Hiking

On the Lake

We stayed with some good friends of ours for a few days this past week...and they live on a lake! 

They took us out in their boat, and we had so much fun! :)

Mums at Their Best

A happy May to all! We got these flowers in honor of May Day. :)

The little pink flowers especially were begging to be photographed!

P.S. Post number 100! Hurray!

Spring Concert

Thoughts on Editing

I've been working alot in Lightroom this week, trying to get more familiar with it, and developing a workflow. I have also selected a few photos and worked for a long time on them, trying to find good editing style for me.

I like photos that have bright, vibrant colors. Having a photo completely in focus is a must for me, and I really try not to crop off limbs. I want my photos to look real, not all hazy and dreamy, but also not over-edited.

I really admire photographers who do not edit. For one thing, they don't have to spend nearly as much time processing, and they also can spend more time learning how to use their camera to the best of their ability.

It is my goal to get everything right in camera....white balance, focus, cropping, and other things, like making sure there is nothing I don't want in the photo. 

Look at the photo below... 

In the before version, you can see the tip of a red scooter handle right next to his head. I really didn't notice that when I was shooting the photo, but when I went in to edit, it bothered me. I tried to edit it out, but it kind of failed (as you can see :P). I want to notice those kinds of things, and fix them before I take the photo.

Anyway, that was a little bit rambling and I don't know if you got anything out of it. 

Oh well. Enjoy the photos!

Service Trip!

Swinging with friends on the rope course

Last week I went on a kind of mission trip with a group of around 60 high school students.

Here are a few photos from our adventure!

This is where we worked for a few days....helping back fill houses with dirt for local flood victims.

I worked at this church one day, chipping away at the concrete walls.

Hey, are you impressed?! I actually got in some of these photos ;D Thanks to friends who took photos of me!

The beach at the camp we stayed at.

There were some lovely sunsets...I'll be posting more photos of them later ;)

Braiding hair....

A glimpse of the camp we stayed at...

Water balloon wars! :D

Dinner

We pulled some great pranks...like stringing the openings of the bunkbeds. ;D

This cat was at one of the churches we worked at. I had never seen a cat with two different colored eyes, and this one was stunning!

Loading up the baggage for the ride home...

Love this photo!

We worked a ton, learned a lot, built some great relationships, and grew in Christ. It was a wonderful trip! :)

HDR: an Experiment

I've been interested in HDR (High Dynamic Range imaging) Photography for a while.
There are some great HDR images out there, and the technique is very unique. 

Here are a few professional HDR images (all link to a post):

by Gavin Phillips

by Leonardo Riano

by Nicholas Moeggenberg

by James Brandon

by MorBCN

After browsing around and reading some tutorials, I decided to give it a try.
I needed 4 things:

1. A camera
2. A tripod
3. A program that did HDR photo merges (Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3)
4. Something to photograph

Well, I ended up just photographing my neighborhood. HDR is a more dynamic kind of photography. It shows closer to what the human eye sees, and captures more of the range of colors and light.

In this first photo, the sky is a lovely blue, and the clouds are fluffy and white. But the rest of the neighborhood is a bit underexposed, and the light is kind of "murky" there.

But....voila! In this photo, both the sky and the neighborhood are properly exposed! Cool, right!?

But, you say, HOW in the WORLD did you do that? 

It is actually quite simple.
I set my camera up on the tripod.
I turned the Aperture Priority mode on.
I correctly exposed for the sky.
Then I shot about 7 different exposures.
In some of the photos, the sky is way over exposed, but the neighborhood is lovely.
In others, the neighborhood is way underexposed, but the sky looks great.

Then I took those photos and imported them into Corel PSP, a program that is somewhat like Adobe Photoshop.
I clicked on "HDR Photo Merge" and loaded about 7 photos.
I fiddled with a few settings, and got this photo. Amazing.



(Basically all the program does is merge the images together.)

Here is another HDR photo merge that I have done (in color and black and white):

HDR is used mainly for landscape and cityscape photography. There are great things about HDR, and not so great things. If you look at the clouds in the comparison photos above, the clouds are much clearer in the original photo than in the HDR. That's because clouds move. I took 7 images and merged them together, but the clouds moved slightly in each shot, so they are blurry in the final product.

In my photo, it looks a little weird and unprofessional, but some photographers are very talented at using the moving clouds to their advantage, like in the last example I gave. (by MorBCN)

So, HDR photography is amazing. I enjoyed experimenting with it, and look forward to using it occasionally.
It is definitely not a technique that should be used all the time, but there are a few instances where it can be very well used. Why don't you give it a try?!