Saudi Arabia Panoramas

I really have been trying to write up about all the fun adventures I went on in Europe and the Middle East. I promise.  It’s just so hard to find the time to write when I also have to find the time to gather my photos!

So here are a few panoramas I took in Saudi Arabia.  They are each like 5-11 pictures merged into one, so consider this a 10,000 word blog post, aight? Make sure to click the photos to open the lightbox and view them much larger.

One big complication with panoramas like these, with power lines in them, is reconciling the power lines from shot to shot. Still working on the best way to accomplish that.  I’d love to get your thoughts on these down in the comments. Thanks a bunch! Oh and if you have a trick in Photoshop for fixing these power lines, DEFINITELY put THAT in the comments!

Inspired Photos

One of my fellow photo students, Leah (@tigersluvpepper) shoots these amazing photos of people in their homes. Her photos are as much a study of the people as of the environment they make for themselves.  Leah has this one particular photo that is really striking of a bathroom window, rich with color and somber light.

I got out of the shower this morning and saw something that probably would have caught her eye, so I took a few pictures and thought I’d share them.  Here goes!  Oh and if you didn’t know, I have a full time photo blog where I post my work.

So there you go. Now back to your regularly scheduled blog.

Not Really Duality But…

[Update…ish] People in my photo class really liked the pics 🙂  Even though it doesn’t fit my idea of duality.  They said I don’t have to be so strict with how I construct a photo. 🙂

So we had the idea but it didn’t really come to fruition.  Still we had a fun time taking pics!  Thanks guys for letting me blind you with 2300 watts of light for so long.  I need a set though.  Ryan reminded me we have a garage.

So, I think I’m going to turn our garage into a photo studio.  Thoughts?  It would be perfect!  Just need to get a background stand that can hold like a 10×10 or 10×20 canvas of white or black.  Black is what I wanted tonight.  I really need to get that set up.

Here are some random shots.  No photoshopping yet cause… I need to be sleeping.  Again, I am not sure I will be able to use these on this project; I’m just so torn as what to do for it.  Argh!  Why does this have to be my final project that I go blank on?

Now I give you the pictures from the shoot.  Plus one of Micheal in front of the setup and then one of my bedroom right now.  I should be asleep but it’s those damn light lines from my blinds that got me to post this!  You’ll see 🙂  Click the pics to enlarge and navigate through the shoot.

First Flower of the Season

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I took that today with my new Nikon 60mm f2.8D AF lens and my new Nikon MD-D80. It was the first flower picture I have taken since the frost ended.  I think it came out quite nicely.  I shot it in Raw on my D80 and processed the NEf file in Aperture 2.

Here’s another.  I was hoping to get a lot of beautiful tulip pictures but the City of Columbia cleared town of all the tulips today.  I can’t imagine why, they sure seemed beautiful just the other day.  Campus has a few, but due to the really strong winds and setting sun, I was pretty limited to what I could capture.

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This last one I used a remote flash, Nikon SB-600 set as a slave to my camera’s built in flash.  The flash sat behind my louvered door, bounced the flash off of the adjacent wall, through the louvres and onto the keyhole.  I had a much better framed version of this shot but something happened and it disappeared from my flash drive during the import into Aperture.

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Reminds me of something a little magical.

So, tell me, what do you think?  It’s been a long time since I’ve done any photography, especially anything worth posting.  With my left wrist out of the cast and working to getting movement back into it… I plan to be doing this much more often.

I’d love to read you thoughts.  If you would like to download a full-size version of the the first picture, just click over here.

Photography Project

I’m supposed to be working on this big project for my photography class.  The basis of it is experimental lighting to enhance a photograph.  I have done some quick and dirty examples of how doing some simple changes to your lighting and camera setting, you can turn a shitty picture into a great picture.

The first example is using a high aperture (f-22) along with a super bright light (650 watt) to light a scene versus using an automatic setting on a camera such as my Nikon D80.  First the auto setting shot.

All and all, it isn’t such a bad picture.  The problems are getting true whites and true blacks as you can see in the shot coming below.

Obviously better whites and blacks here.  Also, I manually set the white balance as opposed to the camera deciding what was white.

This next set is much more obvious.  I took a picture of my mother’s Aggie class ring on a mirror, a blush compact mirror at that.  With this shot I compared again, a 650 watt tungsten Arri light with the built in flash on my camera.  I again modified the f-stop to 22 on my manual shot.

As you can see, the flash blew out the color of the gold and the lower f-stop picked up all the light hitting the mirror.  It’s a plain old gross picture.  However, let’s see what happens when we set the aperture to f-22, pound the thing with 650 watts of light.

I swear, it’s like magic.  The silver mirror turns to black and the gold, which was previously washed to a pale yellow, is now a deep, rich 14ct gold.  Look at that reflection!

These pictures are just the foundation of my project, showing how small changes in light can totally change a picture.  I intend to include emotive portraits and many other genres of photography in this series.  Here’s to hoping I can make it happen and make it something special, unique and captivating.