PhotoCurve

Back again! (This time to stay)

2014-10-15T05:42:00.000-07:00

All right, this is getting silly. It's been over a year since I've posted on this blog. I took some time off to really get a handle on taking pictures and creating art. So from now on, I promise I will be updating at least twice a month. I've learned a lot over the past year, and I want to share as much as I can. Let's start with this one!

This photo was taken in Port Hardy BC. I had just received a Canon EOS 40D for Christmas, and I wanted to try it out. The way the sun was trying to come through the clouds on an otherwise dreary day on the North Island, looked interesting to me. So I stopped near the end of the boardwalk to try a few shots. Since I was new to the camera, I didn't realize that the ISO setting was at 1600, or that my exposure time was at 1/3200 sec. And my F-stop was at f/20. I just sort of turned my camera on and went for it. I'd never owned a DSLR before, what the hell did I know?? In the end, I wound up with an interesting shot (once I changed the filters around and edited the photo in Paint.Net) that will always remind me that, sometimes even when you don't quite know what you're doing, not many pictures are unable to be saved or appreciated :)

Okay. Well, I will have another update in a few days. Again, to those of you that were reading this blog, sorry for the long unexplained absence. I have returned and am around to stay! :D

Update (Finally)!

2013-10-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

Well. It's been over a year since I've updated this blog. But now I feel I finally have some pictures worth adding to the site. I have been very busy with work and travel as well. Around this time last year, my mother aunt and I went to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This picture was taken in Angkor Wat, Cambodia. Our tour group was meandering its way through the temple and I saw this woman walking away in this hallway. She was framed nicely, so I took the shot on the fly. When I looked at it later on my computer after we'd returned from our trip, I realized that she looked as if she wasn't quite there, almost "ghost-like". Now the original photo was in color, but I felt if I changed it to black and white and upped the contrast a little bit it could be so much more. And so here we have a photo I like to call, "Ghost in the Temple". Enjoy! :)

Sometimes it just happens

2012-07-03T14:02:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you get lucky and get that perfect shot the first time! This is my mom and I think she looks beautiful here. We had stopped at a little cafe in Seville (Cadiz) and my father had run off to use the washroom somewhere. My mom had slipped into the cafe to grab some coffee and I was standing a little further away having a cigarette. My mom came out of the cafe and was just taking a drink when I saw the perfect opportunity. When I first took the shot, I'd thought I'd missed it. It wasn't until I uploaded the picture that I saw how great it actually was. All I had to do with this one was adjust the brightness and contrast slightly to bring out my mom's best features! It just goes to show you that people are easier to photograph they're caught off guard. I find that most posing looks a little silly, but if you catch them in a pose that looks natural, it usually turns out pretty great!

Trevi Fountain

2012-05-20T22:05:00.000-07:00

This was one of the places I was thrilled to see; the Trevi Fountain in Rome! I adjusted the color saturation and the brightness and contrast to really bring out the blue in the water and the golden color of the stones that usually get washed out by the blazing hot sun. It actually hurt my eyes a little bit while I was taking the shot, but it was so worth it! I also used the sharpening tool and I am quite pleased with the result. Sure this picture may have been taken by a thousand other people, but this one's special because it's mine!

Lovely Wedding

2012-05-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of my beautiful cousin Christine Braiden (now Christine Thomas). She picked one of the most gorgeous places to get married. And I love her so much that I wanted to make her look even more beautiful! I used the Glow feature in Paint. Net and adjusted the contrast to highlight the nicest features on her face. The next pictures are just to showcase the happy couple!

Gecko Art!

2012-05-06T23:25:00.001-07:00

I took this picture when I was in Tortola, BVI. The original is much different than this one! I wanted this one to look more like art, something you would want to hang on your wall and have people go "wow! Where'd you get that??" I change the hues and the saturation and then used the Posterize feature in Paint.Net and played around a little bit with the settings and finally settled on this one here. I love bright colours and while we were on our cruise in the Caribbean there was no shortage of that! The photo below is the original, which I love as well.

This little gecko just posed perfectly for me. I think he thought he was camouflaged lol, because he didn't move for a good 10 minutes! Once again I was incredibly blessed to have such a wonderful subject. Hope y'all like it! That's enough for now, I should've been in bed hours ago!

2012-05-05T13:38:00.001-07:00

One Wing

2012-05-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

This was another picture I took in Seville (Cadiz). I just loved the way the light was hitting the one side of this "Guardian Angel" statue. I really adored visiting some of the older parts of Europe, it's so beautiful there. And this place was no exception. What really made me want to take this shot, was the fact that this angel only had one wing. It intrigued me and it was something that struck a chord in me. I felt sad, knowing that, at one time, this angel was whole, but the cathedral it was guarding had obviously fallen into disrepair at one time. When I asked why it hadn't been fixed, the tour guide replied that the town had only raised enough money to restore the inside of the church and not everything on the outside. It's just such a shame, something so beautiful will never be put back together, so that others may appreciate it. Now of course I did some editing to this photo, but only a little to enhance the green colour of the moss that was growing all over the statue. I wanted to emphasize the state of disrepair it was in when I saw it. What I'm trying to do with a lot of my shots is convey the emotions I was feeling at the time I took them. How am I doin' so far? I think I can do better. Anyway, that's all for now!

An Angel's Sunset

2012-04-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

I just love this picture! I took this one as we were leaving Fort-de-France, Martinique. I hadn't had a very successful day of taking photo's, I hadn't really found anything to inspire me, or that just jumped out and said "wow, that would make a great shot!" so I was feeling a little down. Then when I looked over my balcony, I saw dolphins jumping and swimming to the horizon and their antics made me throw my head back in laughter. In doing this I noticed this beautiful cloud formation framing the sun. I rushed back inside to grab my camera and took the shot! Of course the sky wasn't nearly this blue when I took the shot, and the orange hues were much less pronounced, so I uploaded this picture onto to my laptop and had some fun with Paint.Net. As I was editing the photo, I noticed the clouds kinda looked like angel wings, hence the title of this entry. It's funny; if I hadn't seen the dolphins, I doubt if I would have even noticed the beauty right in front of me. Sometimes, I'm so damn lucky!

Beauty Fountain

2012-04-18T19:02:00.001-07:00

This photo was taken at one of the most beautiful fountains I've ever seen, in the town square of Seville (Cadiz). I really changed this one up. The blue wasn't nearly as bright and the brightness of the water was increased a great deal. I made a bottom layer in Paint.net ( I used the "clouds base") and then I used the "glow" function to bring out the really bright spots in the water and highlight the shadows on the statues face. You know, in the past, I was really against using photo editing software. I figured, if you're not going to get the shot right the first time, what's the point, right? Wrong. When I think of all the photo's I've "tossed", I actually feel a little ill. I now realize that every photo I take has the potential to be wonderful. Time to buy more mini-drives, or maybe even a terrabyte! lol

Soldier in The Sun

2012-04-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

This photo is one of my absolute favourites! My parents and I were being herded through the entrance to the Vatican and there were all these magnificent statues arranged around a room without a ceiling. This was before we entered the actual church, where much to my dismay, I was told I wouldn't be allowed to take any photos. So I took as many pictures as I could to try and convey my astonishment at how well these statues and artifacts had been preserved. This one in particular was lit so dramatically from the angle I was viewing it that I just had to keep the image forever! Now, I did tweak this one a little; the color of the wall in the original picture is a very washed out orange and the shadows weren't nearly as pronounced. I've inserted the original image below :

I've been learning so much about how to make a good photo into a great one and I think I might be getting closer! ;) I just really wanted it to be a more eye-catching photo. Something that makes you stop and take a good look and make you wish you could have been there to see it yourself!

Anyhoo, that's all for now. Now it's time I was off to bed!

2012-04-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

Little Guy!

2012-04-08T21:45:00.002-07:00

This wonderful little creature is a Barbados Green Monkey. They are so named because of the moss that grows in their fur and gives them a green tinge. This little guy would pose just perfectly anytime I would raise my camera. In this case there wasn't really much to learn, but just be thrilled that I was so lucky to be in this reserve, surrounded by this wonderful group of monkeys. The monkeys were allowed to roam freely in and out of the reserve in order to keep their territory from the other wild monkeys on Barbados. I loved this photo when I first took it, but the green in his fur wasn't quite picked up in the shot. So, courtesy of my man and Pain.Net, I changed some of the hues and contrast to bring out the greens and make it look a little more like a nature magazines cover photo. I think it turned out beautifully, but then again, I'm very biased lol! Hope y'all like it!

Something to treasure

2012-04-04T20:08:00.000-07:00

This picture is of a dear friend of mine, Trevor, who lives in Nanaimo, B.C.
I was visiting him, his ex-fiance and their little boy Shane. It was a beautiful, late summer day and I'd just gotten a new camera for my photojournalism class at Vancouver Island University. We were sitting outside when we saw this butterfly (which I later found out was a Western Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly) sitting in the grass. I immediately went to work with my camera taking all sorts of wonderful close up shots, but something seemed to be missing...My friend decided to let the butterfly walk onto his hand and carried it around on the back of his hand for a good 20 minutes or so. And I was happily snapping away, trying to get a great shot. Then we noticed the butterfly was crawling up his arm and eventually it climbed onto his face. My eyes lit up. My friend noticed and said "what?" I just grinned and said "stay put, this'll make an awesome shot and one hell of a story!" So I walked around to the side the butterfly was on, tilted the camera and "click!" went my shutter. I did a little editing with a program called Paint.Net, just to tweak the lighting and give it a more "artistic/magazine" type quality. Now I've got a great shot and a fond memory of someone, whom, I'm sad to say, I have fallen out of touch with. Maybe someone we both know will come across my blog and get us back in touch. Life's full of surprises!

Well, that's all she wrote for now! Hope you liked it!

P.S.
This butterfly actually spent to whole weekend in Trevor's house! Guess the little guy/lady just needed a place to crash after the sugar rush lol

Why PhotoCurve?

2012-04-04T08:50:00.000-07:00

You're probably wondering why I decided to name my blog PhotoCurve. Well, first of all, it sounds great, just kinda rolls off the tongue. But mostly, because I'm still learning about photography and as with all life, there's a huge learning curve! This blog will feature a daily photo and there's a story behind every one, hopefully some that are more entertaining than this intro (haha). Anyway I have to get downtown and then head to work. I'll add more when I return. Ciao!