DAY 187
DAY 186
DAY 185
DAY 184
DAY 183
darn balloon {102/365}
April 14, 2010 at 3:01 pm (January)
[IMAGE COMING]
I’m having a bit of trouble getting this image to look any good, so here’s a place holder until I nail that darn balloon!!! (the image has a balloon in it).
mud {87/365}
March 28, 2010 at 2:46 pm (January)
Mud. We had more rain this morning (joy!). I was walking out in it also. Hmmm….
Anyway, once I finished getting soaked to the bone, I went for a little drive to a nearby salt pan. Someone else had already been there in their 4WD and made a mess of the pan. Being an environmental scientist by degree, this was a little upsetting to see. However! It made for an interesting picture. I plan to visit the salt pan on another day where I can walk across it without covering myself in mud!
Very simple processing with this one. UFraw was set to cloudy WB…that’s it. And in GIMP I did auto-levels and desaturated with the average setting. Done.
March 16, 2010 at 2:47 pm (January)
For those who are interested in competitions, cameras, food photography and all things visual, here’s a link to such a place: Alexis Miller’s Photography Tips
ker-splash {31/365}
February 2, 2010 at 7:32 pm (Black & White, January, Landscape & Outdoors)
Tags: 365, black and white, coast, landscape, ocean, outdoor, photography, project 365, seascape
With the remnants of Tropical Cyclone Olga battering our shores, and the king tides we had, there was waves crashing over all sorts of things. I tried to get a shot at a rock wall at the marina of some speccy waves. Unfortunately, the wind almost blew me over and the rain, that had momentarily cleared, came back, soaking me and my camera! Thus, most shots I have are littered with blurred water drops from the lens. It was difficult to get in a good position also. Probably would’ve been better off trying to shoot something in the dryness of my own home. Oh Well.
The shot I took today most definitely needed post-processing. I did the best I could.
I started out processing the image in Bibble5 pro – but am still finding that program difficult to navigate. So, instead I used Lightroom 2 in VMWare (aka Windows window within Linux). I wanted to see how the computer handled the processing.
Ok – Now for the processing part. The image was pretty bland colour wise, but had plenty of contrast, as such, I went for a B&W view. I selected grayscale in Lightroom 2, then made the image medium contrast, and increased the saturation of the yellow and orange sliders. Voila! Oh, I also used the spot fixer to ‘hide’ some of the droplets on the lens. If you look close, you’ll find them.
beach reflections {30/365}
January 30, 2010 at 8:27 pm (January, Landscape & Outdoors, night & long exposure, urban landscape)
Tags: 365, beach, coast, landscape, long exposure, photography, project 365, seascape, summer daze, urban landscape
What a disaster!! Almost in any case, at least I got a worthy image. I went in search of a reflection shot, choosing to take one off a beach that faces our main beach/CBD. It was raining. I remembered the umbrella! The only thing that went right. Once I got onto the beach, the umbrella was hard to control because of the gale force wind (slight exaggeration…I admit). I started to set up my shot, when I realised a VITAL component of my tripod had been removed by my VERY PESKY 2 year old. I didn’t even notice it was gone. I also admit to much muttering under my breath at this point. Somehow I managed to ‘dangle’ the camera off to one side of the tripod where it remained faithfully still and free of wet sand. Due to all the distractions, I completely forgot checking white balance settings and DoF. But at least a shot worked. I’m surprised at how good it actually was. Considering all the chaos, and the lovely smudge that ended up on the lens because of rain.
No post-processing again today.
Lesson – CHECK YOUR GEAR!
my desk {29/365}
January 30, 2010 at 8:19 pm (January)
Tags: 365, bokeh, desk, summer daze
I was determined to do an image from around home today, however, nothing really grabbed my attention. In the end, I took a shot of my desk…bits of it anyway. Here you can see my dusty keyboard, my mangled reading glasses (courtesy of a 2 year old) and our external hard drive shining brightly in the background, dutifully storing my thousands of photos.
I edited the image entirely within the Digikam world today. I adjusted the sliders in the white balance menu choice. Within the white balance menu, I adjusted the colour temperature, black point and saturation. Done.
fire sky {28/365}
January 29, 2010 at 2:22 pm (January, Landscape & Outdoors)
Tags: 365, landscape, photography, project 365, silhouette, sunset, WB shift
Another sun shot! Sorry about the repetitiveness of the past couple of days, but I couldn’t help it. I purposely set out to get a sunrise landscape yesterday, but today, a glorious sunset just begged to be captured. Dutifully, I did exactly that.
I tried my best to try and find a silhouette shot to make the 2D sunset a little more interesting. It was pretty breezy, so my silhouette is a little furry. Also, I didn’t have time to set up an interesting foreground, all I managed was a part of a tree in my backyard. Note to self – make a list of good silhoutte objects or places to use on nights such as this.
Again I played with the White Balance Shift to bring out the reds. As seen in my post yesterday, this basically means I’m manually setting the temperature setting of the sensor. Most cameras (if not all!) have standard choices like daylight, cloudy, shade etc. I’m not sure if I’m simply replicating one of these, or actually generating my own WB temperature. I will endeavour to test this out and do a post on it some day (as a stand-alone post outside the 365 theme).
This image was Straight-Out-Of-the-Camera (SOOC). YAY!
watery sunrise {27/365}
January 28, 2010 at 7:37 pm (January, Landscape & Outdoors)
Tags: 365, beach, coast, landscape, photography, project 365, seascape, summer daze, sunrise, WB shift
Woke up at sparrows today (445am!) to go take a sunrise photo at one of the many beaches along my coastal strip. I almost didn’t go, as it had been cloudy recently and I didn’t expect much to happen. In the end, I’m glad I went!
I tried something tricky with my camera today, setting the WB Shift. Now, I would be thoroughly surprised if you understood what this meant, I only found out about it a couple of days ago and understand it in the most vague way. Basically, the WB shift is an in-camera setting of the light temperature (in Kelvin) – which you can use to fool your camera into thinking a scene is a different termpature that it is, or use it to set the actual scene temperature. The WB shift is in effect when you use the Daylight, Cloudy, Shady etc WB settings in your camera. (I’m pretty sure that’s right…I’m new at this, so I haven’t got a great grasp on it all yet. But this blog entry represents my current interpretation of it. I’ll correct it in future if I’m off track).
The WB SHIFT/BKT option is where I set the temperature level. This was in a Canon, so I’m not sure what it would be called in other cameras. On my camera, it gives me a graph where I can set temperature settings (in a language known only to aliens and professional photographers). I have no idea! But I will find out 
Anyway! The output is great. I setting I used helps the camera sensor increase the appearance of reds. Thus, my shot of the day I left as a Straight-Out-Of-the-Camera (SOOC) shot. No processing what-so-ever.
sunny days {26/365}
January 27, 2010 at 6:13 pm (January, Landscape & Outdoors)
Tags: 365, coast, landscape, photography, project 365, seascape, summer daze
Happy Australia Day! (26th January).
Tried unsuccessfully to take a picture of the frivolity of the Australia Day Events at the Main Beach. Unfortunately my zoom capability is lacklustre. I only have an 18-55mm zoom lens. I hope to add greater zoom capabilities in the future….when I win lotto or something!
So, the shot I chose for today was taken in the middle of the afternoon with terribly high contrast. I didn’t get an opportunity to go back and try for a closer shot of the beach party on the beach, nor a better landscape image.
As such, today’s shot was post-processed to make it look more attractive. I used lightroom today (I chop and change a lot huh?). I added a Graduated Filter effect to the sky removing 1-2 stops of light. I also selected a strong contrast and increased vibrance by 21.
