Europe

As some of you might know, I spent May in Europe, studying music.  It was a phenomenal experience and I have a few pictures from my time there that I'd love to share!  I took them all with my Nikon D5100 with my dad's 18-200mm lens.  I think they were all natural lighting, too...but it was a while ago and I can't remember for sure.  Can't wait to see some pictures of your summers!

Prague

Melk Abbey in Austria

a church in Salzburg that was built in 774. there was a youth revival going on when we visited.

a small room in an abbey in Salzburg

Playing with light

I was playing and experimenting with different lighting while shotting my new guitar that I built. I could have had another light or two. I had fun and learned a few things as well.

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tripod with remote flash

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tripod mounted camera remote flash with gold reflector

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tripod mounted camera with flash and rear flash

Dec. Assignment: Light

Well friends, recently I've been experimenting with a form of image post-processing called High Dynamic Range. In a nut shell, you use a pixel pushing tool like Photoshop (in my case cs4) and you combine multiple exposures of the same scene into one dynamic photo.

In its simplest form, one would use their camera's auto bracketing feature, check your trusty-rusty manual for AEB or Auto Exposure Bracketing. You would set the camera to take one image underexposed (dark), one image normal, and one image overexposed (bright). Fire a burst of three photos, and the camera will do the exposure bracketing for you.Then you combine the three images into one image that captures more tonal range (brightness to darkness) than you can ordinarily capture at one time with the camera.

Our cameras can only see so much of a range between full dark and full white at any one time...however, with combining two, three, or more images into one, you can make one image that has detail in the shadows and highlights. This feature can be used very subtly to make a bland photo look more like that beautiful sunset you really saw, or it can be pushed to the max to make everything look like a clown puked up a comic book. And it all has to do with "Light." So this is my submission for December's Assignment.

Here is my example.

Here you see the 5 original images that were shot
hand held using manual exposure bracketing.

You can see from these photos that the dynamic range is too large for one capture. If I expose for the sky so you can see those cool clouds, then you cant see this VERY character filled house. However, if I expose for the house, the sky will be essentially white...not interesting at all.

However, after moving things around in Photoshop cs4 using the built in "Merge to HDR" feature and then playing around with other settings to adjust everything else I got the following...

The "clown puked comic book" version.
The effect is extreme here, but I was just playing around!

Christmas Music

Hello, all! Thanks for inviting me to join your blog here; there are so many great pictures! I'm still very new at taking pictures and this was the first time I heard of bokah. In taking this picture, I learned how to turn my lens to manual so the camera would actually take the picture! This is a picture of my Christmas tree at my home in Illinois; I took it my first day home! I just used a hole-punch that was music note shaped to take this one and I followed the instructions on the blog Meredith posted.
Well, have a Merry Christmas, everyone!

Hark the Herald Angel

Had fun playing with time exposures, except my fingers got cold on the aluminum tripod

Photo Assignment November 28- December 12th

Hey Friends,

I trust you had a wonderful thanksgiving!

Our next assignment is called "Food".  I love taking pictures of food!  People spend so much time preparing food- Its definitely one way that you can show love.  For our thanksgiving this year, we went to Micah's parents home.  We believe that I have the early signs of Celiacs disease, and cannot eat gluten (wheat, barley and rye).  My mother-in-law also has celiacs, so going to her house for thanksgiving was such a blessing.  There was so much food that I could eat!  My picture is of the open gluten free apple pie that she made.  With so many yummy foods that I miss eating, it was nice to have something I could eat just like every other thanksgiving.

How has food influenced you?  Is there someone you know who uses food to show their love?  Is there a special dish that is important to you?-- Meredith

p.s. Our next assignment is called "light".

I am thankful that we live in such a beautiful place in God's creation. We have the some wonderful nature scenes only a few miles away.

This picture was taken 12-26-10 in Holland. I entered it for the Holland Litho 2012 calender and found out today that it made the final cut! Very exciting.

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