Photo of the Week - Week 27

One of the additional features of living overseas - that is often either in the very fine print or not there at all - is occasionally having uninvited guests show up in the house. In some places these can be monkeys or large rodents, but here we get large spiders and the occasional scorpion. With the cats we now just find pieces of large spiders, but they tend to be a bit wary of the scorpions.

I was on the phone with someone when the girls came upstairs to inform me of our latest visitor. Christy put a plastic container over it while the girls came to get me - and to tell me to bring my camera.

EXIF Info
Shutter Speed: 1/100s
Aperture: F9.0
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 50mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm

I lit our friend here with an off-camera flash, 1/4 power with diffuser, from camera left. The flash is down on the ground about a foot or so away from the scorpion. It's triggered by my on-camera flash, which is powered way down, just enough to trigger the off-camera.

I cropped this in Lightroom and bumped the mid-tones contrast up (clarity).

Photo of the Week - Week 26

This entry - the iconic photo.

We recently had the opportunity to visit Disneyland California and I had to take a couple of iconic photos - something that looks like it came from a brochure or the like; all in addition to the requisite princess photos ...

EXIF Info
Shutter Speed: 1/320s
ISO:100
Aperture: F7.1
Focal Length: 33mm
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm

This particular image has a few key elements in it - Mickey, of course; the Toontown writing on the "hillside" behind; the fountain; and the house behind. My goal was to try and capture all of these elements without making it too distracting while telling the story of where the image was taken. The trickiest part was the Toontown in the background - a bit more to the left or right and it gets cut off, either by the tree or by Mickey.

The other tricky part was not getting any people in the image - I had to set up my composition and then wait until the scene was clear. Luckily it was right after this part of the park opened, so it wasn't thronged with thousands of people.

The cloud is a nice element that breaks up the sky and interacts well with Mickey's director's baton.

Photo of the Week - Week 25

This image is one that I recently made of the LDS Temple in Redlands, California.

EXIF Info
Shutter Speed: 1/20s
ISO: 100
Aperture: F22.0
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm
Focal Length: 50mm

This image has some post-processing that I did in Lightroom 4.1. First, I made straightened the image and (tried to) center everything. I was using my tripod, so I didn't have to lose too much as I did this.

Next, I added a graduated filter to darken the sky a bit. The lighting was mid-day, but overcast, which gave me a good, flat light over the building - no odd shadows or anything.

I then painted a mask over the sky - the flat grey sky was not very interesting. I then shifted the color of the sky to a nice evening blue.

Finally, I added a vignette to highlight the Temple and focus attention more into the center of the image.

Photo of the Week - Week 24

This entry - patriotic pictures! We recently had the opportunity to be in a small-town Fourth of July parade. My goal with these photos was to make some images that captured the feeling of the day - small-town patriotism.

The American flag is an obvious necessary accessory. Since this parade was in a small town in the West, the cowboy hats and red bandana also helped to set the scene. 

EXIF Info
Shutter Speed: 1/50s
ISO: 100
Aperture: F8.0
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm
Focal Length: 50mm

EXIF Info
Shutter Speed: 1/320s
ISO: 100
Aperture: F8.0
Lens: Tamron 17-55mm
Focal Length: 24mm

In this second image, I like the symmetry with the two flag portions - the upper left corner and lower right corner.

Photo of the Week - Week 23

We had a unique opportunity this week - we go to ride in a parade for the 4th of July! It was fun to take pictures of the parade watchers watching us ... Nothing technical or fancy, just something fun. Maybe I've been living outside of the States for too long, but just couldn't pass this up:



Was there a car on blocks in the front lawn behind this couch? You'd better believe it. I had to get a shot when the occupants weren't looking for fear of having a beer can or something thrown at us because we were laughing so hard. Howdy, howdy, howdy!