Dawn Visit to Portland Headlight

Maya and I got up superbly early on Saturday, May 24th and drove out to Portland Headlight in Cape Elizabeth Maine. I took 4 panoramas as the sunrise changed, but this one is the one that has come out the best so far:

Click on the picture to see the full-sized version. Hope you like it! Cheers, Cindy

Now selling 18 x 24 gallery posters of Dawn on Portland Headlight!

I've been learning how to do more complex things with the wonderful book my father gave me at Christmas (among many other awesome things!) The Photoshop CS2 Book by Scott Kelby. I learned today how to create gallery prints and I put this one together. I am very proud of figuring this out!

I am selling the prints at $25.00 plus $5.00 S&H. I hope people will be interested, as it would certainly help publicize my photography business!

More splashes and a new self-portrait. . .

Still trying to get the crispest splash photos possible in my quest to become an istockphoto provider at some point. This high speed experiment has been a real learning experience, I'll tell you. (if you click on the pictures, they will open into a large view.)

These were shot at f/16, ISO 200, and this time, set up my shoot with the martini glass standing on two bricks with a white dropcloth covering them and the picnic table to reduce shadowing on the bottom of the glass, which is what I got when I shot with the glass atop the dark wood alone. It really paid off--the first shot is my favorite.

What I encountered with istockphoto the other day when I uploaded 3 of the former images was this: rejected, due to overfiltering. . . (cue the funeral dirge!) In doing some research and with the handy advice of a fellow Pentaxian on the dPreview Pentax SLR discussion group, I discovered just what I was doing wrong in Photoshop CS2. I was really booping up the shadows in camera raw, as well as adding quantities of 50% in the luminance smoothing, color denoising and sharpening categories, which basically is overprocessing for istock. They want minimal denoising, no sharpening and the right exposure every time. . .

Not so much to ask, you say? Well, it's easier said than done, but I'm learning! I'll keep you posted (literally!)

Also, as a last point of debatable interest: take notice of my new self-portrait, taken yesterday in the back yard for my upcoming show this summer at Terrell Lester's Deer Isle, ME gallery!

High Speed obsession!!!

Martini Splash. . .

So I spent the last few days learning how to take high speed splash photography, much as I did last spring with the Canon poin-and-shoot. Only, as I have recently discovered, the Canon did much of the work for me! I've had to actually learn how to set the camera to freeze the splashes. Here are some of the best work so far, using only available full sunlight and a black cloth background I bought at Joann Fabric for about $2.50:

Strawberry Margarita. . .

Orange Splashdown. . .

Manhattan Style. . .

I understand how to set the camera, but even with bright sunlight, the black background sucks up so much of the available light that whatever pictures I took were extremely underexposed. Taking them in RAW really helped, because Photoshop CS2's camera raw feature allowed me to adjust the exposure settings and end up with the nifty-looking photos you see here, but blown up to 100% size, they look grainy and full of artifacting from being so underexposed.

So, I have been on a quest to find an less expensive light source that would work but not cost me an arm and a leg, so to speak, by purchasing true studio lights.

Orange Vertigo. . .

I discovered that Halogen worklights are extremely HOT and have a yellow cast to them. Then I discovered that there are such things as Painter's Halogen worklamps that in addition to having a true color bulb, they also have a frosted front panel that acts as a diffuser, which won't make hot spots on my photos. So that may be the way I go. . . To be continued!

And last but not least:

Raspberry Margarita! Cheers!