Digital Zone System

Ansel Adams created a technique back in the 40s that was called the zone system. This system was made for black and white imagery, and was used to get the perfect exposure and tones that you wanted. Once digital photography came into play, this technique was rendered fairly useless, but by using this system it is easier to find a nice composure.

http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/how-to/shooting/the-digital-zone-system.html?start=1

Great Photography

http://www.topphotographers.net/

So not much to blog about today, but I found this website which was very interesting. It features many great photographers websites. I find it interesting to look through work like this, because it might give inspiration. There is so much diversity in photography, that one person even photographs in Xray!!!! I just feel that you can never learn to much, and being able to learn means that you need to study other work to see what works and what doesnt. This site really shows what can be done and how its done by certain people. Hopefully you will think this is as interesting as I did!

MY FIGHT IS

The first two photos are of my friend Kenny, modeling for MYFIGHT tshirts. These are both the same location, but they portray a different feeling in both of them. The black and white almost strikes you as anger. I like this, because it shows emotion towards what the shirts mean. The second is more somber. The lighting was good on this fence so I wanted to accentuate that. I boosted the contrast and vibrance levels on the lower image. He was also sitting on a towel, and I needed to edit that out because it was such a distraction. I actually did try to use a little bit of a fill flash here, but with very low power. It didnt have much effect, which is ok, because the shadows help give it a mood.

This next photo is of Kenny wearing another MYFIGHT t-shirt. I liked the breath in the photo, but when I took this, the background was just a little to blurry. I thought I had an ok aperature set, but this was not the case. I went into photoshop, selected everything around kenny and used a gaussian blur to less depth of field.

This next photo is of Caden. I was going for these all to be MYFIGHT advertisements, but this almost works for aeropostale better. I tried using this wall with the blue sky to make it interesting. I edited out red railing in the upper part of the photo and edited boards off the wall. The colors compliment well, but I dont know if the blue is distracting, and have not made up my mind.

This last photo is also for MYFIGHT. I thought ths fence was interesting. I didnt edit much other that contrast, but if I was to do this again, I would probably not let the bar go through the head like it is :(

Characteristics of a Great Image

I did not know if I was supposed to go out and take photos of what a "Great Image" should be and since I have been sick, I have not had that luxury. I also do not know if I have taken a "great" photo myself. Instead, there is a photo website called 1x.com that I have used for a long time. This site is a very good site in terms of what good photos should be. This site has very high restrictions of what can be posted, and unless you have an eye catching photo, it will not be posted. By looking through these photos, it is easy to obtain what a good photo should be.

1x.com

Guitar!

I decided to photograph my electric guitar the other week. I edited them quite a bit and did some more abstract things with them. I didnt really have a specific photo that I wanted to take, but I wanted to try something different. There have been so many shots of guitars, there seems like there are only so many things that you can capture, but I tried to do my best to be original.

Exposure

The photos in this blog show what different shutter speeds, ISOs and apertures look like. All the photos are untouched except for the white balance.

Shutter

The first two photos are a fast shutter speed and slow shutter speed. These were shot without a flash and with a desk lamp on right behind them.

60mm, 1/200sec @ f/11, iso 400

60mm, 1/30sec @ f/13, iso 200

Aperture

The next two photos demonstrate depth of field with different apertures. For some reason, my aperture on my lens would only open up to f/3.3. These were shot in relatively low light with just a table lamp on a few feet away. No Flash.

(Left)- 60mm, 1/2 sec @ f/20, iso 500

(Right)- 60mm, 1/20sec @ f/3.3, iso 500

ISO

These last two shots demonstrate ISO. The photos are taken in relatively low light once again with just a table lamp on in the room. The split section on the bottom shows the two images cropped at (1:1) 100%. This shows what the ISO actually does, because the normal pictures are fairly similar unless really looked at closer.

(Left)-60mm, 1/40sec @ f/3.3, iso 1600

(Right)-60mm, 1/2sec @ f/3.3, iso 100

The left photo shows a much grainier photo when cropped at 1:1. The right photo is more creamy and smooth.

Lazy EL Ranch

This past weekend, I went out to my fathers to the Lazy EL Ranch in Roscoe, MT. The weather warmed up just enough for us to go on a 15 minute walk, which by the end was freezing!! While out there I was able to photograph some horses and the landscape. The lighting was good for a bit and I feel some of these photos came out really well. I have been out there so many times, but have never taken many photos of the horses. This is a magical place, and being able to photograph it is very fun.

Trail Running

After resetting my camera and adding new firmware to it, the reds have not been a big problem yet, so we will see how that goes. I also began shooting in raw, so if it happens again, it might be easier to identify the problem.

I used some photos of my little (BIG) brother that have some reds that are really blown out, but I thought they worked anyways. I also used my roommate Jesse, to take more photos once I fixed my camera.

I feel some of these shots turned out decent. Nothing really stuck out to me as a very exciting photo, but they get the job done. I really like the colors in some of the photos. The corral that I had my brother in created nice lines and shapes that I thought add to the photos some.

I dont know why, but I really had trouble with this project. I guess its just one of those things that you have to keep doing to get better.

Blown out colors

During the reshoot of the trail running photograph, I have noticed that my camera has been blowing out reds and oranges to a point that the photos are not useable, because their is no definition in the area. I have added some photos of what went wrong. These are not good photos, but it gets my point across of what has been happening.

The photos both has some major problems color wise. They are both under exposed a little bit, but the main thing I wanted to point out is the shorts in the left picture has the blown out spot, and the orange hat in the right picture is really blown out.

There may be a few things that I figured could cause this. There was a vivid setting selected that i found that may have created this, but i doubt that is the main cause. I have turned it off and reset my camera to all defaults and after that the reds still seemed to have a problem. Some other blog posts made reference to Nikons all having a problem similar to this. I will need to go out some more and test it as soon as possible.

I dont know how to load them on here, but the historgrams from my camera show a spike red on the edges. This shows the blown out portion of the photo in this color. I am going to shoot in raw and post photos of how these turn out so that I can try and make adjustments.