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.