2010 - Week 26, Larger Depth of Field

The Missouri Farm
June 21, 2010 2:34 pm
Nikon D90, 18-105 3.5-5.6 VR @ 45mm
Manual, Pop Up Flash, ISO 320, SS 1/125, f/13
RAW, Spot Metering, AF-C, WB in Auto
Exposure Compensation -0.66 stops, Flash Compensation -1.66

This picture is important to me.

Not because it's portrays happy, content subjects - really, who could be happy on a humid, 100° day in full sun - never mind city kids who aren't used to being poked and pricked by corn stalks and hay stubble.

This picture is important to me because I wanted it to remember my childhood by.

There are so many memories in this photo, and I don't have a photo with my dad in these cornfields, so a picture of my dad with my own kids will fill that gap.

I remember walking from the house through these fields of corn and then another half mile or so to the creek to go swimming - by ourselves, no adults - and none of us knew how to swim!

I remember the summer we built the east-most grain bin, the thousands of little bolts and nuts we slid in and tightened, and how much fun it was to climb to the top and scramble about, or to go in and wallow in the cool grain - now the thought of that makes the bottom of my feet tingle.  But I loved harvest time - unloading wheat, beans & corn into those bins, climbing up into the wagon or grain truck and sliding down to the opening with the grain.  I didn't seem to mind the bugs and dirt back then.

I remember sorting and working cattle in the pen next to the hay barn. I was Dad's little helper. We broke my first 4H steer, Rags, in that pen. He was so wild we had to build a cage over him to keep him in, but was so tame in the end we let him roam the yard like a pet dog.  We had a milk cow for a while and I was the only one who could milk her when Dad couldn't be there, I remember pinning her tail between my hat and her flank so she wouldn't swat you during the milking.

I remember moving the cattle herd in & out of these fields.  It made us into a family of sprinters.  I remember the standoffs with Horns the cow (mother of Rags) and being rolled in the cockle burrs and stubble when I just couldn't get out of her way fast enough when she came after me.  I did stand my ground one time and clocked her over the head with a stick, but most of the time I just tried to stay out of her way.

I remember one of my most detested chores - pulling weeds by hand out of the soybean fields - YUCK! And one of my favorites, being the one who always got to drive the hay wagon because I was the weakest and couldn't throw a hay bale up on the wagon.  I remember just a few days when Dad would let me skip school to help disc the fields, he did all the spraying and planting, mowing and baling himself.

I could obviously go on for a long time about the memories that come back to me just by looking at this picture.  We moved here when I was just a bit older than the girls are now, so my most vibrant childhood memories are here.  Hopefully someday I'll sit down and write some more stories about those times.

I wanted to try a larger depth of field for this photo because the landscape was important to the meaning of the photo. I bumped up the ISO just a smidge, and then pushed the aperture as closed it would go until I reached what I wanted for a minimum shutter speed. Because it was almost mid-afternoon and I was getting some facial shadows, I popped up my flash, adding negative exposure compensation and then also lowering my flash compensation because I didn't need much flash to add a touch of light to their faces. I would have liked to have played around with some different focus points and maybe throw the leading corn a bit out of focus but have the house a bit sharper, but the girls were not interested in hanging out in the corn field while I played, and it was just a tad hot out there.



post-processing
I added a levels adjustment layer and mask of the upper sky, and slid the blacks in and mid-tones over to bring out the clouds and a bit of blue in the sky.

2010 - Week 25, Manual Exposure with a Kit Lens

Neighborhood Pool
June 12, 2010 7:51 pm
Nikon D90, 18-105 3.5-5.6 VR @ 70mm
Manual, No Flash, ISO 1250, SS 1/500, f/5.3
RAW, Spot Metering, AF-C, WB in Auto

I didn't have any other pictures from this week, and I hated to miss a week in their book, and while this isn't a spectacular photo, swimming is an important part of our summer and the camera technique is an important one.

When moving from the little green rectangle (full auto) on your DSLR to manual, most people suggest getting a fixed aperture lens. Since telephoto lenses that are also fixed aperture cost as much as a well used car, most hobbyists find themselves trying out the prime category, with the "nifty-fifty" (50 mm f/1.8) probably topping the list as the most affordable prime, fixed aperture lens.

The reason that kit lenses (the ones that come with a camera) aren't as handy to use for learning manual is that as you use the zoom to move closer to or farther away from your subject your aperture also changes - which means that if you had a close up shot, and were using a focal length of 55 mm, and then went wide angle to get your toddler's whole body so maybe now you're at 20mm, your aperture changed from f/5.6 to f/3.5 or 1.33 stops, so the shutter speed would also have to change 1.33 stops and most usually by the time you make the changes your toddler has run away and you've missed the shot.

Even on days when I throw a kit lens (this one was bought used at an insanely reasonable price) on my camera I find myself moving to manual so I can control more of what I like to control (metering mode, focus point & focus mode). I'm starting to learn that if I overexpose my images by 1/3 or 2/3 stops they don't need as much brightening in post-processing. I could also do that by using aperture priority and a standard exposure compensation, there is almost always another way to do something - and I'm trying to do them all!

In this case, my aperture was set by my focal length, and I had set my ISO up at 1250 to grab some of the first shots up at the pool where the girls were going down the slide and I needed to freeze the action. I could have lowered it to 800, and still been ok on shutter speed for this one, but the exposure was good and there's very little noise (the biggest problem for high ISO and consumer grade cameras).



post-processing
Pushed the Aqua Hue slider to +48 to make the water more blue, I can't help it - I'm a sucker for blue water and green grass.

2010 - Week 24, Just a Picture

High School Front Lobby
June 11, 2010 10:47 am
Nikon D90, 50mm 1.8 - shot in RAW
Aperture Priority, No Flash, ISO 200, SS 1/40, f/2.8
AF-S, Spot Metering, WB adjusted to B3

Today is just a picture...a RAW file taken into ACR and then converted to a JPG, no fiddling.





post-processing
no PP, although I tried. With the luck I had last week with clarity & vibrance I had to try them again, but they made the image TOO sharp with added clarity, and vibrance just made their skin glow yellow. I also slid clarity & vibrance all the way to -100% just to see and the eyes still stayed clear & sharp.

2010 - Week 23, Sun Haze

Master Bath Tub
June 2, 2010 8:44 am
Nikon D90, 50mm 1.8 - shot in RAW
Manual, No Flash, ISO 200, SS 1/800, f/2.8
AF-S, Spot Metering

I told myself I wasn't going to take my camera because it was too hot to carry it and pick blueberries, but blueberry picking is so much fun I wanted to have pictures so I brought it along.

Turned out we got there just before the sun rose too high and I was able to get some backlit, sun hazy pictures. Their daddy isn't a fan of this photography style, but I think there are moments when its good.





I realize that in my post-processing I took out a lot of haze, so I don't know if it still has the same dreamy sort of look that it had SOOC.

Of course, once I got home I got some tips on how to get even better SOOC exposure (main thing being blocking the sun from the sensor so that the camera can meter & focus correctly).

post-processing
This time I did all my edits in camera raw, in the Basic tab I changed Blacks, Clarity & Vibrance. I have a bad habit of making any foliage "green", I just can't help myself. I realize that maybe it takes away some of the warmth of the photo - but I prefer it. To achieve that, under the HSL tab, I slid Yellow + 30, then under Sat I took the greens down - 20, and then under Luminescence I dropped the Greens as well.

2010 - Week 22, Print Big

Our Neighborhood
May 31, 2010 7:55 pm
Nikon D90, 50mm 1.8 - shot in RAW
Manual, No Flash, ISO 320, SS 1/250, f/2.8
Pattern Metering, AF-S, WB adjusted to A4



This photo did not turn out artistically like I wanted it too. I should have taken the photo in the wee early morning so I could get catch lights in their eyes, and had the light on their face, not their shoulders. I should have put them in a different neighbors yard so that I could get low and get blur more of the house in the background, and have more grass and not so much street, oh and maybe I should have gone with a wider angle lens as well. I may have to do a redo when I get the enlargements of them individually.

But technically, the color was ok, the focus was fine and the photo does capture the main point that this 20x24 print of them is over half the size that they are (and that they are a lot tanner than they were just seven weeks ago).

Taking a picture of them once each week for a for Project 52 after thinking up a theme has proved harder than I thought. So in this case they were clean and their hair was combed and they were agreeable for all of 30 seconds to having a picture taken. Most amazing was how hard it was for them to hold up this very lightweight print. The morning would have been a disaster because they would have dropped it in the wet grass several times.

But my point for this week is don't be afraid to print BIG. I didn't take the photo that was enlarged, but I LOVE having this large print in our home.

Printing large doesn't have to be that expensive (finding a frame can be though). Costco will print a 20x30 for under $10, but it should be mounted on foamboard or matboard so that it can be framed more easily. I like Costco because their print quality is really good (if you turn off auto-correct) and if you don't have access to a professional print lab. MPix (mpix.com) is a consumer sister of a professional lab, I haven't tried it yet, but have heard pretty good things about them.

So, in the future, I'm going to print BIG more often and encourage my friends and family to do the same.

post-processing
In ACR warmed the color balance even more than the adjustment in camera and then used the yellow & green hue sliders to push the grass to green and the green luminance sliders to fine tune the color a bit more.