Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Adventure Time!

No the show...never seen it...don't even know what it is...don't want to know. Moving on.

No post yesterday because I camping on Shaw! It was a pretty spontaneous trip that managed to turn out pretty awesome actually!

Anne and I met up on Shaw from the ferry, and then biked out to Indian Cove on the south end of the island. Only like a mile but still a pretty ride! It was odd biking with a heavy(ish) pack. I packed in maybe the half an hour before I was supposed to get on the ferry, and I somehow got everything I needed into my daypack. True, my bag, pad, and tripod were strapped to the outside, but minor details!

After a sweet beach walk by moonlight (even got moon shadows and everything), we attempted to make a fire. But being us, the fire refused to start, and it was only after we gave up and let it burn down did it actually catch.

Yeah...no idea how that worked out.

But anyway, we had this sweet fire, and you know what that means. Pictures!

I started out trying to use a pretty high aperture, around f8 or so, coupled with a jacked up ISO. And that's really didn't work out. I'm not really a fan of vast depth of field or noisy images, so that combo of expo settings didn't really float my boat.

I then switched to my favorite settings as of late. Aperture priority mode at f1.4 and ISO100. Wide open with minimal noise makes for images I really like. I pretty much just started snapping away at the fire at whatever caught my eye. I tend to go for intersections of lines that make geometric shapes. Like triangles and stuff like that.

I didn't even look at the photos till tonight.

After going through, I settled on an image of one of the logs with fire wrapping around it and a dark/blurry log off on the right side. The two logs created a v-shape to the image that drew the eye to the in focus area near the intersection of the logs.

Editing tonight was a bit challenging. I saw the image I wanted in my head, but I couldn't get it. After a lot of fiddling and tweaking (which is how I edit, really have no idea what I'm doing half the time), I got what I was looking for. I've said it time and time again, experimentation is why I like photography and it's how I approach it every time. I can almost never execute any plans I have, all of my best work is just from me trying something different and having good luck! but I digress...

For the photo, I raised the shadow areas and intense highlights just a bit. This gave you more detail to look at in the wood, and made the fire more poppy and fireish. I went a bit further and upped the clarity in the area of the wood that was sharp. Also the vibrance just a bit because why not add more color?

So it went from this...


To this! and of course Blogger being Blogger makes the good photo look terrible and the original look like the good photo. face palm. just look on the facebook page, please.


Now, for today's photo! When I was on the beach this morning, I found this epic shell and had to take it back for pictures. 

To photo it, I used my macro adaptor to get close enough. There wasn't a lot of light from my desk lamp, so I used a tripod to keep everything steady and also to keep my focus point in the same spot. I played around with different depths of field, but I eventually settled on using f3.2. Like I said, I just love the shallow depth of field. It was in Av mode, so the camera figured out the rest for me. :)

Editing this one was a pain! A fun pain, but a pain none the less. I just kept trying different things out and taking breaks to let my brain reset on the look I was trying to get. It's incredibly helpful to take breaks while editing, even if it's switching to a different photo for a bit, the brain needs to reset and get a fresh perspective. Every time I would go back to editing, I could instantly see where I'd gone wrong before. 

I ended up with a pretty complicated Lr edit. The Basic setting I've screen captured for you. What I wanted to do was bring out the detail and color in the shell with out making it look to edited and over processed. At least, over processed in my eyes. I wanted it to look like I saw it, which is not necessarily photo realistic. (that term is so ironic now) I also added some blue to the shadows to get a richer tone to the image, the stark black wasn't doing it for me. 
As far as local adjustments, I darkened the spiral line and then lightened the center point. This improved the overall contrast and also focuses the eye to the center more. It emphasized the spiral geometry of the image. I like geometry.

Before:

After:


See you tomorrow!

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