Camera Obscura

http://www.abelardomorell.net/photography/cameraobsc_01/cameraobsc_01.html

Abelardo Morell was my inspiration for this project, basically his stuff is amazing. I really wanna be able to get some shots like that someday

On Wednesday I made a camera obscura in my room
I covered both of my windows with black garbage bags and cut a small square in one of them

This was my setup. Just used my tripod with a 30 second shutter speed WHICH SUCKED
I tried it on bulb but my hand on the shutter was too unsteady and messed up the picture
Anyways, these are my results
very noisy because my iso was at 1600, the only way i could get enough light with 30 seconds

Muddy Butt Races '10

On Sunday I went over to good ol' St. Maries Idaho for the muddy butt races, which are tag team endur-o cross races. Teams of two compete against each other in different divisions. Each team mate does the track 3 times, equalling about 30 miles all together, it's pretty intense stuff. My friends Tyler and Cody got first place in the lightweight division, and came in 45 minutes before anyone else in their division.

I thought it would be a good chance to get some action shots as well as capture some emotions.

This is right before Tyler left for his first lap, I like how guy in front of him looks like he is saying good luck, I thought I captured a pretty good moment right there.

These are just a few ones I got of Tyler as he was coming to the end of his first lap. On the second picture I used a photoshop action called urban acid, basically it messes with the color curves and a couple other things. I just thought it went well with the subject of the picture.






I really like how two racers are pretty much in the exact same position doing the same thing in this shot.




Right when the guys come back from doing a lap, they all have the same expression. It's really weird because all you can see through their helmet is their eyes but they always have the same look of exhaustion, and almost worry or fear in their eyes.

NZ continued

I have been working on a lot of pictures from New Zealand still, I'll be moving on to something new next week. Here are the one's I've gotten edited and such. Flickr was working on the school computers the other day and I was looking through panorama photos. (http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=panorama) I noticed that a good portion of them are edited to HDR so I've been messing around with the HDR effect preset that I downloaded to lightroom, and I've gotten some pretty sweet results. One thing that I'm bumming about is the fact that I barely took any portraits, besides at the wedding. I really wish I had gotten more into that while I was there. I didn't take my camera everywhere with me mainly because it wasn't that convenient, and missed some sweet shots which sucked. I am happy with the ones I got though, and will be back there soon so I will be getting some more.


Just a shot from the airplane. I'm pretty sure this was above Auckland when we were getting close to landing.


Bluff, Southland New Zealand


Tutukaka (awesome name huh? ha) Coast, Northland New Zealand
I framed this photo and it is in our bathroom now, I really like how it turned out.


Blue Lake, Southland New Zealand
I LOOOOVE THIS PICTURE. This is probably my favorite shot of the trip. I used rule of thirds with the dock. For some reason I just really like how I captured that spot, it was a gorgeous lake. There wasn't a single person around and it was just so quiet and peaceful, I seriously could have stayed for hours and just stared at that dock. There was just something about this place that was really comforting. These are the kind of spots over there that I love about New Zealand, because there are so many places that are full of tourists, and yet just a few miles away you can have a whole lake and mountain side to yourself. It is also like this at some beaches like the panorama above this. It is amazing to be able to look that far down a beach and be able to count 1, 2, 3 people on the entire thing, sometimes if that.


Not sure exact location, somewhere outside Queenstown, Southland New Zealand


Queenstown, Southland New Zealand

Queenstown, Southland New Zealand


This one isn't really edited or anything, just an example of the scenery you see everywhere while driving through the South Island. p.s. Lord of the Rings was filmed in the mountains of the South Island around here.

Panoramas

The past week I've been taking a lot of panorama shots
I've used photoshop to merge the photos together. I also shot in raw and just fixed the levels a bit


I used my tripod for this one so i could use a slower shutter speed, I love the reflection on the lake

Blue Lake, Southland New Zealand



Bluff, Southland New Zealand


Ballantrade Farm, Southland New Zealand

The Gilbertson Wedding

Saturday, March 13

This was my aunt's wedding, and they had a 1920's theme. They had a photographer hired, but I figured I'd still get in there and get some shots of my own. It was very fun seeing everyone dressed up and i got some great shots. I decided to do black and white on most of them just to fit the 20's theme.




This is my favorite photo of the night. The only thing I dislike about it is the fact that her feet are cut off a bit. I took this during their first dance, which of course was fitted with the 20's theme, the Charleston.




There were a couple places around the hall set up for old time photographs. I decided to use this to my advantage.

Update

HELLOOOOO
So.. I've been in New Zealand since the 10th
I'm on the South Island at the moment, heading to the North in a few days.
I'm having a lot of fun, and haven't had many opportunities to use the internet. I have been taking a lot of pictures and I shot a wedding the other night. I've also been taking a lot of panorama shots, of the ocean as well as the farms over here. Some amazing scenery. I'm on dial up internet right now and it's way to slow to upload any pictures, but I have been editing and doing a lot. I will have a few projects posted hopefully within the next couple days when I can get better internet connection.
:)

Natural Lighting

So over the past couple weeks, with the sunshine being out and as nice as it has been, I've been working on pictures using natural lighting.
ALSO
I was messing around with lightroom and downloading presets for it. I found a sweet fake HDR effect and thought I'd play around with it. I found it looked pretty good on some pictures.

These two pictures were the ones I used the preset on. I really like the portrait. I think it looks a bit over edited but at the same time I really like that look in some pictures. Both of these were using natural sunlight and nothing else. I also really like what the hdr preset did with the lens flare off of the water in the picture.

The only editing I did on these was some exposure adjustment in adobe raw editor. I just wanted to get some pictures that really demonstrated natural lighting

Some of these are really simple, I've found I'm really starting to like that concept in pictures.

This picture was taken with a 3 second shutter speed. I like how the lights from the houses lit up the houses shown in the pictures, as well as how the city lights contrast with the natural light left in the sky.

For a while now I've really been wanting to try out time lapse photography. This is my first attempt, and I'm not that impressed with it but I figured I'd post it. It is only over 20 minutes because it started raining outside (you can see the clouds roll in) so I couldn't capture the full sunset, just as the sky was starting to look awesome. I will definitely be trying this again soon