HAPPY EASTER 2008!

These are the eggs Maya, her cousin Eve and I dyed yesterday afternoon--they're pretty cool, aren't they? It's actually a lot easier than it looks--the dye comes in liquid packets with some sort of oil in them that stays separate from the dye, so when you dip the hardboiled eggs in with a spoon or a dipper and swirl them around in a circular pattern for a second or two, they get coated or dappled in the pattern you see. Then you dry them off with a paper towel and dip them in a contrasting color, and so on, until you have the effect you want. Easy, peasy, japanezy! And here are Eve and Maya, hard at work in the kitchen:

More Portraiture Practice

This afternoon, Maya's friend, Callie, came over for a playdate. As I sat on the couch, watching them dance to Renaissance music, I decided to get out the camera with the zoom lens again and do a little more practice. I tried using available light first, but I had to set the camera at ISO 1600--which left the pictures grainy and boring. After I put the ISO back to 200 and used low-powered fill-flash, here are the results I got:

Trying out a new look

So, I have seen a lot of blogs that showcase photos with a white background, and I thought I'd give it a whirl. If you have a moment, let me know what you think of the colors for the text, titles etc and whether the white works or whether the black background was more dramatic and interesting! Thanks, Cindy

dSLR Portraiture Woes!

So, my latest quest is to learn how to capture portraits of people with my Pentax K10D dSLR. It was so easy with the Canon S3 IS, which is a sophisticated point-and-shoot, but having to A) set the correct aperture, correct shutter speed and not introduce any motion blur using a telephoto lens makes it easier said than done. Today, I put my father's borrowed 50-200 mm zoom lens on and took some pictures of my nephew, niece and daughter with natural light only, since I still don't have a real flash, nor do I understand how to use one correctly yet. . . I set the camera at f/5.6, left it at 95 mm, and the camera took the best picture at 1/20 sec. Unfortunately, in order to be able to take blur-free (reasonably) images, I had to set the ISO at 800! Grain-city, but easily removed with denoising software. Also--I had to use Auto White Balance in order to get color approaching normal as opposed to other custom white balances. . . The picture on the bottom is Maya, climbing her loft bed ladder. On the top, she's looking surprised and this one is quite soft-focus, not my intention! Below is a version I desaturated. . .

This ----------------------------------------->

is what the images look like before I've used the noiseware and portraiture denoising and photoshop unsharp mask. 800 ISO introduces a lot of grain or noise. . .

And THIS one on the left is how good it can look with the portraiture denoising used to smooth out skintones. I like! Butterscotch pudding heaven, while on belay on the loft bed!

The Entertainer? This is my nephew, Miles, showing me how well he plays the piano. He's quite the character! I took the picture in color, but desaturated it, using Photoshop (hereafter to be known as PS, for ease of moiself!)

My niece Eve, and Maya, smiling preetty for the camera! I used the portraiture denoising on them, too, to smooth out the old skintones. . . Maya was disappointed to see that her freckles kind of faded away with that process, because she really likes them. . .

And last but not least, this headshot of Maya--my beautiful girl!

The original lighthouse photo

So, I took this photo at dawn on October 28, 2007. There were about 10 other photographers out that morning with me, and all set up their tripods in one spot that is a nice vantage point and there was no room for me there, so I jumped the fence and climbed down the slippery, wet rocks, almost sliding down about 30 feet at one point because I hadn't been wise enough to wear shoes with good traction! But this is one of what I came up with! Below, is another shot from that morning I really like:

This is really my favorite one, because I love reflections of things in water.

Big News for january 2008

In the January 2008 issue of Digital Camera World, an English photography magazine I buy and read to rags each month despite the hefty price tag ($12.95! Ulp!) I have my first published photo in the hallowed pages of their Hotshots category! You can see the photo of the 2 page spread of my picture, taken at Portland Headlight on October 28, 2007, the blurb about the picture and a photo of me holding my camera below:

Here's the link to go to Digital Camera World's website: http://www.dcmag.co.uk/

Lighthouse Mania

Last Saturday, I woke up early and checked to see if it was clear outside--it was, so I loaded my Canon S3 IS and the tripod into the car and headed over to Fort Williams, in ape Elizabeth, to try to get a nice shot of the Portland Headlight.

By the time I got there, there were already six other guys with nice tripods and even nicer cameras (or big guns, as I prefer to call them) set up in pristine shots pointing everywhere from out at the horizon to at the lighthouse.

I boldly set up with my little camera, and as the sun began to rise above the ocean, I snapped away and caught the image you see above. with a little noise reduction help from my dad, it came out quite well, although truly only a very classically framed shot.

I am so excited though, because I just ordered my first dSLR on Monday night! I'm getting a Pentax K10D and I can't wait to get my sweaty little hands on it and start shooting away1

The image above is another one I captured at Fort Williams--the Prince of Fundy, Portland's own "cruise ship" that sails up to Canada and back and a tiny fishing boat, going in opposite directions. Nothing brilliant. . . But hey. . .

More when I get the Pentax!

Infrared Mania!

I realized in the last week or so that once the leaves had fallen off the trees in September, all my infrared opportunities would be over until May 2008! That lit a fire under my butt and I drove over to Eastern Cemetary, Portland's oldest graveyard, dating back to the 1630s, and got three good images of graves with my Hoya R-72 infrared filter. The one above is titled Here Lyes. The one below is called Sacred, and I love the cotton candy effect in the whiteness of the trees and the beautiful wispy clouds in the sky.

I am submitting the above two images along with a third to the Spirits Alive gallery showing of artwork inspired by Eastern Cemetary. I just got the 8 X 10 prints in the mail yesterday and am really excited to take them and get them matted and framed!

I was so happy with the Eastern Cemetary shoot, that I headed to the West End, another big historic district dating back to about the 1850s in Portland, the next day around Sunset. The following three images were taken with 15 second exposures on a mini tripod set up in the grass across the street from the houses. I was amazed at how much ambient IR (infrared) light there still was at almost eight o'clock at night! The first two pictures are what I call the Gatsby Mansion, and the third is a beautiful Federal Style with a hip roof.

Once I got such favorable results at the west End, I thought, "Maybe I should go back to the East End and try to get some images of houses there!" But the one below, is the only one that seemed worth photographing, even though it was a beautiful day. There just weren't that many clouds, which are an important part of getting an interesting IR image. I like the sun flares in this image, and the low perspective it was taken from though.
For all of these photos, I decided to try something new to me--I set my camera on Sepia, so I didn't have to put each photo I liked into Photoshop, convert the brilliantly red photo into grayscale, fix the levels, contrast and sharpen it. The finished project is a lot more interesting to me, and I wish I had tried it before!

And finally, last night, after my writers group in South Portland, I set up my tripod in a parking lot right next to the bay, that looks across the water to Portland's skyline and took this image. I like how the lights of Portland are reflected on the glassy waters of the harbor, but I missed the jewel-toned post-sunset sky by about 10 minutes, AND some of the buildings are just a hair out of focus. But it's interesting, nonetheless!

Princeton University at sunset

After leaving our friends, Ross and Julie's wedding reception on Saturday the 4th of August, we changed into comfortable clothes at our hotel and then headed back in to Princeton, where we walked around the campus and I took a bunch of pictures.

It had been stinking hot the day before and it wasn't too pleasant earlier in the day, but by the time we were walking around Princeton, it was pretty nice and the air was really drying out. (In fact, the next morning, it was cool and dry!) The photo above is a view of one of Princeton's many libraries--can't recall it's name and I really wished it had been open b/c I understand it's beautiful inside too.

The photo above is the clock tower/cupola on top of the building that faces the street in the town proper. The one below is another view:

Below, is a detail of a very ornate, majestic-looking building. I liked the sunset light on the stone.

Another tower from a different, ornate building. The deep blue of the sky is a nice counterpoint to the tower.
All in all, we had a great time walking around, and I got a lot of nice pictures, but I'll leave you with these, as none of them are very "special." It was just fun to have time to walk around together on such a quiet university campus with a big history. I believe F. Scott Fitzgerald was a princeton man, along with many other famous people. I've always been a Fitzgerald fan, though, so it was cool to imagine him going to the library and penning whichever novel it was that he wrote in college. . . Over and out.

Spencer Pond Memories. . .

Wow--Maya and I had such a good time visiting my mother's rental cabin on Spencer Pond last week! (The bullfrog above was our pal--he hung out by the edge of the water the whole time, catching mosquitoes and ribbiting mournfully every so often.)

Maya had a sailing lesson from Rufus:

She also did a lot of diving off the dock:

And of course, I did some night photography and early morning photography as well. This is a photo of sunset on Spencer Pond, on July 13, 2007: And below, is a picture of sunset on the 12th. I also got shots of the stars over Spencer Pond, which are kind of cool:

And this one:

I got a couple of nice images of the mist on the lake in the morning:
And this one was from the canoe ride we all took before breakfast:

We had some delicious dinners, played a lot of hands of Uno and scrabble one day because it rained, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves all around. (Ummm--Except for that spider that ran across my arm and book while I was lying in bed.) But other than that. . .
I'll leave you with one final image--this is how much fun we had: