Day 44

So, I'm finally caught up. (there is no day 45 shot)

Last night I went down to the Pt. Loma Sport Fishing Docks for dinner with friends. We sat out at the rail at the Hudson Bay Seafood restaurant. The food was good. I like the crabcakes :)

While we sat there I played with the camera and was adjusting for exposure using the brow. The Auo exposure had this shot as bright as daylight. So I stopped the speed down until I got an exposure I liked.



There are 2 elements that I really like about this one. The subtle colors and shadows. And the pattern.

Now, I could crop to better accentuate the pattern. And I think that I'll try that. Just to see what happens. But not tonight :)

Day 43

I really don't like this photo. The only reason it's here is so the folks in it can download it if they want to. I really botched this one.

Day 42

Well, somewhere in here I lost about 25 photos. For the life of me I can't figure out what the hell I did with them. If I find them I'll fill in the missing days. This is days 37 to 41. Oh well.

So on to day 42.

There are 2 photos today. We were in Torrey Pines State park. I caugt a picture of the Cliffside buckwheat.



I like this one for 2 reasons. The color of the ripening head is brighter than the other buckwheat I shot. And I didn't even realize that there was a species that grew only within a few feet of the cliffs edge overlooking the ocean. So I though I'd share.

The second shot was of new growth on a Coastal Prickly Pear (Opuntia littoralis).



I like the combination of the colors, composition (it just looks right to me), and detail (the silk strand).

Day 31 and 32

Ok, so I lied in the last post. I decided to do 1 photo from each day.

Day 31. Since this was the friday open practice, we went out after for food. I caught this photo of Erik as he sat next to me.



I like the expression on his face. The color adds a certain urgency to the photo as well :) This was just playing around. So you should call this a snapshot. But hey, a good snapshot can be a photograph is you're lucky.

Day 32.

I took this shot of the dinner table. I really liked the pattern that the candles and napkins made.



I used a narrow depth of field to add to the feeling of a long table. I like this one.

Day 30-35

Well, I was shooting here. Mostly is was for our annual seminar. While I'll post photos, I don't think that I'll blog them. I was pretty busy :)

Day 29

Once more I was playing with the in camera controls for this series. For this group I was trying the Picture controls. There are 4 of them:

Standard - DSC_1729.jpg
Neutral - DSC_1730.jpg
Vivid - DSC_1731.jpg
Monochrome - DSC_1732.jpg



As you can see there are some differences :)

I think what I'll need to do is find a better subject and try this one again.

Day 28

Another shot of Buckwheat. Well, it is what's blooming at the moment. This one was taken at Torrey Pines SP.



So what is better about this one? Let's see... the background is dark. This sets the subjet apart. It also is more buckwheat. This helps establish both continuity of subject and environment. It keeps the subject grounded and isolates it, but doesn't remove it from it's habitat.

What could be better? Depth of field. This would have benefited from a bit deeper DoF and a tripod.

Still, It is an improvement over the last one.

Day 26/27

No post

Day 25

Day 25
Originally uploaded by bmorris1313

I'm trying something new. Flickr has a function to blog the photo straight to a site. So let's try it out and see what happens.


This photo was taken as a curiosity because of this jokers bad parking. I thought the ticket was funny. Although the author could have left off the comment about the car.


Man, What a bad job of html. I think I'll stick to using the blogs editor for now.

Day 24

We're in La Jolla for lunch. I'd been playing with the in camera controls and wasn't happy with the previous photos I was playing with. The Quality was set to RAW and jpeg fine. As we pulled up to a light I saw the lady at the bus stop. So I grabbed a quick shot and started to play with it in the camera.



What attracted me to this was the street quality to the situation. If I hadn't mentioned La Jolla, you could have placed this at any bus stop.

So the first setting that I played with was Monochrome. Once I changed it I saved. That gave me 2 jpegs of the scene. Then I tried the crop. Especially since there was a lot of extraneous crap around the edges. As I went through the setting I found that I could do only use 3 settings: 4/3, 5/4, 3/2. I chose 5/4ths. I tried to crop vertical but there is no setting for that. It would be a useful thing to have I think.

Still, it really is pretty usefull to be able to do corrections and basic editing right in the camera.

Day 23

So, I got hungry and decided to get a snack. So I go to Wendy's to get some fries and they tell me to please pull forward. Guess what I see?



As I sat around waiting I decided to try a bit more gritty look that I'm used to. So I used the 5 minutes to play with various settings and took a bunch of exposures. I wanted a darker more saturated feel to this one. So I dropped down the ISO and aperture until I had several exposures that looked adequate in the camera. One I got a chance to look at them in Lightroom I chose this one. I think I at least captured some of the feel I was looking for.

Day 22

Right now we're at the tail end of the blooming of our local Bottlebrush trees. We also have quite a large hive of honeybees around here as well. For the past couple of months the bees have been really going after the pollen from these trees. You can hear the buzzing and it's pretty loud.

Since most of the blossoms have fallen. I decided to try to get a macro of a bee on the flower.



The problem with this is...

I wasn't using a tripod.
The bees were moving quick.
The focus kept going for the outer edges of the flowers while the bees were down inside.
I had the depth of field too shallow.

So the lessons are...

Use a tripod (duh)
Patience
Watch the focus and use manual if necessary
Watch the depth of field
Use a ladder

Day 21

I've finally got more than 2 days in a row. Its going to be busy this weekend so I'll try to put up a couple of posts tonight.

The photo today is of ripening buckwheat. Or at least that's what I remember this as.



This was taken in Mission Trails park. At the moment there are thousands of these plants going from white to golden brown. The first few attempts were to try to get the feel of the broad swaths of color and texture these plants show. Unfortunately I didn't get it. So I tried to do the next step. It goes something like this (in my brain anyway :) ):

"What is it about this that attracted my attention? Was it the color? Form? Pattern? Light? The image is too busy. Simplify. I like the golden brown. Maybe just a head?"

And that was it. I chimped a few to check composition and exposure and then shot around what I thought was a good setting. As it turned out it kinda captured what was the simplest image.

I also like the brown over the green background.

Is it great...no. But it is adequate. And I do like it.

Day 20

Missed.

But on the bright side I did get 3 posts in tonight.

Day 19

I tried once again to get a shot of a white flower.



I can't seem to figure out how to get a decent shot of something white. I'm going to have to try to find some techniques that work eventually. Maybe buy a flowering plant as a prop would help.

Day 17/18

Once again we get to skip another day. I won't go into details on these. It'll take up too much time and sound like an excuse.

Day 18.

I was walking the dog when these 2 flew up out of the grass.



I guess I caught them making little butterflies. While it isn't much of a shot. It was the closest I could get to these 2 without using a long lens. And I didn't want to disturb them more than we already had.

I did crop this one down to better show the butterflies.

Day 15/16

Not much happened on day 15.

Day 16 was a bit different. For the past couple of days I've been hearing the screech of several raptors. Today I finally spotted them in some Eucalyptus. So I ran inside and grabbed a cheap lens to see if I could capture one of them.

Well, I did.



While identifiable, the cheap ass lens sure shows how bad it is. No detail. Soft focus. It is so true that you get what you pay for.

The lens is a Quantaray 70-300mm macro. I got it for $130. It was advertised as a Sigma. So I took the chance. I guess a Quantaray is a Sigma. But it sure is the cheap end. Later I learned that Sigma sells rejects as Quantaray. Live and learn. This lesson is well learned ;)

And I do hope that someone can tell me what the bird is. I'm pretty bad at bird identification.

Note: this is the last photo in July

Day 14

2 weeks in. So far only 2 days missed. Not too bad. I suspect that I'll miss maybe 5% of the days deadlines for various reasons. So once I catch up it should run better.

On to the next photo.

For this one I broke out the 60mm micro. I've been seeing a lot of suckers on the local trees. I like the bright green against the gray bark. So far this is the best I've captured.



I like the green/gray color. But I don't feel I caught the brightness I was looking for. That would be a factor of either white balance tweaking or (more likely) a slightly darker exposure. I also don't really like the composition. I think that a more vertical format would give a feeling of height. Maybe a single/double leaf in vertical.

Maybe I'll retry this one in the near future.

Day 13

Today I tried to take a portrait of my dog. Well, I got a couple of ok shots. But not what I was looking for. While I was able to get an adequate exposure and focus. The background left something to be desired. To make a sorta short story shorter...this is what happens when your dog finally gets bored :)

Day 12

Last day of the Con. Exhaustion rules. So my choice is limited. Again I chose a model under glass.

Day 11

Saturday. Long day. Here's the photo I chose.



This is a close up of a model about a foot tall. It was lit from multiple angles. I really like the depth of field and the way the camera captured the colors. This was taken through a plexiglass housing.

Day 11+

I haven't posted in a while. I have been shooting. Problem has been time to sit down and do something with all of the photos. So I'll be taking a bit of time to get things together tonight and get some new photos uploaded.