Sunshine and Summertime

I was bored this afternoon and hadn't done a model shoot in a while, so my sister and I went to work. (:

















I had had a few posing ideas and editing ideas I'd been wanting to try out, so this shoot was the perfect opportunity. The time of day was less than ideal, but the bright sun actually worked to my advantage.

I shot these all completely manually and in RAW.

I'm a firm believer that RAW files are the only way to shoot. (:

~Becky

Lights!

Welcome to the first post of a series of Christmas posts! The first matter of business- LIGHTS!!
I love Christmas lights, and Christmas light photography is always so much fun. You can do so many creative things with them. And some not so creative things. Or you can try to do creative things and epically fail.. like this one-
The whole 'shaped bokeh' thing is really cool. I've seen some awesome examples of it, however, I have yet to master the art of shaped bokeh. I've got the idea, but not the technique, I guess. Here's the lens hood I made for it-







It's cute, isn't it? Well, it didn't work that well.

I took these with my Nikon D3000, completely manually. I was rather proud of myself for that. I can't tell you what each pictures settings were, but they were an 5.4f, 400 ISO, and somewhere between 1/6 and 1/13 shutter speed. Anyway, onto some better examples of Christmas light bokeh, and a few ornaments. (:

Here is one example of just bokeh. Nothing fancy, just plain old bokeh out of Christmas tree lights, on a small tree. It's kind of cool just by itself, but I like having it focus on something else.

I love how you can see the lights reflected in the snowglobe. It's like double bokeh. (:

Isn't he adorable??
I love this one because you can see the whole antler reflected in the snowglobe. (:

Can you tell I love snowmen? (:
And just because I love my deer, and am a bit of a redneck...
~Becky

More Star Trail Photography

So here I am, once again posting a star trail photo. This one is by far my favorite. I still need to figure out how to get rid of the purple corners. Maybe if there was less light around it would help. Same settings as last time, but I cannot remember for the life of me how long it exposed. Possibly somewhere between 10 and 25 minutes.

My Star Trail Photos!

So tonight I finally got around to doing some star trail (long exposure) photos. As far as the quality, they're not that great, and they're nothing compared to the ones I shared when I introduced this shoot. But, all that aside.. I'm so excited because.. IT WORKED!!! I'm definitely going to keep practicing and do some more of these, but doing these long exposures sucks all the juice right out of your camera battery, so I could only do 3 exposures, and only 2 of them are worth posting. These are completely SOOC. I used my camera's remote on the Timed exposure in my Manual settings. I let them expose for about 5 minutes each (it should have been WAY longer, but I was too excited to let it expose any more (: ). ISO 100, f10, and... I think that was it. I don't know what's up with the purple in the corners. Any ideas? The first one is without a flash, and the second one is with the flash on.
~Becky

Star Trail Photography

Brainstorming.

So, my recent obsession is star trail (aka long exposure) photography. I'm in love with the idea and I cannot wait to try it myself. I've been doing some research online to figure out how exactly to do it. I have a remote (which is what all the websites said I would need), but I didn't think I had the right kind. After a little help from my photo teacher, Mrs. O., I now know that the remote I have will, in fact, work for it! Now all I need is to figure out how to set my timed shutter setting on my camera for it to work. I'm so excited to try it! I think I'll have to wait until we're in the mountains again to be able to see the stars well enough for it to work. I may try some tests around here, though.

HERE is a link to a how-to for star trail photography using a film SLR.
And HERE is a link to a how-to for star trail photography using a DSLR.

And now for some star trail photos I pulled off the Internet. They're absolutely gorgeous!
~Becky

Water Drop Photography

Today I was inspired to try some water drop photography. I found this awesome how-to for water drop photography, and I realize mine aren't near as good, but it was a first attempt. If you're interested, here's the link to the website: Click HERE
So here are some of mine. I took them all completely manually with my Nikon D3000 with just a normal 18-55mm lens. I had my aperature set at f14. My shutter speed was at about 1/3 and I had my ISO at 200. I had two lights on around the water as well as my camera flash. I used a water-dropper and my camera's remote to take the pictures. I've got some edits and some SOOC below.

This one is an edit, and it's not real great as far as capturing the actual drop, but I love the colors.
This one is one of my favorites from the shoot. I'm not real crazy about the quality, since I had to crop it to eliminate the edge of the bowl in the background. You can still see a little bit of it, but I like the color it adds.
Here's the same drop, but I edited the colors differently to get them more blue. I think I like the other one better, though.
I love how the drop came out, but I don't like the background. I couldn't crop it out enough.
And here is an SOOC picture. I haven't really decided which ones I like better- the edits or the SOOC pictures.

~Becky