Midterm Pictures

These are the pictures that I talked about in the presentation.

Photographing in the Rain

So for this Thursday I decided to blog about tips for photographing in the rain since I am leaving for the rainforest!

I thought this website offered some good tips, some of which were familiar to snow and some which weren't! I think my favorite two tips were holding your camera upside down so that your breath doesn't fog the viewfinder and not to use flash unless you are right on top of your subject. The first one is a good one to remember for winter as well since I know that I have taken some pictures holding my breath in order to keep the fog out. The second one is good to remember because usually rain = clouds = low light and you want to put your flash on to see things. If you do this too far away from your subject, though, all you will see are overexposed rain drops! This means that you must plan your photographs carefully if you want them to be good!

http://photobird.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/photography-in-the-rain/

Winter

So after looking at the National Geographic pictures (see post below) last night I was motivated to try and play with some snow pictures. I took these this mrorning on my way to Fortin and back.

This one was taken kinda pre-dawn and with the help of my flash. I like how you can distinguish the snowflakes (that they aren't just a white blob) on the leaves and how you have one leaf covered, one partly covered and one bare.

This one was taken outside of Fortin. I just thought it was typical Montana that we need to remind people that the "floor" might be wet or icy when there is snow on the ground

I really liked how you could see people's footprints on the sidewalk due to the snow and ice so I decided to take a picture.

The next two were taken of someone's bikes that got left out in the dusting last night. I just liked how the snow stuck to the bike so I took the picture. With the one on the left I was playing a little with all of the different lines And like the way they went together!

The last picture was taken of the snow on the railing. I played with shutter speed, aperture and flash strength to try and get some sprakle into the snow.

National Geographic

While trying to decide what to do for my Thursday blog I came stumbled upon National Geographic website and found some cool winter pictures. I like the snowflake pictures of course because each one is different and the patterns are cool but I think my favorite picture is of the frozen rock bed with a single red rock against all of the brown. The pattern of the rocks is beautiful but the single speck of red just seems to complete it somehow.

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photos/patterns-snow-ice/#40372_600x450.jpg

I also like how the pictures of the snowbanks use shadowing to make an otherwise boring picture (all white) into something interesting to look at. I think that these are good examples of landscape type photographs and gave me some new ideas of things to try.

Pictures about Clothes (was going to be clothing shoot but Mary said I couldn't copy)

The assignment was to take pictures of clothes being used outdoors in the winter. After two hours in the cold (but thankfully sunny day!) and some editing this is what I came up with.

This picture was taken at ISO 100, f/ 3.5 and 1/1600 sec. I like how the brand is very visible and the snow boot is being used on snow. I cropped this picture, removed some snow from the boot and straightened the frame using photoshop.

This picture was taken at ISO 100, f/8 and 1/500 sec. I like how the boot is being used so that you can see the boot and the tread. I cropped this picture using photoshop.

This picture was taken at ISO 100, f/4.5, 1/500 sec. I used a flash because the coat was too dark without and drab without it and then slightly darkened the coat to its true color with photoshop. I also made the blue underlayer a turtleneck by removing the zipper that was actually there.

This picture was taken at ISO 100, f/3.5 and 1/1600 sec. In photoshop I removed the wrist straps, some of Mary's hair and cropped the picture down.

This last picture is titled "Attack of the Brandnames". It was shot at ISO 100, f/8, 1/500 sec. I wanted to take it because of the sheer volume of different logos in one area! In photoshop I cropped it a little, removed some snow from the pants, and cloned snow onto the background to remove the distracting rock formations.

Mary Cornelius

Mary Cornelius is a photographer specializing in horses. She is a staple at shows in the Washington/Oregon area and has the uncanny ability to get shots that epitomize the sport she is working with. Her dressage pictures usually show not only the grace of the horse and rider but also the happiness of the horse and rider. She is also very good at capturing the relationship between horse and rider in both show and home settings.
She was a long time rider before she started taking pictres which aids her in capturing what the riders feel on film. She has sold many images to equestrain publications and even gets hired by magazines like Dressage Today to do photoshoots to go along with a story. Mary's portfolios can be found below.

http://www.marycornelius.com/#/client/template.xml?aaa=portfolio/7145

Great Pictures

This first picture was found on http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4037334. I think it is a great picture because of the simple color scheme and the way it uses the curves of the horses body to make it interesting. For me it does a good job of telling a story too since I spend so much time around horses, this stallion just seems to pull me in with his beauty and strength.

I took this picture in Bulgaria. I think that the limited color pallet along with the fairly straight lines of the plant and the swirly lines of the snail shell make this a good picture.

This flower picture was taken in Bulgaria also. I like how the vibrant pink stands out against the bland background. I also like the simplicity in letting the flowers petals be the interesting lines and not having a lot of clutter in the picture.

This picture is one of my favorite story telling pictures. My grandparents and friend had come down to Oregon to watch me show and we were talking right before I took my victory lap. It was a quite moment in the otherwise stressful show environment and I may feel that it is a good picture just because of the memories I have associated with it.

The last picture was taken by Mary in Yellowstone. I like how the waterfall has three layers and seems to be framed by the trees. A little less snow so that there was more color variation might make the picture better but I like it as is.

Exposure-ness

These were taken at different shutter speeds. The one on the left was at 1/500 sec and the one on the right was 1/8 sec. Apparently I have no control over my stabilization since the 1/8 sec was really blurry!

These were taken playing with ISO. The left was at ISO 100 and the right was at ISO 1600. The left is darker but the right is way grainy when enlarged!

These were taken playing with aperture. The left was taken at f/8 and the right at f/4. The one on the left is darker but the detail outside the window is better (the tree) while the right is lighter but there is no detail outside the window.

Modeling

After spending most of last Saturday modeling and most of Friday evening trying to figure out how to model I thought it would be good to post a warning for all future models.

Never before have I done something so completely ridiculous as model for running! Friday evening saw Anne, Mary and I going through our closets and frantically asking what we each thought about different outfits. This may sound like a normal Friday night for three young women but trust me, for us it was anything but. Conversations revolving around clothes only happen once or twice a semester and its usually because we have to look "nice" for some formal event!

After finally choosing several possible outfits (so that we could change if our first choice didn't look good) we get up to Red Lodge and have to take a back pack on the trail (THANKS Mary!). It turns out we didn't need to change but we were prepared! Then the actual modeling took place. It was odd mainly because we all spent varying amounts of time running over the same 20 meters or so until the photographer was happy with the shots. I'm sure that any people who came across us thought that we were insane.

It turned out to be worth all of the work though, as we did get some really awesome shots (see previous postings).

Fun in Red Lodge

For my normal Thursday blog I thought I would show some pictures from our Red Lodge Trip. The first is of Mary reclining in the snow after she collapsed after a jump! The next is one of my favorite pictures of Anne being ridiculous if only the stupid tree had not decided to be in the way ;)






And what kind of snowshoeing adventure would be complete without a little ski pole fencing? Of course when your models are already exhausted from running back and forth the battle is short lived without a clear winner!







The best part was on our way back to Billings. Traffic was a standstill outside of Red Lodge which was odd because the ski hill was still open. After several minutes of impatient waiting we finally got to see what was going on - they were moving cattle on the side of the road! Of course we took some pictures that didn't come out very well since we were still in the car but I thought I'd share them anyway. I particularly like the tractor with the round bale that was leading the "parade".

Photoshop

This blog is to show how good I'm becoming at manipulating pictures with photoshop. I will place the original picture on the left and the photoshopped version on the right.









I cropped this picture down a little bit so that Mary does not appear to get lost since she is running out of the frame.


I cropped this picture down a little so that emphasis was put on Anne and Mary rather then the background. I also cleaned up some of the trees and shrubs on the ground so that they weren't distracting



In this picture I lightened/brightened Anne's legs and snow shoes up so that they stood out better against the dark background.



In this picture I cleaned up the distracting image in the foreground (the branch thing) and some of the other various branch things in order to give the picture a more polished look.



This picture was not on my original blog but I wanted to put it up anyway. I really like the first picture but Anne turned out blurry so off to photoshop I went. I used the sharpen filter to try and get her more in focus and ended up making her appear more neon and glow-y which I liked. I then decided to make the background Sepia so that she stood out against it better. I like the final result even if it is a little odd!

Trail Running Again

This time we went up to Lake Fork Trail in Red Lodge for a day of snowshoe running because the extreme amount of icy snow makes anything else unappealing! The hardest thing with this photoshoot was the lack of light. I swear the sun wanted to stay hidden all weekend no matter where I went. That said, I messed with the manual mode (and shot all photos in this mode) on my camera and feel like I did get some good shots!

The first picture at the top is of Mary approaching the river on the trail. I liked the scenery in this picture which is why I shot it. Settings were: Shutter Speed - 1/500, F-stop - 4.5 and ISO 200.


The picture on the left was taken during the very brief period that we had actual sunlight! There was a neat ridge that made running easy with a cool background. Shutter Speed - 1/500, F-Stop - 5.6, ISO 80




In the picture on the right I like how Mary's hair and the snow are both making the same arching type pattern! Shutter Speed - 1/500, F-Stop - 4.0, ISO 80







I like how Anne's pink stands out against the background as well as how all of the verticle lines seem to work together! Since she is so tall and has such good posture, her verticle lines seem to flow into those from the trees which I thought made a good shot. Shutter Speed - 1/500, F-Stop - 4.5, ISO 200








The next two pictures were taken from the same angle. I wanted to try something different so I hiked up the hill and shot from above. Although shooting from above proved to not be as much fun as I thought, I did enjoy shooting two people at once!

Picture on Left: Shutter Speed - 1/800, F-Stop - 4.5, ISO 200

Picture on Right: Shutter Speed - 1/800, F-Stop - 4.5, ISO 200







The final picture was taken on a bridge. I wanted to try taking a picture of something other than the entire model, thus leading to the picture of her feet! Shutter Speed - 1/320, F-stop - 4.5, ISO 80.


Overall, most of the pictures are still a little too dark but I think they are improved. I would like to thank both of my models for all of their hard work!