i took some pictures

Light, flowers, RAW!

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa @ i took some pictures) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:30:00 +0000

Alright, once again I'm way overdue for a post. So here it is. I took some pictures of the spring that was appearing around me. In case anyone was wondering, we here in Seattle also got some snow in late March! Preposterous. Winter won't leave, but spring was determined and I captured her while she was here briefly.

While snapping flower pics, I saw this wonderfully delicate dead leaf in the grass. She had survived since fall and I had to acknowledge the effort.

I love the curly swirls, especially when they are backed by the light from a setting sun.

Every year, the giant purple plum tree blooms in our yard, but it only stays in full bloom for a few days. The scent of its flowers is the best in the world and I wish it could be bottled as a perfume. I'd wear it. You can imagine that I stood in the garden for quite some time just breathing like a weirdo.

I also took some pictures in RAW format. While they take up more space on your SD card and end up being pretty big after editing, I did notice a difference in detail, clarity, color... basically they were better. However, when I went to view them on my computer, I only could see them when I opened them in Photoshop (Elements). I also had to download a plugin to open them (Camera RAW 6.3 from Adobe). A bit frustrating, but I think shooting RAW is worth it if there are some awesome detailed pics you are trying to capture. The following flower pics were shot in RAW while the sun was setting.

This year my parents and I went to a sunrise Easter service, because a clear sunny morning is fairly rare in Seattle on Easter. The following are some pics of the fountain waterfall in the park after the service just as the sun was coming up.

I actually added a gradient map to this picture - the sky had few clouds as you can see, and it was mostly white and blue with some faint yellow. The gradient brought out the skyline to me.

One last spring adventure! I went to Yakima with my boyfriend and his dad to visit family last weekend. Here are the pics from that lovely sunny trip.

The cousins have an awesome old black lab, Hal. I basically hung out with her as much as I could :)

A little Orton effect on this one.

Hope you liked my somewhat random post! Now that the weather is getting nicer (occasionally), I'll be outside taking more pics. I discovered a love for the prime light times around sunrise and sunset - those really are the best times to take pictures. Get up early sometimes or stay out late with your camera; you'll be rewarded!

happiness is...

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa @ i took some pictures) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:34:00 +0000

I made a photo book for my boyfriend recently (coupon from Safeway for a free one!) and in it I used pictures from our years dating so far. It has some examples of what happiness is in our lives. It was a blast to make - enjoy!

Click here to view this photo book larger

The new way to make a photo album: photo books by Shutterfly.

Old Tracks by the River

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa @ i took some pictures) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 20:41:00 +0000

So it's obvi been a while since my last post, and I was itching like crazy to get outside with my camera. I went to Al Borlin Park in Monroe, which I'm pretty sure is supposed to be named after Al Borland from Home Improvement - they just misspelled his name!

I wanted to find old train tracks to photograph, and this park had them. And woods and a river, my other two favorite things :) Enjoy!

I found it difficult to walk along train tracks.The wooden ties are not spaced evenly and some are crooked. Strides are too short if you step on each tie, but too long every other. And with their uneven spacing, your foot doesn't quite fit on the ground in-between most of the time. It's a process that forces you to slow down and take your time, which I had no problem with.

I found this crate just sitting here in this spot. Convenient photo opp, so I couldn't pass it up!

Closer to the river, I could walk under the old tracks -- avoiding the dripping slime, of course :)

I loved how everything was coated in this lime green gunk. So colorful against the dark tar-covered pilings.

Here is a small branch of the river where the water was a bit calmer

Some dead ferns growing under the dead railroad

Lots of shiny dried tar along the pilings

Tall dead golden grass always makes for great pictures, especially against the dark backdrop of a shadowy railroad and rain clouds

I love little grass sprouts like these - I used to chew on green ones in our yard when I was younger and pretend to be a farmer :)

The sun was making appearances that day, and I also liked when it hid behind clouds

Just some maple leaves, hugging a log

I could see miniature hobbits living here

I was walking along the park road trying to find where my car was, when I turned around and thought it was pretty. Turn around sometimes when you are out with your camera; you might be surprised by the perspective it gives you.

I stopped on a trail and thought my boots made good subjects :)

I finally found Sven! His recently washed sunroof also made for a convenient photo opp.

Hope you liked these pics, and remember to always keep your eyes open to new and unexpected angles, perspectives, and subjects for your photos. It makes them a lot more interesting!

Angel Rock Climbs

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 02:03:00 +0000

Before putting away the Christmas decorations (really late, I know), I wanted to capture some shots of my beautiful angel. I crafted her when I was a wee child and she holds a special place in my heart and our living room every Christmas. The other day she was bored. I told her to go outside, followed her, and documented the following adventure.

I said playing outside might make her happier. She looked at me like I was crazy. And it's not just because of her missing eye, which disappeared some time ago in an unfortunate accident, the nature of which I'm not entirely certain.

But she relented and turned to ponder the grass. It was not stimulating.

"I'm so bored!" she whined after rolling around on the porch bench for a while.

"You know," I said, "I've heard rock climbing is a pretty good cure for boredom. And there's a pillar you can climb right over there."

"...a cure for my boredom?" She looked uneasy. "I'm just not sure. I mean, I've never done rock climbing before, and people tell me my upper body strength isn't superior. But you say it's just over there? Maybe I'll take a look."

"Holy guac. It's so tall. I don't think I can climb all the way up that."

"Seriously, I'm barely taller than the arm of this bench..." I could see she was thinking; the gears in that solid wooden head were turning. It was an intriguing endeavor for the little angel.

Then she jumped on the bench arm with sudden enthusiasm, the likes of which I'd rarely seen from her. And with determination comparable to that of a slug that dreams of flying, she shouted, "For the sake of my sanity, I have no other choice but to conquer this giant rock-beast!"

And so began the climb. It was tough, and she often had to look up to see how far was left, using only her strong feet to grip the pillar as she leaned back and detached her doily arms.

After much huffing and puffing, she finally reached the top!

"I'm exhausted. My doily arms can't take that kind of stress!" she cried while resting on the bench in utter fatigue. "But at least I'm not bored anymore!"

And that's the end of my angel's adventure. Maybe she'll make an appearance again next year in an exciting sequel! Stay tuned.

Frosty Frolicking

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 01:37:00 +0000

Happy New Year! 2013 should be full of big, exciting happenings and I hope you have a wonderful year. Maybe they will even find bigfoot or I will get a picture of a unicorn in its natural habitat. One can hope.

Anyway, to celebrate the new year a few of us went up to my friend's cabin in the San Juan Islands. I woke up [fairly] early to an amazing display of foggy, frosty, eerie weather goodness. So I ran down, grabbed my camera, put on my penguin cut-off gloves, and romped around the yard to capture it all.

I love frosty grass. It's so cool and makes its own fantastic contrasts.

Then I found this amazing table that has seafoam green tiles in it, and there is a quaint little world of life growing in the cracks.

If I was a miniature person living here, I would definitely hike and picnic on this little peninsula.

There are also several Madrona trees on the property which have awesome peely bark. I liked this shot looking up the tree.

A couple hours later, the fog cleared and everything started thawing so I got a good shot of the bay. Wishing I had a telephoto lens to capture the details of this scene, but it's still pretty.

This is a great time of the year to get out in the early morning light when nature is still half asleep to get some shots of frozen water beads and cold trees. Since it was overcast, I had the white balance set to "cloudy" and the exposure generally +1/3 of a stop to make up for the darker lighting outside.

Go take some pictures of old man winter, and don't forget your gloves!

Tripods and Focus Points - Christmas Adventures

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 18:19:00 +0000

Tripods

Sitting around with my curious camera and all of the sparkly lights and decor everywhere, I shot some frames of a few of my favorite bits of Christmas magic at home. I shoot in manual mode so I can change all of the settings to my liking. Trying to shoot in low light is a problem for just about anyone, and without a tripod, it is even harder.

I've had this Santa for as long as I can remember. He is really squishy and obviously quite photogenic.

If you cannot increase the light in the room, try to get the lowest f-stop your lens allows, the slowest shutter speed before it gets blurry from hand shake (usually no lower than the lens' highest mm - in my case it's 55mm, so that would be about 1/60), and keep the ISO only as high as necessary - the higher the ISO, the more digital noise in your shots. A lower f-stop means the aperture or lens opening is as wide as it can be to let in as much light as possible. A slower shutter speed has a similar function, capturing all of the light between opening click and closing click.

Your main goal is to use the triangle of aperture (f-stop), shutter speed, and ISO to get your exposure to 0. Your exposure will be the little light meter scale on your screen or in the viewfinder that has a + on one side and a - on the other. Exposure is key.

Here are a couple of the pictures I took. I did not use a tripod, so my ISO was higher than would be ideal to compensate for the low light and shaky hands. I later found out that we have a tripod that fits my camera, but during my frustratingly blurry, underexposed attempts at capturing the tree and ornaments, I was seriously considering going down to Kenmore Camera to buy a tripod right then and there.

As you can see in this picture, my ISO was raised to a pretty ungodly number (4000) and as a result it is grainy. Invest in a good tripod, kids!

Focus Points

With family here for a short while around Christmas, I went on a little photo adventure with my sisters to the quaint Montlake neighborhoods near the University of Washington. We then went to Gasworks Park to shoot some views of the Seattle skyline and the old rusted pipes. Cameras in hand, we ran around and had a good time figuring out what we were doing (one sister has a new camera as well).

There's a lot of trial and error, but practice really is the best way to learn. Also, I'm a big fan of macro and bokeh as you will see in most of my pictures.

I love reflection pictures and with the abundance of puddles in Seattle, it makes for great photo ops.

One thing I like to do to add some creativity to a photo is change the focus point. In this shot and the next one, I selected a point that I thought gave the most interesting framing of the foreground subject and the background.

Another thing to remember is that your aperture (f-stop) controls your depth of field. With a low f-stop (wide aperture) you can get just the foreground subject in focus and the background blurred, and with a big f-stop (narrow aperture), everything through the whole depth of the picture will be in focus. Play around with your aperture and see what happens. Always keep balancing shutter speed and ISO to reciprocate changes in aperture in order to get an exposure of 0.

This is actually in my parents' front yard, but it goes with the water drop and focus theme :)

If you want to know what my camera settings were for any of the shots above, I'm happy to provide that info! Sometimes it can be helpful as a starting point for messing around with exposures, focus points, etc.

Linking up at:

It's Overflowing

Water Drops

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa @ i took some pictures) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 22:47:00 +0000

The other week I saw some of those amazing water drop photos by professional photographers - you know, the kind with the pristine water and brilliant color and crystal clear droplet? Well, I decided to try to create some of my own. It was quite a long process as this was only day two of having my new camera and I was still figuring out how to adjust settings and grasp basic concepts like aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.

Along with providing sufficient lighting substitutes for my lack of external flash / spotlight, my other primary obstacle was getting the camera to focus just on the spot where the water drop would be. This first photo shows one of those earlier attempts. It's obviously blurred, but I like how the splash looks like sparks of fire or gold.

After several hours and various locations, backdrops, containers, and camera settings, here are a few examples of the (somewhat) satisfactory results! In order to get these shots brighter than the one above, I had to increase the flash compensation as well as the exposure compensation 1 stop. The light meter yelled at me saying that the shots would be severely underexposed, but I ignored it. I'm learning that sometimes you have to trick the camera to get the results you want.

Here are the camera specs for all three pictures below:
Nikon D5100
18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens
1/200 f/4.8 ISO 200 exposure compensation +1 stop

I had some fun in post-editing, applying various colorful filters. I liked the green tint to this one.

In future repetitions of this project, I will try using different colored backdrops (this one was blue, as you can see), and will also try a larger container to isolate the droplet without the peripheral vase edges and reflections.

Hope you like them, and let me know if you try this out! I'd love to hear about your techniques.

New camera for Christmas!

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa @ i took some pictures) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:04:00 +0000

Hello!

I got a new camera for Christmas and it's my first DSLR so I was really excited. My sister and brother-in-law are in town for Christmas and since my sister has the same camera, she has introduced me to the wonderful world of digital photography adventures and blogging.

I love taking pictures and capturing the world around me, and I look forward to posting some pictures soon. As this is a learning experience for me, I'll also provide explanations of camera settings and other tips on how I get some of the shots. Hope you enjoy!