Woof

I took notes this time!

This is a "daylight" shot:

This is a normal shot with "shade" white balance.

Shade acts as a warming filter to bring back the colors. If you use "shade" white balance for an early evening sunset, you will warm it up.  U can even use it to get a very light sepia effect.

This is the same flower shot with "Tungsten" white balance"

Everything gets a blue tint and seems to luminesce.

I left it un-cropped so you could see the effect on the different areas.  It seems to work better in soft or shaded light.  The real point is to play with and learn all the capabilities of that camera you bought with your hard earned dollars.  And of course to amaze your friends and make girls swoon  :)

Breaking the rules, eating dog food

Im not supposed to post on Sunday but I am so far behind I want to get this done!

A few years ago "eating our own dog food" was a hip business term.  It meant using your own products.  For me it means going out and shooting in the ways I talk about here.  So the other day I went out and unloaded my bag trying all my toys.  I took a LOT of bad pictures, partially because I had not used some of it in a bit.  Here are some of the good ones.

The black fabric trick is one of my favorites but by chance I didn't have mine.  But I was wearing a black coat, had my tripod and my remote.  As a result I was able to shoot this series:

this is a nice picture:

This is Dog Food!!

The ONLY difference between these pictures is the addition of a black pea coat behind the flower.  (**it was windy so the flower moved slightly between pictures)

Shortly after shooting this I decided to see just how far I could go with using steady hold and breathing to push my shutter speed down. Here is what I got at 1/6th of a second:

and here are the two pictures before and after:


Now this only works with stationary subjects or semi-stationary.  A great way to capture motion is to intentionally blur the subject while the background remains steady.  The key is keeping the background steady!  If you have to shoot 1/60 to do that, you are probably not going to get the blur you want.

Now here is where it gets sketchy.  I wanted to shoot with different white balance settings but I forgot to write down the settings!!  I think the first one is using fluorescent light.  The rest are tungsten:

Tungsten:


Normal:

Tungsten

Tungsten

I also used 10x filter on those.

Thats it for Sunday.  I am working on the DIY projects and remembering to take notes!