drays. The interior is lined with New Haven brick. It has a circular staircase made of granite from local quarries, and 74 steps lead to the lighthouse's lantern.

The lighthouse is located at the eastern point of New Haven Harbor. The view beyond the lighthouse is beautiful in the daylight and even more spectacular at sunset. Across from the lighthouse is an enclosed pavilion that contains the Lighthouse Park Carousel -- one of only about 100 carousels still in use today. It was inside this pavilion that we ate dinner, danced, and -- yes! -- rode the carousel at Kelly and Jeff's wedding reception. I told them that theirs was, hands down, the most picturesque wedding reception I'd ever been to. Our class assignment was to try to take portraits that looked like portraits you might see in a magazine or book, and this setting was surely up to that challenge!

Almost 21

As I had my first cup of coffee in bed on Saturday morning, I decided that the white curtains covering the window in the hotel room would serve rather nicely as the background for a portrait sitting. At breakfast, I recruited my subject: my niece Stephanie, soon-to-be 21 years old and a Air[wo]man First Class in the U.S. Air Force.

I took about 100 photos that morning in the room. I took a few more shots later with Steph dressed in her wedding finery, both at the wedding and that evening during the reception. You can see more of our "shoot" here.

Thanks, Steph! You're a great girl and an awesome model!

Quick Trip to Connecticut

Kelly, my oldest niece and god-daughter, was married this weekend in Hamden, Connecticut. My husband and I arrived at the hotel in Orange on Friday afternoon and were back in St. Louis by 2 p.m. on Sunday afternoon. Between those times was a fun meal at The Chowder Pot with my two brothers, sister-in-law JoAnn, and niece Stephanie on Friday evening... an extended "photo shoot" with Steph after breakfast on Saturday morning... and the nuptuals at 1 p.m., followed by the wedding reception at 5 p.m. We had to pack Saturday night after getting back to the hotel from the reception (so that we could get our wake-up call at 5 a.m. and make it to the airport on time!). WHEW!

In the week before the trip, I'd looked forward to taking photos of people I don't get to see very often for this assignment. I wanted to be able to get really good shots at this really special event! My task was to experiment with ISO camera settings in bright outdoor and low inside lighting... and at close, wide angle, and telephoto ranges.

On the way to the hotel, I practiced my bright daylight and close range shots in the car, using my genial hubby as a model. You can view the rest of that short series here.

Sunday Coffee Break (4:37 p.m.)

Here is my third (and last!) set of indoor photos.

4:30 p.m.: New Room, New Subject

Here is the link to my second set of indoor shots, taken in the kitchen.

A Dark, Dank Living Room (4:15 p.m.)

Here is my first set of indoor photos.

3:50 p.m. on a Cloudy Sunday Afternoon...

Here is the link to my outdoor shots.

White Balance

Our first assignment was to take a series of pictures using each of the camera's white balance manual presets: automatic white balance (AWB); Sun; Clouds; Tungsten Lighting; Fluorescent Lighting; and High Fluorescent Lighting. This was to be done with the flash disabled.

I decided that I would take a set outdoors and a set indoors. My husband agreed to be my model. The outdoor shots were not a problem. But I was really disappointed with the quality of the indoor shots -- even on the AWB and the appropriate (i.e Tungsten) settings. I ended up taking three sets of indoor shots, choosing a new location for the second and third sets, and experimenting with an inanimate subject for the second set.

At the end of it all, I deduced that the flash is just that important... and/OR that my home has some pretty poor lighting!

Hello!

This blog will serve as a method of "turning in" homework assignments for my Fall 2009 Digital Photography class. I love taking pictures, and over the past ?? years have taken some shots that I've been quite pleased with. Still, I know that I could have better results -- and more consistently -- if I learn more about how my camera works. I confess that I find the camera manual pretty mysterious, with its minimalistic explanation of settings and indications for the use of any particular setting. Its diagrams and pictures are also less than intuitive, to say the least.

It's my first time to create or post to a blog, so I'm anxious to see how I like that, too. This semester's experience with blogging will allow me to decide whether I'd like to keep up the blogging after the class is over.

So here we go!