Valentine's Day, in light.

Any day is a good day to put an idea on paper, as it were. Today, the flashlight was my victim. Here is the result:



For those looking for an idea for Valentine's Day: it's more creative than a store bought card and your date/girlfriend/wife will love it because you created it. All you need is a little camera skill, a tripod and some patience. A dark room also helps (turn off the lights at night).

A winter of Black and White.

The cold weather (sub-zero temperatures) really lends itself to stretch the post processing muscles a little. This time, instead of doing a bland "average" gradient map conversion, I actually used Adobe Camera Raw's black and white conversion tool, and played with the color sliders a little until my model's skin tones looked 'right'. It's a little more work, but I feel it was worth it.



As usually, you be the judge! I really liked the way this particular photo converted.

Macros, Because You Know You Love Them.

I'll start with admitting this wasn't entirely an original idea, although I can't for the life of me remember who I got this from. I do like the results and I'm putting it on the "to explore" list.

I don't think this needs to much explanation, I included a pullback! Yeah, don't expect it too often. I like a little mystery to my work.

50mm, ƒ/11, 1/250sec and ISO 100. OCF camera right @ 1/8 power.


Pullback with same settings:

The Light is Golden.

Everyone with a camera will eventually stumble upon that moment when they say "dang, I wish I had my camera on me, right now!". Those are the moments worth recording. Today, I was making my way to make a cup of coffee. I walked into the kitchen, making my way toward the coffee maker. I noticed a rather nice shade of sunlight out, but from this floor there's usually very little to photograph. I then looked out the window. What I saw was nothing short of stunning.



The picture doesn't do it justice. I tried my hardest at finding the perfect angle from the window I shot this from, and this is the best I could find. The crystal look of the ice in combination with the way the light fell on it and the snow on the roof stopped me dead in my tracks. The light was by any definition of the word, Golden.

Focus on Manual Focus

So in the past few days I've been playing with the thought of exclusively using manual focus for a while. So out come the macros! Yeah, portraiture might be a nudge more difficult using fly-by-wire manual focus. I'll definitely have to practice that. That said, though, I'll have to practice that anyway, seeing as my addition will be fully manual.

Naturally some samples of my plays:


and



That last one was hand held at 1/40sec. Kudos to Olympus for getting it right with in-camera image stabilization!