Thursday, May 12, 2011

Two Peas: The Color of Light

Week three has us playing with white balance.  This was one of the first things I learned about when I bought my Dslr, and have been shooting mostly in custom anyway.  That said, I have just been using custom, but didn't know to use a piece of white paper to CREATE that custom balance.  Wow.



I took these in my dining room, where I take a lot of my (fairly poor) food photography under the overhead light in there.

Auto white balance; forgot to turn on the light above.

f/20, 1/15s.  Auto white balance

f/20, 1/5s.  Auto white balance.  I remembered what I'd learned about exposure metering.  Much better.

f/20, 1/5s.  Tungsten white balance


f/5, 1/100s.  Custom white balance

Two Peas: Shutter Speed and ISO

What a total slacker I am.  It's been almost a month since I did week 1, and I'm just getting around to week 2.  I stink.

Anyway, week 2 has us considering shutter speed and ISO.

First, we were to photograph moving water, using a high ISO and changing the shutter speed.  All were taken in shutter priority, at 1600 ISO.

f/7.1 1/80s

Oops.  f/5.6 1/1000s

f/36, 0.5s



f/36, 0.5s.  Not sure why this looks so different from the one above.

f/5.6, 1/1000s
 Next, we were to play with Manual mode.  I chose the lovely orchid I was given by my boys for Mother's Day.
f/5.6, 1/250s


f/5.6, 1/640s

f/5.6, 1/250s

f/5.6, 1/125s

f/7.1, 1/125s

f/10, 1/100s

f/7.1, 1/125s

f/10, 1/100s

f/10, 1/60s

f/20, 1/60s

f/20, 1/15s

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Two Peas: Aperture

Some friends were planning to go through the Two Peas photography course, I totally butted in and joined them.  Everywhere I go, I'm crashing parties.

This week was about aperture, and our assignment was to take some photos of the same thing at various settings.  I sort of understand what changing the aperture does, but don't really know the technical talk.  I also read the assignment about a week before taking the photos, and so (of course, knowing me) didn't fully follow the instructions. Better luck next time.

The timing is great, since we're doing this assignment just as spring is... springing, and the flowers are blooming.  The assignment sent me outside with just my camera, and I got to look at how much yard work is really needed around here.

First up:  two citronella candles that never got taken in after the summer.  They're in pretty sad shape, and are filled with water.  I gotta take care of those.
f/29
f/10


f/4.5

This is our bay window, which has an amaryllis in it, and there's a philodendron "tentacle" hanging down into the shot.

f/20


f/10


f/4.5
Outside again, the tulips are starting to bloom.  The gopher hasn't yet gotten to it, the mole hasn't yet dug it up, the squirrel hasn't torn up the bed, and the deer haven't had their snack yet.

f/6.3


f/10


f/20
Some more pretty flowers, with their freshly added new red mulch.

f/20


f/10


f/5.6

And, because I'm the queen of self-deprecation, I saw these and thought it might make a neat picture showing aperture as well as my horrible yard maintenance skills.  The weeds in our sidewalk (it really should haven't been mortared rather than SAND, but I digress on the previous owners....)
f/5.6
f/10

f/20
All shots were taken at 400 ISO using Aperture priority.