Posts Tagged ‘EF 50mm f1.8 Mk I’
Project 365:ONE-HUNDRED-THIRTY-NINE
Fragile
Considering the image: A quick photograph of some landscaping flowers at my house.
Making the photograph: I made a single exposure tonight. The EF 50mm f/1.8 was still on the camera so that’s what I used. I desaturated a bit in post to leave a bit of detail in the flower petals.
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365:ONE-HUNDRED-SIXTEEN
"Snakeberries!"
One of our son’s young friends pointed to this plant and sang out, “Snakeberries!” This is not the snakeberry flower that I’m familiar with. But I don’t know what it is, so I’ll let it stand for now. It made a nice composition against the shorter yellow flowers at its feet. I shot this with the “Nifty-Fifty” at 1/250, f2.0 and just a hint of flash from a 1/4 CTO gelled 430EX. The bit of light helped the red flower pop against the blue-ish shade of late afternoon.
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365:EIGHTY-SIX
Lighthearted
An afternoon portrait at Palmetto Island County Park. This was the best shot of the bunch. Too bad I didn’t account for the depth of the sunglasses when I focused. I wanted a shallow depth of field to blur the background, but I focused on the corner of the sunglasses, which left her face slightly out of focus. Still…I like it. I might be biased, though!
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365:SIXTY-THREE
Product
Yup. Had about that much time today. I’m selling this particular lens so one of the product shot series became my 365 entry for today. Back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.
On a side note, these types of product shots have become exceedingly easy to do well in this digital age. One simply needs a couple of lights, whether flash or even just a pair of lamps. I built a box out of white parachute nylon, white sandwich board and poster stock, and some velcro for about $10 and an afternoon of work with scissors and glue. Just shoot away, process with a quick white balance to get rid of any color cast and there you have it. Or you could pay $50 or $60 bucks for a pre-made tent online. It was more fun for me this way. I’ve more than made my money back on my DIY kit and will probably get many years of use out of it.
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365:FORTY-SIX
Time
Today has been a slow day. I’ve spent most of it cleaning up my Aperture library and beginning the long task of scanning the thousands of old slides and negatives in my storage. Photoshop crashed as well and I had to reload the entire CS3 suite.
After all that I had a moment to head out to find something for today’s subject. But the day is grey, wet and uninspiring. What to do? Grab a flower, one of our hand-made Swedish shot glasses, a couple of strobes, and go to town.
It brightened my day, anyway…
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365:FORTY-FIVE
Remnants
You have to be quick to catch snow in Charleston, SC. The four inches of snow we got two nights ago has been reduced to a few patchy square feet in the landscaping around my house. These holly tree berries stood out against the blueish white of the snow. Not a bad colorway in honor of the day. Happy Valentines day!
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365:FORTY-THREE
Snow!
Tonight’s photograph will not impress the nor’easterners out there who have had more than their fair share of snow lately. But snow in Charleston, SC is a BIG DEAL. I can guarantee you this is the first time this house has seen snow! It’s 9:00 and my two young sons are begging to head outside and have snowball fights. I can already hear renewed arguments from them to move back to Quantico, VA so that they can have snow every year!
Sigh…
Pouring a cup of hot chocolate….
365:THIRTY-SIX
Life
“Be still sad heart and cease repining;
Behind the clouds the sun is shining,
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life a little rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
365:TWENTY-NINE
Remnants
I liked the subdued colors of the old pomegranate hanging on the barren tree branches. I could picture a photograph in square format hanging in a kitchen or dining room nook. I am starting to “see” photographs more and more as I walk through this project. Thinking about photographs every day keeps me connected with the thought process of selecting and framing subjects. I am seeing more and more subtle light and tone.
For an image like this, keep the depth of field shallow with a large aperture (small f-stop number). This will keep the background sufficiently blurred to keep focus on the subject.
Take the time to stop and consider a photograph today. What is your subject? How would you frame it? What techniques will you have to use to make the shot?
365:TWENTY-FIVE
Redux
The weather is not cooperating today. I tried some long night exposures in Joshua Tree National Park, but the stars and moon are hidden by misty clouds…killing all the exposures I made. So I’m left with another mural shot. C’est la vie.
For those who have been following, you may note some slight differences in the overall appearance of the photos over the next week. I am away from my normal post processing computer with Aperture and Photoshop. I’m doing the edits in Adobe Lightroom 2.6 on an uncalibrated laptop screen. After a couple of days with Lightroom, I can say that I like it almost enough to use it as a stand alone product. With Lightroom I might never have to export to Photoshop for final edits. I’m quite impressed thus far.
