A Photo Story

Gone fishin’

joanna — Mon, 07 May 2012 18:00:56 +0000

I visited Brazos Bend State Park this past weekend mostly to photograph the super moon, but also to practice photographing birds. The park is amazing during the evening and incredibly full of life. At one point I was fairly close to one bird watching as he tried to find food. He stood above the water watching and then would slowly place his open beak in the water and wait. Sometimes he moved his beak very fast to splash the water around attracting fish. I thought for sure I would have the perfect photo op if I could just be patient.

Black-Crowned Night Heron (?)

Then, off to the left of where my camera lens was perfectly pointed, a second bird appeared with a huge fish in its beak! I swung my lens towards him, but there was a plant between the two of us. That bird was ready for flight, and I knew I had a split second to decide if I should move to get a better photo and possibly scare the bird, or I could wait patiently and hope that he settled down first so I could move later. There was no way he was going to settle down, so I moved to get the shot. Of course, the bird saw me and flew away with the fish in his mouth and out of range of my 200mm lens.

Green Heron

At least I got a few shots off before he flew away, but every time I look at the photo I can’t believe there is a plant in the way of the perfect photo! If you know the bird species, please comment. I would love to know what I’m photographing.

Spring flowers

joanna — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:43:43 +0000

Spring is here in Texas and to celebrate here are several flower photos from the front of my house:

Camera Settings: Nikon D300 with Nikkor 105mm Micro lens, 1/80 sec at f/11, ISO 400.

Camera Settings: Nikon D300 with Nikkor 105mm Micro lens,1/125 sec at f/13, ISO 400.

Camera Settings: Nikon D300 with Nikkor 105mm Micro lens,1/200 sec at f/13, ISO 400.

Small details

joanna — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 06:00:55 +0000

In my quest to find choose an interesting abstract photo to post this week for my 52-week photo project I’ve been taking macro photos of the plants outside my house. Here’s one of my runner-up photos. I don’t know if this counts as true abstract photography, but I liked the detail.

Camera Settings: Nikon D300 with Nikkor 105mm micro lens, 1/3 sec at f/36, ISO 400

Zoomed abstract

joanna — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 02:00:53 +0000

This week’s 52-week-photo-project them is simply, “abstract.” I love abstract art and my previous favorite abstract photo was posted on this blog. Spring is practically here and the bush in my front yard is flowering. I took advantage of the sunny day to create some more abstract photography. I came up with this effect by zooming the lens while the shutter was open. I paused at both the beginning and the end of the zoom and moved the zoom fairly quickly between the two. The resulting image almost looks like two images super imposed on each other because of this pause. Take a look:

Camera settings: Nikon D300 with the 70-200mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens, 2.5 sec at f/22, ISO 100

The Road Less Traveled

joanna — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 17:28:42 +0000

Many interesting photos have leading lines that lead the viewer through the photo. One of the easiest ways to create a leading line is to use a road. There are both interesting and non-interesting photos of roads. For instance take this photo:

There is a road, there is a car, and there is a background, but the photo falls flat. There is nothing very interesting about the photo that my eye can follow. Now take this photo:

There is a road and a car and a background, but see how your eyes follow the road into and through the photograph. That’s the leading line. In fact every time you come back and look at the photo, your eye starts with the car, then sees the road and follows the road through the photo. Your eye might also catch the flowers on the right side of the photo and follow that separate leading line into the photo as well. This is not a perfect leading line because the line takes me into the back left part of the photo and there is no line leading me towards the back right where there is a building and trees. Now look at this leading line:

Your eye probably starts with the sign, which was the subject of this photograph. However, then your eye leaps to the road which leads you through to the back of the photo where you can see the background and the rest of the landscape. Here are some more examples of using roads as leading lines. Spend a few moments on each photo and let your eye follow the lines through the photo. Make a note of how your eyes travel and which parts of the photo you both are drawn to and which parts are hard to see because of the way the leading line is positioned.

If you are just starting out to experiment with leading lines, I suggest you stand off to the side of the road and look through the viewfinder of your camera until you see the road make a diagonal line across the photo like the photo above. The next step would be to find a road that curves and try to position yourself off the road so the turns in the road take you through the entire photograph. Your leading line should guide the viewer to the parts of the photo that you deem most important. You are the artist, so you can choose where you would like to lead your viewers.

More HDR

joanna — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 02:23:50 +0000

Now that I’ve got some HDR software I am slowly working my way through older images that I bracketed with the intention of applying the HDR techniques. Here is another one from my road trip through Colorado last summer. I woke up early to catch the sunrise on the Chalk Cliffs near Buena Vista. Unfortunately it was too cloudy for my planned photo during the golden hour as the sun was coming up, but while I waited for a good shot, I couldn’t help but take many photos of the sunrise in the distance with the clouds. I tried many different angles, and finally settled on this one with a plant as my foreground. This is a combined HDR image with 5 photos.

Camera settings: Nikon D300 with Nikkor 12-24mm f/4.0 lens at 17mm, combined shots of 1/6 sec, 1/25 sec, 1/13 sec, 1/3 sec, 0.6 sec at f/20, ISO 400.

Painting with Light

joanna — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:58:12 +0000

There are many ways to use light in a photograph. Light is the key aspect of a correctly exposed image, after all. One of the more creative ways, light painting, refers to moving a light source during a long exposure to create drawings with the light. I’ve seen many different examples of light painting including using a white light to light up a tree during a star trails photo or outlining an object with a laser pointer, or even drawing with light in the air to create an image. I experimented with light painting last weekend. I found it incredibly difficult to stand in the pitch darkness and draw with a light. It was kind of like playing Cranium and drawing a picture with your eyes closed. For my experiment I used different colored glow sticks and tried out many different ideas. All the photos are taken on my Nikon D300 with the 18-200mm Nikkor lens at 18mm, 30 second exposure at f/11, ISO 400. I used my dark and empty garage for my workspace and a couple hours of free time. Some of my designs were crazy, and others were more planned out. Take a look at some of my photos. I think next time I try light painting I will use a more crisp light source since the glow sticks gave my images more of a soft focus.

Click on the photos to view them larger:

Evil vs. Good

joanna — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 03:32:58 +0000

I’m always amazed by what a little change in light can do to a photo. In this case, I was taking some photos for my 52-week photo project for this week’s theme: laughter. Check out what a difference the lighting made. When I moved the light source below the peppers, I came out with a very evil and spooky photo. Darkening it up in Lightroom helped, too of course. However, with a softer light off to the side of the peppers, they appear to be much less evil.

Time-lapse birds in flight

joanna — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:00:53 +0000

Brazos Bend State Park south of Houston is a photographer’s paradise. I really need to come here more often. While taking photos of the tree silhouettes against the sunset background, a flock of birds flew by. I was able to capture 38 frames for a new time-lapse video as they flew by.

Interesting blurs

joanna — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:00:27 +0000

Camera settings: Nikon D300 with Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 lens at 200mm, 1.8 sec at f/16, ISO 200

I was very happy with this shot at sunset in Brazos Bend State Park south of Houston. I started out just taking photos of the silhouettes of the trees with the sunset, but when a flock of birds flew by, they created interesting blurs at the slow shutter speed. This is one of my favorites from my shoot.