Wednesday, January 19, 2011
A Spur of the Moment Photo
It's January and several days ago we had a few hours of the dreaded "winter mix". Most of my backyard was encased first in snow and then in ice. Yesterday evening I noticed my favorite lawn ornament finally started to peek through the snow. I had to grab my camera before it got too dark and take a couple of shots of my "speak no evil" fat froggy! Sometimes the impromptu, "spur of the moment" shots end up being incredibly charming.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
The Bathroom Experiment
When I first began studying photography, I remember an old challenge for photo students to shoot a roll of film in the smallest, least interesting room in the house - the bathroom. This was to help develop the photographer's eye to see interest in the most mundane. It was a really quiet day for me, so I decided (after all these years) to finally try it. What the heck, I'm snowed in!!!
As I recall (haven't shot film in about 15 years), a roll of film had 36 exposures. I figured I would aim to get that number of images in my little bathroom. I began shooting away and when I downloaded the images to my computer, I was surprised to see that in only 25 minutes I had shot a total of 110 photos. Of course, many were crap and several were repeats when I tried different settings.
But in keeping with my goal of 36 images, I pulled out those I considered the most intertesting, starting with my colorful shower curtain.....
I used a very shallow depth of field to get the top corner of the tissue in sharp focus and have the rest of the image out of focus (blurred).
I found the monochromatic coloring and the intersecting lines of the blinds and curtains quite interesting. Of the following 3 images, the first had less exposure, the second had more exposure to make it lighter, and the last is taken at an angle to accent the "V" pattern.
The following 2 images are the same mirror and window, but with a shallow depth of field and the focus changing (first the window is in focus and in the second photo the mirror is in focus). Same settings otherwise - simply changing what was in or out of focus produces quite different effects.
The two images below are of the same subject with just a change in the amount of exposure and the tilt of the camera.
Of course, this was a perfect time to try for a self-portrait. Kinda hard to do when you can't look through the view finder! Used a few shots trying to get myself in the mirror!
As I recall (haven't shot film in about 15 years), a roll of film had 36 exposures. I figured I would aim to get that number of images in my little bathroom. I began shooting away and when I downloaded the images to my computer, I was surprised to see that in only 25 minutes I had shot a total of 110 photos. Of course, many were crap and several were repeats when I tried different settings.
But in keeping with my goal of 36 images, I pulled out those I considered the most intertesting, starting with my colorful shower curtain.....
I used a very shallow depth of field to get the top corner of the tissue in sharp focus and have the rest of the image out of focus (blurred).
I found the monochromatic coloring and the intersecting lines of the blinds and curtains quite interesting. Of the following 3 images, the first had less exposure, the second had more exposure to make it lighter, and the last is taken at an angle to accent the "V" pattern.
The following 2 images are the same mirror and window, but with a shallow depth of field and the focus changing (first the window is in focus and in the second photo the mirror is in focus). Same settings otherwise - simply changing what was in or out of focus produces quite different effects.
The two images below are of the same subject with just a change in the amount of exposure and the tilt of the camera.
Of course, this was a perfect time to try for a self-portrait. Kinda hard to do when you can't look through the view finder! Used a few shots trying to get myself in the mirror!
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