Friday, November 28, 2008

What's This? (Part 3)

Ready for round 3?

Guess what the objects in the pictures are. Leave your answers in a comment. Take a look at all the pictures first, before looking at the comments as someone may have already made guesses.




Wednesday, November 26, 2008

It Snowed Some More! (part 1)

Well looks like winter has arrived. I'm not sure what the official amount was, but, on average, it was up to my knees. So I wrapped up the camera in a plastic bag and took a walk.






Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Seems We're Having a Baby!

We had our first ultrasound today and saw his/her little heart beating so I thought I'd take a picture. Seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

Monday, November 24, 2008

First Snow!

It snowed for the first time this season a few days ago so I had to rush out and get some shots. It was cold, but I love the snow!




Friday, November 21, 2008

What's the Difference?

Another game!

Look at the two photos below. They're almost the same, but there are some differences. Can you spot them? Leave your answers in a comment. You can click on the photos to get a larger view.

Don't look at the comments until you've studied the pictures for a while.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Have you heard of Animoto?

I created this video in about 5 minutes!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Lights

Here's some interesting, kind of abstract, photos of some cars passing by.  I started out with the idea that I'd get some sunset shots and maybe some of the city where I live from a nearby hill, but I was a little slow to get going and missed the sunset completely and I didn't have a tripod at the time, so good night-time shots were out of the question.  These were taken with 3 or 4 second shutter speeds and some deliberate shake and movement.

This is really just a last minute attempt to post something at least three times a week.


Monday, November 17, 2008

More Water, Again

Playing with water is fun!





What's This? (Part 2)

Time for another around. Hopefully these are a little more challenging.

Guess what the objects in the pictures are. Leave your answers in a comment. Take a look at all the pictures first, before looking at the comments as someone may have already made guesses.





Friday, November 14, 2008

What's This? (Part 1)

Last week I said that I'd have something interactive so here it is.

Let's play a game! Below are some close-ups of things. Can you guess what objects are? Leave a comment with your answers. We'll start with some easy ones.





Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Another Walk Through the Woods

Well I haven't posted anything in a while, so here you go. I even tried some abstract type editing on the last one to make it more interesting.













Monday, November 10, 2008

Some More Water

Well I didn't get a lot done this weekend, but I did find a little time to play with some more water.

I set up a mini studio to get some splash shots. I started with a square vase that had reasonably flat sides so that the glass wouldn't distort the image too much. I think an aquarium would have been better, but I don't have one. I set the camera on a tripod and focused it manually on an object I held in the middle of the vase. I used manual focus for a couple reasons: I wanted to be able to take a shot as quickly as possible, the auto focus takes time; and I wanted to be able lock the focus in the same spot every time.

Some of the splashes were somewhat large so I used the blue bowl as an umbrella.

Setting up the flash was a little tricky. I don't have an external flash (yet) so I was stuck with the built in flash. I wanted to light the vase from the side so that there wouldn't be a reflection on the front of the vase blocking the subject that was within. So I found a white cardboard box and made two shades, one to block the flash from hitting the front of the vase and another to reflect the light into the side. It worked alright.

Once set up, I filled up the vase with water, sat down and dropped rocks in the vase and tried to press the shutter at just the right time. I have a remote shutter switch which came in handy, I didn't have to worry about accidentally moving anything by reaching my hand into my contraption. It took a few tries to get the timing right, but some of them are interesting.

I started out with a white background.


Later I switched to black.








I'm not sure which background I like better. I think next time I'll try more interesting backgrounds that are multi coloured to add another layer of complexity.

I must not have been paying too much attention to the flash shade and reflector. You can see that there's a quite a range in the amount of light that's hitting the subjects. Most of the shots used a shutter speed of 1/200, the white ones were 1/40. f5.0 and ISO 400 was used for everything. So I figure that maybe the reflector got moved. Oh well, live and learn.


If you have any ideas or tips or would like to say anything, please feel free to leave a comment.