7: Textbooks

Sooo, guess what I'm doing today!

Ok, I cheated, this pile includes some books from last semester, but it's still a lot of books.

What I learned from this exercise is that I need a bounce flash and light diffuser so I don't get that glare from the reflections

Back to my nice stack of books

6: The Falcon

This is a statue on my university campus.  This was another exercise in PP for me, to take an other wise drab, boring picture with an ugly, slightly over blown sky and try to draw the attention to the statue.

My only problem, as one can see, is the lovely (not!) building sprouting out of his wings and head.

Anyways, my take on trying to 'spice up' a picture.

5: Transitions

Ok. I'm getting a jump start because I know today will be a busy day for me.

This is an old photo, taken around the same time as my Free Study on DPC. I'm very lucky to have the advantage of going to the country fairly regularly, where watching the seasons change is absolutely wonederful. Not only do the leaves change, but as it gets cold, the river slowly freezes, so I get to document the transition.

I'll be posting more of the river frozen over. There are more pictures of the river available here and here.

Since I've gotten my camera, I'm hoping to start a few projects involving this river, so I'll be posting those eventually...

I think nature is such a cool thing!

4: Grace

Ok, I'm lame, I posted this without the picture. *doh*

Taken of a houseplant that has its leaves leaning against a window.

I wanted to select it out and drop it onto a solid white back ground, but I got lazy, so I just left as is, with the screen and everything in it. I've decided it gives it character :-)

Practice with backlighting, since I don't have the means to do a good food shot (photographically that is). My SO and I can cook quite well, and we are often entertainment for our friends because it's one of the few situations we've ever actually argued with each other.

Tried to take the mundane and make it interesting.

Shot in RAW, fiddled with WB and brightened it waay up. Levels, saturation, curves and USM.

Cheers

3: Around the World

Since most of the pictures I've taken today are potential DPC shots, I've decided I'm allowed to use old pictures as well. Gives me incentive to go through them. So, yes, this will be more of an upload a picture a day project, but I will do my best to shoot something everyday.

This was taken in San Francisco (I wasn't wearing flowers in my hair) at the Golden Gate Bridge.

The guy is deaf and mute, and is on a quest to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by being the only deaf-mute person to travel the world on a motorbike. He had a scrapbook of pictures taken of him all over the world. He's now onto his third bike I think. He started in Minsk, and was currently hitting all 50 states in the US. Well, I'm not sure about Hawaii. He relies on donations from tourists like me to pay for gas. He had a list of every country he's been to. He also listed states/provinces where applicable.

He communicated with laminated writings, and also had a collection of newspaper clippings where he ahd been written up.

I had spotted his bike, and was trying to get a picture of his bike, when he came over and gave me the thumbs up. I had my 80-200 lens on, so that's why there isn't more of the bike. I thought about switching lenses, but I would have felt bad making him hold his pose while I changed it :-)

So, thought I'd share his quest and story with you. I'm sorry I can't remember more details, but you may run into him at some point and then you can see it in person.

And I liek Artyste's way of numbering the PAD's, so I'm adopting it, too

Day Two: Winter in the City

Ok, Hopefully, I will at one point be able to delete the gi-normous one below this one.

My street. For those of you who wonder if they miss winter, imagine this before the plows came through! If we get another snowstorm, I'll be sure to post some post storm pics.

And I will post pretty snow pics, too.

My :P to Alfresco's very nice leading lines with pretty snow shot from his photo today.

I think the brown adds a nice touch. What do you think?

Edit: ok, blog is working when it wants to. I will get this figured out!

Day One: Ribbit Quack Quack

Well, I've finally gotten this blog up after a bit of confusion (on my part)

I've officially started my PAD project for 2006 now with this picture. One of my goals this year is to shoot raw and get to know it a little bit better.

Shot in raw and some light PP. Levels, curves, little colour saturation... Resized and saved for web then a quick run through Neat Image.

So, there you go! I'd like to do some sort of theme, but I'm not that organized, so for now, it's just going to be trying to do a PAD

Cheers!

Edit: Several people have asked about the lighting set up. It's actually just a tacky halogen light on the ceiling. I shot at 1600 ISO, and fiddled with the WB and adjustments in the RAW format. I'd say the light was at about a 70 degree angle. It was not a strong light, which is why the iso 1600 and thus the ligth run through neat image. Maybe I'll post the setup tomorrow as my PAD :)

testing Testing for now!

Testing Testing. Old picture