Photography
Photo Update: February
21/03/07 10:45
Enjoy the new shots in the gallery!
My friend Kayla is in town, so I'll have to put WW on hiatus for the next 5 days. In the mean time, look forward to reviews of The Tipping Point and Getting Things Done.
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Tell me more about this... "Photoshop" you speak of
11/02/07 12:12
12 hours later I
emerge, grimy with sweat and pixels, bearing the efforts of my
labours: two edited photos.
Despite my dad's pesterings, I had long avoided using any photo editing software. I found fiddling with colour to do more damage than it was worth, editing for blemishes often looked heavy-handed and unnatural, and I had hangups over messing with the "reality" that my camera captured. Any pro photographer will tell you that's silly, of course. A camera is just a device that captures light, and its functioning is just as subjective as our own eyes taking in and making sense of light. I still feel that I want to capture what I saw, but now I have realized that I need photo editing to make that happen, because my camera can't do it all on its own.
Anyway, I've been riding the lappy for the last 5 hours, screwing around with the site design and I am fed up. These colours and fonts are a bit "happy" but I think the site will function better on browsers this way.
Oh, and check out the photos.
Despite my dad's pesterings, I had long avoided using any photo editing software. I found fiddling with colour to do more damage than it was worth, editing for blemishes often looked heavy-handed and unnatural, and I had hangups over messing with the "reality" that my camera captured. Any pro photographer will tell you that's silly, of course. A camera is just a device that captures light, and its functioning is just as subjective as our own eyes taking in and making sense of light. I still feel that I want to capture what I saw, but now I have realized that I need photo editing to make that happen, because my camera can't do it all on its own.
Anyway, I've been riding the lappy for the last 5 hours, screwing around with the site design and I am fed up. These colours and fonts are a bit "happy" but I think the site will function better on browsers this way.
Oh, and check out the photos.
Photos, Round 2
04/01/07 14:06
I've put
up the pics
for the rest of my trip. Enjoy!
At dad's we pigged out and watched hockey games. I also managed to drag my dad and his friend who was visiting out on snowshoes, despite the fact that they work on them 5 months a year. Back in Kelowna I met with my financial advisor and generally visited and ate too much. On the 31st, with heavy heart, I boarded a flight down to Vancouver, where I met up with Kayla and managed to soothe the ache of leaving by partying with her.
And bang, here I am again, having spent the last day and a half trying to put it all down on my site.
At dad's we pigged out and watched hockey games. I also managed to drag my dad and his friend who was visiting out on snowshoes, despite the fact that they work on them 5 months a year. Back in Kelowna I met with my financial advisor and generally visited and ate too much. On the 31st, with heavy heart, I boarded a flight down to Vancouver, where I met up with Kayla and managed to soothe the ache of leaving by partying with her.
And bang, here I am again, having spent the last day and a half trying to put it all down on my site.
So I Am Still Going Through Ecstasies
09/12/06 12:17
On
Wednesday I took basically the greatest photo I have ever taken.
Have a look at the gallery and
guess which one it is in the comments. So through the haze of
photographic ecstasy, I've made a few other revelations:
Having a huge aperture means you actually have to pay attention when you are focussing. My old camera focussed very slowly, period, so I always had to take time. Since the Rebel can shoot so fast continuously,
AND it has a really wide aperture,
the possibility of having truly out of focus shots is greatly
magnified. The geisha shot from the previous gallery proves it - I
blasted away without taking much care to focus, and I got a very
fuzzy geisha. I've been using the maximum aperture most of the
time, and it has surprised me. The main "problem" has been, as in
the photo of the girl on the bridge with the yellow umbrella, that
only part of the main subject is in focus. I wanted the whole girl,
but the distance different between the edge of the umbrella and her
face meant that her face is blurry.
This certainly isn't bad - but it is a challenge. If I am using autofocus I need to make sure my aperture isn't too big, and that it has focussed on the right thing.
Another realization has been more psychological: I always wondered how pro photographers could get into peoples faces and take photos. For me, I have found that raising a camera to my face is sort of like hiding behind it. I'm not holding a digicam out at arm's length in a superobvious photo pose; instead I am concealing my face and looking at the world through a very small window, somehow cut off from reality a little. That, coupled with much faster shot taking time and a long lens that doesn't require me to really get into people's faces means that I am taking photos of strangers that look good for the first time.
Having a huge aperture means you actually have to pay attention when you are focussing. My old camera focussed very slowly, period, so I always had to take time. Since the Rebel can shoot so fast continuously,
This certainly isn't bad - but it is a challenge. If I am using autofocus I need to make sure my aperture isn't too big, and that it has focussed on the right thing.
Another realization has been more psychological: I always wondered how pro photographers could get into peoples faces and take photos. For me, I have found that raising a camera to my face is sort of like hiding behind it. I'm not holding a digicam out at arm's length in a superobvious photo pose; instead I am concealing my face and looking at the world through a very small window, somehow cut off from reality a little. That, coupled with much faster shot taking time and a long lens that doesn't require me to really get into people's faces means that I am taking photos of strangers that look good for the first time.
New Camera Magic!
04/12/06 12:21
After
months of saving and the help of family for Christmas, I've bought
my first Digital SLR. The body is the previous entry level Canon
model, called the Digital Rebel XT in
North America (the digital Kiss here,
unfortunately). The lens is a 50mm/1.4 fixed lens, which, despite
it's cheap design, has received really strong reviews for picture
quality.
3 things really stand out, in comparison to my faithful little Canon A95:
Aperture size - my previous max was 2.8 - now it is 1.8 - meaning that my ability to take in light and to have cool depth of field effects has multiplied by 3.
Light sensitivity - my old max sensitivity was 400 but it was grainy as all hell - now it is 1600 and looks great!
Shooting speed - I can power up, focus and take a photo in 6 seconds if the light is decent and I have a good stationary object with the A95 - with the XT it takes a second and a half or so (unless I leave the lens cap on, retard!) The geisha shot I took (and I took two) you can see in the gallery wouldn't have been possible at that proximity with my old camera. The shots are out of focus because I aimed poorly in my excitement.
Enjoy!
3 things really stand out, in comparison to my faithful little Canon A95:
Aperture size - my previous max was 2.8 - now it is 1.8 - meaning that my ability to take in light and to have cool depth of field effects has multiplied by 3.
Light sensitivity - my old max sensitivity was 400 but it was grainy as all hell - now it is 1600 and looks great!
Shooting speed - I can power up, focus and take a photo in 6 seconds if the light is decent and I have a good stationary object with the A95 - with the XT it takes a second and a half or so (unless I leave the lens cap on, retard!) The geisha shot I took (and I took two) you can see in the gallery wouldn't have been possible at that proximity with my old camera. The shots are out of focus because I aimed poorly in my excitement.
Enjoy!