Right after sunset is “blue hour’, in which the sky takes on a deepening and darkening blue as it transitions into the black of night. I think that this time of day is the best time to shoot sky photos, especially since if the clouds are just right, the sun will shine a beautiful array of reds, oranges, and purples onto them as it sinks lower below the horizon.
Yesterday while sitting at my table, working, I noticed some Blue Jays, so this morning I slapped on my 50-200mm lens on and kept the camera next to me. I got a couple shots, none very clear. I blame that on the lens, it’s the cheapest zoom I could get w/ IS I could find, and and I bought it. Little did I know that the quality of glass is one of the most important contributors to image quality (as far as gear goes). Want to by a cheap lens? 😉
200 mm, 1/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 (Fly Birdie, Fly)
200 mm, 1/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 (Blue Jay)
I was in New London, CT this evening to attend a graduation ceremony for an employment class I taught a lesson in. I arrived early and decided to just go for a walk with my trusty camera. I ended up just circling the block. My initial intent was to shoot the sun behind the steeple of the church where the ceremony was held, but as I walked, I noticed an old guard rail for a basement access of one of the old buildings that populate the are. I then took several more photos as I went on this short walk. I was glad that it was empty so I could shoot w/o distraction 🙂
37 mm, 1/50 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 (City Fence)
33 mm, 1/50 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 (City Guard Rail)
55 mm, 1/80 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 (Blue Doors)
21 mm, 1/60 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 (Power of God)
35 mm, 1/50 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 (Blue Bricks)
Today’s image is for the photo scavenger hunt (hosted by SeeingSpotsPhotography and Nick Exposed), under the title “Patriotism”. When I think of the word Patriotism, my first thoughts are of the US Flag, followed closely by our men and women in uniform: Navy, Army, Coast Guard, Marines, Air Force, Fire Fighters, Police, and others who risk themselves for their fellow man.
60 mm, 1/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Patriotism)
Here is the list I’m shooting from. I’m supposed to “find” 15 of these:
I tend to recycle as much as I can (it saves me money on trash service, not going to debate the environmental pluses/minuses of recycling here), and had a few of my cleaned out yogurt containers sitting on the counter ready to go to the recycle bin, but the colors caught my eye a few days ago, so I left them for such a time as this 🙂
I thought it would be cool to play with them a little in front of the camera as an exercise in color. I also hope this encourages you to look at everything around you for inspiration for shooting! Look at the images below and then think about that they are of my trash! Subjects for your work can be anything! I challenge you to look for interesting subjects in new and abnormal locations/places, maybe even your own trash can!
And as an FYI, I’m leaving in about 15 min to head back up to the ADK Mountains in upstate New York for tonight and tomorrow. I may not get a chance to post tomorrow, but I will be taking some photos, you can be sure 🙂 I’ll definitely post on Sunday.
60 mm, 1/10 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60mm Canon macro lens (Line of Colors)
60 mm, 1/5 sec, f/3.5, ISO 100, 60mm Canon macro lens (Array of Color)
60 mm, 1/50 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60mm Canon macro lens (Color Wheel)
60 mm, 1/30 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200, 60mm Canon macro lens (Tower of Color)
Today is what my employer would call a ” day off.” But it’s funny that I always have tons of work to do on my day off. Not for my job, but home work, yard work, auto work, house work, etc. It seems I never have enough time to get it done, but that’s ok. Most of it will still be there for my next “day off” lol.
On one of my errands, I swung into the local high school parking lot since I noticed a lot of trees blooming. I swapped out the kit zoom for the macro lens and spend about 20 min shooting the flowers. Today was bright and sunny, and shooting at about 2:30 pm meant the light was bright and harsh. So could that with the challenge of shooting white flowers against a back-lit sky, I was happy that I was able to get some good shots 🙂
60 mm, 1/1600, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Busy Bee) {cropped}
60 mm, 1/2000, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (White Bliss)
60 mm, 1/80, f/5.6, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Azalea)
And this is a sight I’m never tired of seeing!
60 mm, 1/500, f/5.6, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Old Glory)
Every time I blow out a candle, I am mesmerized by the patterns and shapes that the smoke creates as it wafts up from the wick. Today I grabbed my camera just as I blew one out and took a few shots. And just for fun, I played with the split toning to see what it would look like in different colors. A bit different than what I normally do, but it was fun and a learning experience 🙂
I think I would like to do this again more deliberately, with a cleaner back ground and play with the shutter speed to see how it comes out. But for now, I like how these turned out.
60 mm, 1/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60 mm macro lens (Blue Smoke)
60 mm, 1/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60 mm macro lens (Red Smoke)
60 mm, 1/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60 mm macro lens (Smoke)
Since I’m busy working on a paper due tomorrow today (I only had 2 paragraphs started, out of 3-5 pages needed done before today), I didn’t have much time to do any photography. I was going to try and shoot something w/ my iPhone (which I just got today), but I’m not familiar enough w/ it to try to get ‘fancy’ 🙂
But I remember that I have my LED strands hanging from the banister rail to straighten them, so I thought maybe I could just swing them like a pendulum and take a longer exposure and see what happened. I know it’s a lot of photos posted, but I couldn’t pick out just one or two; I like a lot of them 🙂 Not bad for a last-minute idea, IMO.
Today I’ve been working on a paper for my investing class. I have to write about Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme. So in an effort to do something more uplifting than writing about the life of a crook, I decided to do a little light paining before I ate dinner.
It’s not fancy, just me messing around with some LED christmas lights. If I wasn’t stuck doing this paper, I would have taken more time to do something more fun to do/look at. But this will work for now. As with any photo I’m not thrilled about, I did learn some things to apply to the next time (such as getting a better composition). Anyway, I hope you enjoy, at least a little bit 🙂
55-18 mm zoom, 5 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 (Zoom Lights)
18-55 mm zoom, 3.2 sec, f/3.5, ISO 100 (Light Plane)
18 mm, 5 sec, f/3.5, ISO 100 (Jumping Rope)
55-18 mm zoom, 5 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 (Camera Twist)
Today my girlfriend and I decided to take a quick walk in the woods behind my yard. I wanted to show her an old beaver pond since we had talked about some photos I had taken last summer out there. There wasn’t much life out there today, but we did come back with some good photos. I can’t wait for the spring to go back out and shoot it in its full color.
20 mm, 1/80 sec, f/13, ISO 100, EF-S 18-55mm IS kit lens (Pond and Sky)
49mm, 1/50 sec, f/5/6, ISO 100, EF-S 18-55mm IS kit lens (Red)
Every day I drive past this college on my commute home, and love the way it looks in the dark. Each street light is topped with a green light, and the tower glows a new color every 10 seconds. It took some paying attention to realize it was a school and not a business of sorts. I’ve been meaning to shoot this for a while, so today I took the exit and tried to capture its beauty. I’m afraid that I was not able to do it justice; I’m not terribly proud of the results, but maybe on a darker night, when I’m not trying to get home and satisfy my hunger, I can take more time, try different angles & views, and get something I will be happy with.
23 mm, 15 sec, f/11, ISO 100, EF-S 18-55mm IS kit lens (Goodwin College)
One of the street lights that only had the upper green light working:
33 mm, 30 sec, f/11, ISO 100, EF-S 18-55mm IS kit lens (Green Street Light)
365 Photos by Jeremy 