Snow in mid-April? REALLY….

This is really quite pathetic, I took the pictures on this post a week ago, in mid-April and here I am making this post on April 29 and its still snowing. I’m quite upset with the clouds right now, I think I would rather get drenched by rain than suffer with the snow. Anyways, enough with my rant, because it’s been snowing so much lately I decided to look up some snow photography and I found this cool site that had 80 examples of snow photography and there were some pretty cool shots. HERE IT IS. Since I had just looked this up recently and it’s been snowing outside, I decided to try to capture some sweet shots. I didn’t really happen but thats cool, at least I tried it.

This is what I got:

The top three look pretty much the same due to the fact that I was taking the pictures through my kitchen window since it was so stinkin cold outside. Lazy, I know. Comfortable, indeed. I liked those 3 the best because the lighting was pretty decent and then I could see more of the snowflakes. I liked it better in black and white because the green grass threw off the feel of the snow. I had to make the black and white high contrast because without it, the snowflakes would have been even harder to see. The compilation is all of the pictures that didn’t turn out, mainly due to lighting.

That is my fantastic post for the week. Have a good weekend and hopefully the snow will stop.

Mexico? I think not

Over spring break my dad and I went to Mexico for a nice vacation. I ended up getting pretty sick and not being able to go out and explore the area. I got a grand total of 3 pictures. They are quite fantastic, 2 being pictures of ice in a glass of iced tea and the other being a picture of me that I took to use for an art project. AWESOME!

Here are the sad 3 pictures from Mexico:

Nothing fancy, almost pathetic. I really wish I could have taken more pictures but since I was sick I didn’t really have to opportunity to except for the last day I was there but I wasn’t smart enough to even think about taking pictures until I was on the plane ride home.

So since I didn’t get pictures from Mexico, I’m going to add some studio portraits that I took with Bailey this past week. I wanted to do something kind of weird with the lighting, I didn’t really have anything mind when I was setting up the lights, I just set them up and messed with them till I like the result. I wanted something bold and bright, something…..OVER EXPOSED. Something similar to what Brittney Price did on Valentines Day.

I had a hotbox set up on the right side of Bailey, the stand was as low, or I guess as short, as it could go and then I angled the light itself up toward her face. Then on the left side I had a soft box set up so it was almost as high as the ceiling and then I angled it down toward the top of her head. Finally I used the ring light right in front of her face. Overall it made her face over exposed and left the background black. I like this look a lot because to me it puts the focus on her eyes and the dark background keeps my eye from wandering into the background.

Here are the pictures:

I must admit that this one is a little scary because you can only see a little bit of her mouth and nose and her eyes are so bright and bold in comparison to the rest of the face.

This is definitely my favorite of all these pictures. Just the expression on her face, its so natural, not forced at all. In the other pictures, she just made random faces and was being silly, which is cool and fun but its nice to get a natural Bailey face every once in a while. Usually the fact that I can see the inside of the ring light bothers me but I really like it with this picture, it provides a nice frame for her face.

I really liked these pictures I got and I think its not my typical pictures that I take, I like it.

 

New York

A few weeks ago my family went on a trip to New York and I took a few pictures but not too many. I only took pictures when I got the urge to, which wasn’t very often but I did get a few shots. I was kind of going for more artistic type pictures, just taking what I saw and making it interesting, at least to me.

This is what I came up with:

I think these turned out pretty cool, my favorite are the black and white pictures at the end.

On the Plane

On March 10, 2011 my family embarked on an epic journey to the BIG APPLE! WooHoo! When I was chilling out on the plane for the 5 hour flight from Seattle to Newark, I got a cup of coffee from the lovely flight attendants and my madre shared some of her delicious chocolate with me. For some reason, seeing these objects on the tray in front of me inspired me to take a few photos. I only got a few that turned out the way I wanted them to.

These are the 3 pictures I managed to capture:

I think they are cool because to me they tell a little story of the chocolate being eaten and the coffee being drank(?) and then everything turing into garbage. I like the set up of the first one but I can’t stand the golden orange glow on it, it just doesn’t look right in comparison to the other 2 pictures. The second is okay but it’s not my favorite. I thoroughly enjoy the last picture. I like how simple yet complex it is. The simplicity comes with the basic setup, it’s slightly hard for me to explain, its almost as if the cup is the only object in the picture until I start noticing the garbage in the cup. My favorite part about this picture is the lighting, its a harsh overhead light causing a harsh shadow off to the right side.

I’m quite pleased with how these turned out and how I was able to find something ordinary and turn it into a piece of art, in my opinion.

 

Pilates

I needed to take some pictures for my senior project presentation at the end of the year, and I also needed a photography project for the week. I figured why not combine the 2, especially after seeing Brittney Price’s project for the past week, where she took photos of athletes doing extensive testing. Anyways, it was a little difficult because the lighting was low and people were moving their bodies, obviously since it was an exercising class. I was happy because no one had any problems with me taking some pictures and I don’t have to worry about getting pictures for my project later.

Anyways, this is what I got:

I think the pictures themselves are pretty cool, just being able to see all the different things that go on in one class, but what is driving me crazy is the lighting and the graininess of them, but hey one can only do so much in a low-lighting situation, especially with a point-and-shoot camera.

Poster

Lightbox poster for the school. This was made to encourage fellow students to join the Coeur d’Alene high school photography program. I chose my strongest photos, well the ones that I think are the strongest. I think it looks pretty okay, but its nothing fancy. 

Avedon Style

This week, I was inspired by the great Richard Avedon. He is a fantastic portrait photographer who captured natural character of the subject he was photographing. He didn’t tell them what to do or how to look, he sat there and waited for the true person to come out.

That was my goal for this week, capture the naturalness of the wonder Bailey, and a little bit of Kaylee.

This first picture is probably my favorite just because of how comical it is. This is the story behind it: Bailey was sitting on the stool while I was taking pictures of her and Kaylee decided she wanted to be in the picture, so she grabbed the shorter stool and sat down in front of Bailey. Bailey started pushing her so Kaylee would move and then they got in a tiff and were fighting over the stool and being hilarious. So this is Bailey trying to take the stool away from Kaylee and Kaylee is telling Bailey “Noooo”.

This is Bailey making a weird face, it probably had something to do with what we were talking about at the time.

This would be Bailey flying on the stool. I don’t really know where it came from, but it was a good photo op.

Bailey talking to Kaylee, I’m not sure if she even knew I was taking the picture. I just really liked how she was looking out of the photo and also her hair looked really pretty. 

And this is Bailey striking a cute pose.

I love random photos, especially ones of people. I guess you would call them candid? I appreciate them because of the light hearted innocence, there is no one pretending to be something they are not. After taking these pictures the 3 of us were discussing using props in our pictures, so hopefully there will be some of those soon to follow.

Mouths

This post is late due to attending the preview for The Crucible last friday during class.

This week I was trying to think of something fun and different to take pictures of. When thinking of some previous things I’ve done, I thought of my eye pictures and how they were a different style of portrait. Then I thought back to my final project a couple semesters ago was that of hands. When thinking back I wanted to do something similar by taking odd or different style of portraits.

I then was thinking about a project that Brittney did last year where she took pictures of her brothers eating breakfast. I used this as my inspiration but I wanted to focus only on the mouth.

I went to the studio with my friends and had them stand in front of the camera and do whatever they wanted. They could make weird faces or stand there and do nothing or sit and talk. I didn’t really care too much what they did, I just wanted to get some cool shots of something weird, the mouth.

I really like how these turned out. I found it entertaining watching my subjects try to come up with different faces. It was hard for some because they wanted to use their whole face but I was only focusing on the mouth. It kind of reminds me of Avadon in a weird sense because I was waiting for them to do what they wanted to do, not what I told them to.

I had a lot of fun with this, mainly because its different, but it was highly entertaining and full of lots of laughs haha.

Thanks to all my friends who let me use your mouth!

Freedom

Freedom: the state of being free or at liberty rather than inconfinement or under physical restraint.

When we were given our assignment I wasn’t quite sure what to do. We were given a list of words to pick from to be our theme for our final project and then we were to get 8 to 10 photos to represent that idea. I didn’t know what word to do, I had a few picked out but I couldn’t think of anything to do.

The past few weeks a few of us have been going to the studio a lot and getting in front of the camera to just goof off, even me, which is a shocker. I was thinking about it, when my mom wants to take pictures of me doing stuff or being somewhere I hate it, but when I’m in front of the camera in the studio I don’t mind the pictures, I find it entertaining, and in a sense, freeing. When I’m in the studio I can let myself go and act like a total dork and not care.

I took this idea, or this thought, whatever it might be called, and applied it to my project. The idea of freedom. At first when thinking of freedom its more the idea of being free from slavery or the government, something profound, but the type of freedom I was thinking is freedom from yourself. Being able to be yourself without any inhibitions.

Anyways, I’ll show you my project and then explain it.

So what we had going on here is a basic studio set up with the addition of a fan. I didn’t tell Brittney what to do, this was all her just being herself. I arranged the pictures in a certain order, not in the order they were taken. Starting from the right, we see a simple, conservative smile. As it progresses, she gets a little crazier making faces and such. To me, I see the progression of letting oneself go, reaching the point of freedom from self. No inhibitions, no thoughts, just actions.

I love pictures like this because they reveal true person.

I hope you enjoyed them.

Camera

After being in the studio with my friends this week, and from past projects, I wanted to do some shopping. Camera shopping. Right now, I have something between a point-and-shoot and a DSLR. It works well, but sometimes it’s just not enough. Take for example, studio portraits.  

The lighting in the front and side is decent, but there is no background separation, it drives me crazy. An SLR camera could potentially solve this problem because with a handy hot shoe and a set of transmitters and receivers, it could get the back light to go off simultaneously with both the camera and the other lights being used.

Another thing that makes DSLR cameras helpful is the manual focus, something that my camera does not have. The helpfulness of this can be seen when I took my food coloring pictures. There was a few at the end that were out of focus, and as my teacher pointed out, if I had manual focus it shouldn’t have been a problem.

 

Those are just a few reasons why I’d like to look into getting a DSLR camera, also for the fact that it looks more professional and maybe I would be more comfortable taking pictures in front of my peers who do have these fancy cameras. Anyways, getting back to the main idea here, shopping for them.

The camera I have now is  Nikon, so I think I’ll just stay in the family, also Brittney says that they are way less confusing than Canons, no offense Canon people, but I think she’s right.

I figured DPReview would be a good place to start because it is full of photographers on all levels. On their home page they were highlighting the Nikon D3100. I followed the link and it brought me to a comparison between the Nikon D3100, the Nikon D3000 and the Nikon D5000. There are all pretty similar, but the D3100 has the most features and contains the ones that the other two cameras have.

Now lets compare pricing. I just went to the Nikon company website because I thought it would be the most reliable. I found out that in first place with the highest pricing is the D3100 at $699.95. Second was the D5000 at $629.95. And finally, the D3000 in last place at $549.95.

Those are quite expensive for my taste, and then start adding on lenses and special safety equipment, maybe some insurance… Way over my head. I’m just going to be happy with what I have and stick it out.