Posts Tagged photography
Written on January 5, 2010 by Jen
Filed Under: Journal, Photos
Just to get out of the house yesterday we went to the beach. This served three purposes in addition to getting out of the house:
- Exercise the kid
- Exercise the dog
- Take some photos
Apart from calling my dog Monty (as is her name) I also call her Lady Monty. Note the crossed paws at the front. She is wet but not because she swam with us but because she’d go into the water to follow us then the slightest wave would break and she would be off to go and roll in the sand.
While I’ve got some time to take photos and then blog about them my 2010 affirmation of taking more photos is absolutely fine. The proof in the pudding will be when I go back to work and the daily routine starts up again.
Written on October 18, 2009 by Jen
Filed Under: Photos
I bought a new camera a few months ago and it’s the first camera I’ve had that shoots in RAW format. I usually use the JPG files but occasionally I need to modify the RAW file – usually because of over exposed photos.
Because my photography is a hobby and I don’t do that much with the photos except for putting them on the web and occasionally printing them out I don’t keep all the RAW photos I take. The reason for this is that they take up a heck of a lot of disk space and I’m not equipped for that so JPGs suit me just fine.
Even when I do edit the RAW photo I keep the resulting JPG file, not the RAW file.
I wanted to share a couple of examples of how I salvaged a couple of photos from the RAW file.
The first photo here is the original and the one underneath is the result after editing it. I flipped it and I also tidied up that brown smudge on my wrist using some Photoshop wizadry. Goodness knows where the smudge came from – I’m sure it was JJ’s fault.
I wanted to keep the photo below of JJ and took it while praying he wouldn’t come off because sliding on the gravel would have been quite painful.
I probably over compensated a bit with the colours and saturation here but it certainly works a lot better than the washed out version above.
The only software I have to edit RAW files is what comes with Photoshop CS3 but that seems to do me okay. Lightroom would be the ideal I understand but I can’t justify it at present.
Just in case you don’t know what the heck RAW is, here’s RAW phto file format explained.
This video from Blurbomat shows how to adjust RAW photos using Lightroom.
What do you shoot in?
Written on March 20, 2009 by Jen
Filed Under: Photos
I’m getting THIS close to buying myself a DSLR camera. I’m still loving using my sister’s Canon 350D and am 99% certain I’ll get the Canon 450D. I went and tried one out today and got a price for it. I’m sleeping on it! Update: I slept on it last night and I bought it – the Canon 450D twin lens kit, camera bag, extended warranty, another SD card. Am charging the battery as I type.
Anyway, yesterday morning, the birds were making lots of noise in a tree I’ve got out the back so I dashed inside, put the zoom lens on my sister’s camera and went outside to take photos.
Even though it’s blurry I love this photo. The zoom lens I was using doesn’t have an inbuilt image stabiliser and when (not if) when I get my camera I’ll be getting a lens with an image stabiliser function. Now I know when looking at camera websites what IS means
Written on November 19, 2008 by Jen
Filed Under: Photos
I’ve been tagged to do a 6 x 6 meme by Shai Coggins. You need to:
1. Find your 6th photo folder (hard drive or online)
2. Find the 6th photo in that folder.
3. Share the photo on your blog and give the details of the photo.
4. Tag 5 folks to do the same.
So using Flickr I went six sets back from the beginning and counted six photos in from the beginning of that set. This was it.
It’s JJ at Christmas 2005 when he was four and he got a little piano with a microphone. For some reason I don’t mind noisy toys like this to a point. The point being that they’re used away from me after the noise becomes too grating.
So, the meme said to find your 6th photo folder and I didn’t know whether it was from the earliest or latest. Therefore I did both and it came up with yet another photo of JJ. What a coincidence, but then my Flickr account consists of a lot of photos of my boy. As I said to a colleague who was looking through my photos the other day it’s a document of his life, just like this blog.
Here he is at the beginning of this year after we’d been to the Martime Museum at Port Adelaide on the top of the nearby lighthouse.
Now I’m supposed to pass this onto five more people to do with what they will. So, Tiff, Trish, Jeanie, Kikolani and Cellobella, over to you.
Written on October 23, 2008 by Jen
Filed Under: Photos
My grandfather used to be a professional photographer. Unfortunately he was considerably older than his wife, my Nana and died when I was only about three. I would have liked to learn some things from him.
I was digging through his collection recently and came across some photos which I thought I’d share with you.
This is some of the beautiful South Australian coastline.
Some old sheds
Two girls sitting on the beach. Not sure who they are.
Do you know what? I’m no good at fibbing. I have to tell the truth. My grandfather did not take the above photos. I did, and used a Photoshop action to age them. I didn’t lie about him being a professional photographer though.
I got the actions from Smashing Magazine -The ultimate collection of useful Photoshop actions and the action I used was the Hand colored vintage photo by Jenny.
Below are the original photos.
And these two girls are my sister and myself.
I can’t wait to try out some of the other actions, but I love the vintage one I’ve used here. It’s so thorough.
Written on August 14, 2008 by Jen
Filed Under: Photos
During our Perth holiday my camera went with us and I took a few snaps – as you may have realised. One day we visited King’s Park and I took some photos of flowers. I love getting in close and taking photos of flowers but have always had trouble focusing on exactly what I want.
In a moment of inspiration I moved the focus setting from auto to manual and it made the world of difference.
I think this Kangaroo Paw shows some of my results perfectly and I’m really pleased with the way it turned out.
I used to use manual focus a bit back when I used a film SLR but I’d gotten so lazy with auto focus that I completely forgotten that my camera does have a manual focus setting. I’ll now be using manual focus a lot more. I can’t believe it took this long for some common sense to sink in.
Of course, sometimes there’s no time to line up the shot so auto focus is perfect, but for still life, manual focus is the go. If you can bear it, there’s some more photos below that I managed to take inbetween rain showers.
Written on February 22, 2008 by Jen
Filed Under: Photos
I few weeks ago I submitted a photo to Neil Creek’s photography website for a View from below perspective. The submissions for this have now closed and voting is open. There will be one winner and I’m asking you to spend some time at the page to vote. I’m not telling you to vote for mine – but of course feel free to if you want. I don’t win a fantastic prize, just the satisfaction of knowing that my photo was ok.
Mine’s the first one on the page as shown below. Go here to vote or click on the image below to vote. You have until 28 February.
