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

Project 1 "Little Planets"

So this was originally going to be a one week project, but I came to realize it takes a lot more time than I thought so i;d make it two weeks. I decided to do this because it is something new in photoshop that I haven't done before, and they are really sweet looking. I'd love to get some better ones and will continue doing these whenever I get the chance
Anywayssss... I saw this idea last semester, and wanted to do it but never fully got around to it.
http://www.dirkpaessler.com/blog/index.php/photographers-tools/2006/09/06/tutorial-create-your-own-planets/
^^That is a link for the tutorial I used
Basically, I took a few 360 panorama pictures, squished them down to a square, and added the polar coordinates filter, and it made these.

for the first one I did, I thought I'd try something different and do an indoor panorama
it didn't quite work out as cool as I thought it would :/

At first, I couldn't quite figure out why this one didn't quite look right, until I looked at one's made by other people and realized that most of them have the sky in them.

So i tried again
I think this one turned out pretty good. It is of a park, you can kind of see the monkey bars and swings

This one is my favorite over all. After a lot of trial and errors I finally got a good one here.

New Lens

http://digital-photography-school.com/macro-photography-tips-for-compact-digital-camera-users

For christmas this year I got a macro lens. I'm beyond stoked about it and have been messing around with it a lot lately. Just getting a feel for what all it can do is important. I decided I'd share some of my best shots over the last couple of weeks. It is obviously awesome with close up photos but I've also figured out it is really good for taking portraits.

I LOVE the focal points this lens can give me. It really makes the subject of my pictures pop.

This one of my cat's eye took me at least 20 shots to get right.

Same goes with the snake. With moving subjects, focusing my macro lens was really difficult. I used a fast shutter speed with this along with flash, but it was still hard to get the right parts in focus.

Nothing really special about this one, I just thought it was kinda fun. Once again, however, It demonstrates how sharp the focus is with my new lens

This is a close up of a rip in my jeans. I thought it turned out kind of neat especially with the detail it shows that close up