Reflectors + Painted Pots

I had fun playing with reflectors recently, and have a few photos to share...

These little pots are so unique that I just had to grab my camera!

A Storm Brewing

My sister came running downstairs ten minutes ago and told me,

"Looks like a storm...the sky is almost black behind the house."

This is what I found.

I just noticed the tiny bird on top of the roof...see it?

Sure enough....I hear the rain now!

Elements of Composition #2

 The second element of composition is:
Simple Backgrounds

The title basically explains this element...a simple background! 

I don't know if the duck (Platypus?) photo quite made the cut on this assignment...you can tell I took the photo on a white towel ;) 

Oh well. You get the idea. 

Tomorrow I will be posting on the Rule of Thirds!

P.S. I used flash in the second photo... could you tell? See the ducky's beady little eyes ;D

Black and White with Diffused Flash

 Whew. Yes, I've been learning a bit about flash lately. It still isn't my best friend. All the reflected light it leaves...bleh. But the diffuser helped. I just wrapped a long piece of vellum (thin, partly transparent paper) around the built in flash and taped it.

I took mostly in black and white, because I like the feel the flash gives it ;)

I started in the computer room...

The wire and connector holder

Pencils...and mugs...

Hellloooo there.......  *note to self* Clean mirror

Then I went out to the deck.

A plant. Duh.

The balcony of our deck is quite interesting, doncha think?

The little ball at the end of a wind chime. You can see the flash in it ;)

And lastly, a shell.

Verdict: Flash when I need it, but not if I can help it. Unless I come up with a better idea for a diffuser...

:P
Any ideas?

P.S. There is a little bit of a blog redesign in progress....excuse the lack of header and other interesting differences right now ;)

Histogramia

 Welcome to the world of histogramia.

Here I will teach you what a histogram is, and how it helps you take better photos.

 Try not to get confused.*

What's a histogram?

It looks like this:

 To quote Wikipedia:

An image histogram is a type of histogram that acts as a graphical representation of the tonal distribution in a digital image. It plots the number of pixels for each tonal value. By looking at the histogram for a specific image a viewer will be able to judge the entire tonal distribution at a glance.

Blah, blah, blah. ;)

In English, an image histogram is a graph that shows you all the different shades in an image from pure white to all black. So histograms differ depending on the photo.

(p.s.: Usually you can find a setting in your camera's menu that says "histogram." Just turn that setting on to see a histogram when shooting! Refer to your manual if you need help...) 

Okay, now you know what a histogram is. 

But how does it work? 

Take a look at this photo:

(yep, same one I posted yesterday :) )

See that there is quite a range of tones in this photo, from the almost white sun, to the dark shadows in the bottom half of the photo.

Quoting Darcy from 31 Days to a Better Photo: 

In a histogram the edges are the most important part.

Okay. The left side of this histogram represents the darker places in the photo. And the right side represents the light spots.

Keeping that in mind, look at the far left side of the histogram. See that grey strip running up the side? That represents the dark places in the photo, which are also the blue shaded places in the below photo.

There the histogram is showing you those places are completely black. You can't "retrieve" them, or lighten them up, even in a good editing program because the camera just captured pure black. 

 

This is what would happen if you tried to lighten those places up:

If you look closely, you can see areas that are just plain black. They aren't retrievable...you can't lighten them to see more detail.

And same with the white parts of the photo:

The white parts of the photo are shaded red... it's just the sun in this photo. But I can't darken the photo to be able to see the round shape of the sun, or see more shadows.

It can't darken the part that is completely white, because the camera didn't capture any detail there but plain white!

On the right side of the histogram you can see a little grey going up the side of the histogram. That represents the white part, the sun in the above photo.

Now, in the sunrise photo, (the good one, the first photo I posted) it was okay for me to have "irretrievable" places that were completely light or completely dark. I liked the photo that way... I didn't need to lighten or darken those places.

But in a photo like this...

Poor flower :(

it's NOT good! 

You don't want a lovely orange flower overexposed to the point of being white. You won't be able to fix it, even in a fancy editing program.

 When I try to darken it this is what happens:

Poor, poor flower :'(

Now, not all photos are as drastic as this. There may be a time when you are taking photos, and they look fine on your camera, but then you look at them on the computer, and you realize that there were places that were way too dark or too light. That is when the histogram comes in handy. You can read it and see quickly if places are too dark or light

(for the 1st flower photo)

As I quoted before, the edges are the most important part. If you have strips (aka pixels) running up the left side, you know some places are irretrievably dark, and if you have pixels running up right side, you know some places are irretrievably light. 

So watch your histograms, friends! 

:)

*if you read this whole thing without getting confused, brownie points to you!

Once in a Blue Moon

 {White Balance}

Ever seen that famous blue moon?

Now you have.

The above photo is unedited. I took it straight out of the camera.

I didn't edit it to make it blue. I didn't do anything to it, except re-size it and add the watermark! (Impressive, hm?)

Here's what happened:

Before I took the photo, I adjusted the white balance. 

White balance is the setting that changes the balance of lighting in the image. Yeah.
Well, it is hard to explain.

If you take a photo outside, in the middle of the day, the lighting is very different than if you were to go take a photo near a lamp with a yellowish bulb. White balance fixes that, and makes the photo look the right color. See, if you have the white balance set too high, a photo taken near a lamp will look very yellow. And if you have the white balance set too low, it will look bluish.

That is basically what happened in the first moon photo. I had the white balance on a low setting (or a low temperature) so the moon looked blue.

The white balance on this photo is correct ;) The moon looks like it should!

And this photo has a very high white balance, (high temperature) so it looks ORANGE!

Now (I hope!) you know a little about white balance. :)

Almost Full Moon