I never get too fancy with post-processing. Even though I have the full version of Photoshop, I generally just make a few adjustments in iPhoto before uploading my photos anywhere. The most common changes I make include straightening, adjusting the exposure, playing with the histogram to bring lighter or darker tones into the shot, or boosting the contrast. Sometimes I'll change the hue of the shot to give it a different feel. Here are my most recent Flickr uploads, post-processed.
in this shot i just boosted the contrast by a lot to emphasize the vignette effect of the lens setup i was using.
for this one i increased the contrast by a lot, and also played around with the colors to make it a little more interesting. the original tones of the picture were yellowy because of the light from the sunset, but the post-processed version is much more colorful.
yesterday afternoon i got out of work and was waiting for mark to finish up in the lab, so i wandered around campus for a while and took a few pictures. the sun was setting, and i came across these abandoned mums and was struck by the way the sunlight was coming through. in post-processing, i boosted the contrast.
i'm trying to remember exactly what i did with this one... i'm pretty sure i just increased the contrast to make the sun more dramatic.
this one i cropped, straightened and brought up the contrast. i'm in love with these shoes.
i cropped this shot to make it seem like a panorama, and boosted the saturation by a lot to enhance the colors. i always have trouble enhancing the saturation- i feel like i'm cheating the viewer, or something. like, it wasn't THAT beautiful in real life- but that's okay, right?
boosted the contrast, adjusted the color to accentuate the bricks and the sunlight.
cropped it, boosted the contrast to the point of darkening her blue jeans to black.
I wish I could post the original images to offer a comparison, but I don't tend to keep a raw version of the pictures I take. I think I'm going to start doing that; I just need to find a good way to organize my pictures. If you've got any tips, I'd love to hear from you! Right now my pictures are just backed up on my external, organized by arbitrary folder names and approximate dates. I edit the originals, and save them that way, so I never have the raw images to go back to. Anyway.
Ever since I moved off campus (a little over two years ago) and started exploring the surrounding towns, this particular field of sunflowers alongside the highway has stuck out to me. I've imagined getting lost among the tall stems and big yellow blooms on a sunny day with my camera in hand (and maybe a crate or two... they're pretty tall, and I'm pretty... well, not tall). A little over a year ago Mark and I moved into a house in Sunderland, which we rent with four girls (who all happen to be Animal Science majors- but that's another story for another day. Actually, there are a lot of stories that come out of that little fact...)
Our friend and housemate, Caitlin, boards her horse, Jake, at a barn five minutes down the highway from us. The barn is owned by the Laurenitis family, who also run a greenhouse. Their store is located right across the street from the aforementioned sunflower field! In fact, they're the ones who own that land, and who plant it every year. And, not only does Caitlin board Jake here, but she also works at the stand. Once I made this connection, I thought, yes! I have an in! I'll be able to get lost in the sunflowers with my camera! Then Caitlin suggested I take some pictures of her and Jake in the field. Long story short, plans kept falling through while sunflowers withered and eventually snow fell. This summer, since it's the last time that we'll be here when they bloom, we were determined. We also made plans to include Caitlin's friend Karina and her horse and mule. Karina is actually Karina Laurenitis, meaning she lives on the property with the sunflowers. She has a beautiful picture of herself with her horse in the field of sunflowers which I found inspiring.
We finally got around to making it happen this past weekend. The field had withered, unfortunately, but the Laurenitis' grow more sunflowers in their fields back behind the house, so we were able to use those. It wasn't a full field, but it was still beautiful.
Okay, enough back story, sheesh! Here are a few of the shots I took that afternoon. It was cloudy, so the lighting wasn't very unique, but I think it worked out pretty well.
Caitlin and Jake, while they weren't busy kicking each other
Too cute
Karina, with Henry (on the left) and Chili (on the right)
Chili liked to eat the sunflowers...
This was taken in front of the tobacco barn. Apparently the Pioneer Valley is a big producer of broad-leaf tobacco. Who knew?
The tobacco barn
The hay barn
It's hard to keep track of which lenses I used for which shots, but I know for sure that I used the 165mm for the one of Caitlin and Jake in front of the tobacco barn.
I kept the f-stop as low as it would go, which, for the 135mm, was 2.8. The other shots were taken with my 35mm at f2.
I usually pair that adapter ring setup I've mentioned before with my 35mm. It results in a nice vignette effect, which you can really see on the shot of the tobacco barn.
I need to take a better shot of this, I really don't use all of those adapter rings at once- they're unnecessary. I didn't realize this when I took this picture. It's a learning experience!
Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and I appreciated the opportunity to learn a little more about my lenses and to photograph some completely new subjects!
I've decided to stay for another year at UMass. I was planning to stay just one extra semester, but it was going to be so rushed and stressful. Staying another year just made sense. Now I get to take a couple of extra courses that really interest me, and that will probably help to shape my research interests as I enter graduate school. Here's my Fall schedule:
Anthropology- Culture Through Film
Communications- Media, PR and Propaganda
Economics- Economics of Cooperative Enterprise
History- Problems in World Civilization
I'm pretty excited about all of those courses, it should be a good semester.
Recently I took my camera onto campus to take a few pictures of the showcase garden near the Durfee Conservatory- there are these beautiful pink flowers called Gomphrena Fireworks (I think) that I've been meaning to take pictures of. Mark had to run an experiment in the lab one Saturday a week or so ago, so I came with him and spent the whole time taking pictures by the Conservatory.
Gomphrena
Echinacea
Earlier that week I'd been playing with my filters around the yard, and of course, Ivy came over to keep me company.
That's all for now- it's getting late, and I have to work at 8:30 tomorrow. Another day, another dollar. Thankfully my work day will be followed by stopping by People's Market to meet with a few other peeps (People's Market Employees are called peeps) to get going on the start-up tasks for the semester. Things are going to start getting a little more enjoyable in my life :) Of course, another year at school means another year working at the Market, which is my heart and soul. I wasn't ready to leave anyway!
Sorry for the lack of posts lately- I've been really busy with classes, work, looking for grad schools and thinking about the GREs. Oh, and freaking out- I've also been very busy freaking out. Between all that, finishing my thesis, applying to grad school, taking 18 credits next semester and trying to find employment for after the semester's over, I figure I won't be able to breath until right around Christmas. Maybe I'll take up yoga to cope.
I've been so busy that a couple of weeks ago I made it home for the first time since March, which is a really long time to go without seeing your parents (especially when they're only 2 hours away). While Mark and I were there I took a lot of pictures, and I've been working on a post about home.
In the meantime, we also went to The Fells, which is a property that was owned by Lincoln's secretary of state. The grounds are beautiful, full of gorgeous flowers and pathways. I wanted to post a few of my favorite pictures form that trip.
That's all for now, hopefully I'll have time to post in the next week or so!
Last summer I did a post about the Fourth of July fireworks here. I was using my Canon Powershot and a cool wrap-around tripod I'd recently acquired. I was sort of disappointed with my results, and this year I set out to do a better job.
I brought along my D5000, my Vivitar zoom lenses (28-90mm and 70-210mm)
and my tripod.
I started out with the 28-90mm Vivitar, and was pleased to get a few shots with the landscape included.
That was taken with the lens zoomed in as far as I could, so I decided to try the 70-210mm. After switching them out I had to move my tripod back a few yards to be able to get the whole display in frame, but once I did this I was really happy with the shots I got out of this lens.
Here are a few of my favorites:
I started out shooting in landscape, which made it difficult to capture the whole firework at times
I love the purples in these last two shots
I turned my camera to shoot in portrait, and was able to capture more of the fireworks
I did some cropping in iPhoto
This one is my absolute favorite because of the way the ends of the green firework were captured as stars. I was really excited when I saw this.
Last year before I went to the fireworks display I read this article from Digital Photography School's website. I wasn't able to control a whole lot of the features on my Powershot, so I was looking forward to having full control this year. Before going this time I read this article. From it, I took the suggested ISO setting of 100 and the suggested aperture setting of 8-16. I had mine set on 16 for both lenses. For the shutter speed, mine varied from 5-12 seconds. I didn't use a remote release (because I don't have one)- I simply pressed the shutter button each time one exposure ended, or as soon as I heard a firework being set off.
All in all I think it worked out- next year I'm hoping to be somewhere where there's water to reflect the fireworks. Who knows where that will be... only grad school applications and time will tell. Eek!
