Smoky sunrise

Last week I shared an image of the shadow of smoke. Today, the smoke itself comes to visit! (Okay, that was a little melodramatic. My brain is mushy, forgive me.)

I would love to play with this just a touch and make the building completely dark, like a silhouette. I love how the only colour is the pink from the sunrise that is picked up in the smoke. The sky is perfectly clear, no clouds or birds or planes to fill it up. Just smoke.

1/250 sec exposure, 4.0 aperture, ISO 80, -2/3 exposure bias, auto white balance

Flowers in Winter

As I've mentioned before, this winter is leaving me uninspired. The best way to deal with it? Ignore it! (Okay, probably not, but it did make for a nice picture in this case.)

What I like: The way the flowers and leaves fill the frame. The bold purple and green that say HERE!

What I don't like: The background is way too over-exposed. Dealing with a dark subject against a bright window with snow reflecting the light like crazy led to a lot of trickiness. Either the flowers were too dark or the background was too bright. Obviously, I preferred the latter outcome to the former, since this is the picture you are seeing.

1/60 sec Exposure, aperture 4.0, 800 ISO, 0 exposure bias, auto white balance. (Yes, I've changed the order of these to reflect the order they show up in Flickr. It's just easier that way.)

Get closer

This is a great little tips post from the fine folks at the Digital Photography School.

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/beginners-tip-get-closer

If you haven't already signed up for their news letter, I recommend it. I wish I had read that suggestion before going out the other night - then I might have some interesting go-kart images for you, instead of the boring guck I ended up with! Perhaps some cropping with salvage something as a pretend "get closer".

Shadows of smoke

On chilly winter mornings, the smoke from nearby buildings is a visible and constant presence.

And it's thick enough to leave it's own shadow! This image is heavily cropped from the original, which leaves it a little big grainy. I really wanted to clear out the clutter and noise though of the other buildings to focus on the great shadows that are cast by the moving smoke. The view is constantly changing as the wind shifts just a little, the sun rises a bit further... lovely! This was taken in the warm glow not long after sunrise.

Auto white balance, 0 exposure bias, ISO 200, aperture 4.0, 1/80 second (0.013 sec)

Downtown reflections

Light moves in funny ways around a downtown. Because of all the windows, a side of a building that should still be in the dark can have wonderful light patterns on it.

There's a million ways this could have been better - starting with not being shot through a dirty window! Thankfully, that doesn't show up much. Instead your eye is drawn to the amazing pink light pattern along the side of the building. One thing I like about working several floors up is being able to take these pictures straight on, rather than looking up. I darkened this one up while I was shooting, in order to bring out that pink more clearly.

Auto white balance, -2/3 exposure bias, ISO 200, aperture 5.0, 1/50 second exposure (0.02 sec)

Self Portraits

One thing that often turns up on photo challenges is a self-portrait. I find these particularly difficult, as I'm relatively self-conscious in front of the camera at the best of times. If you're like me and need some inspiration, The D-Photo has shared some great examples from several different photographers. My favourites are from Dustin Diaz (about half way down the page).

Lighting Day 3

Here I was playing with essentially the same set up as yesterday's image, but instead I had the light on red.

Believe it or not, the light was perfectly still here. This is not an example of writing with light. I'm not sure if it actually qualifies as caustics, but it does quality as really neat - at least to me!

Auto white balance, 0 exposure bias, ISO 200, aperture 3.2, 0.8 second exposure length, and no flash.

More lighting

So I have really been slacking off on the blog posts lately. The simple fact is, it's winter, it's hard to get outside, and I am just not all that fond of shooting indoors. Part of that is due to the fact I have lousy lighting, and with such short amounts of daylight at this time of year, it's hard to get any chance to work with natural light. And part of it is just that I'm not feeling inspired in my own house. However, I have recently acquired a pair of small LED lights on foldy tripod legs, a lot like a Joby Gorillapod. It also has the option of both white and red lights (meant, I believe, as emergency roadside lighting). So perhaps that will at least help with the lighting issue!

What prompted the acquisition of the new lights was my attempt, and mostly failure, to capture some images of caustics. (Here is a description, fancy method, and beautiful images of caustics.) This image wasn't a raging success, but it's not bad, either. I am certainly much more pleased with this than I was with my earlier attempts using a regular desk lamp with a bulb that apparently shines yellow. My set up was a fairly simple one. I was using a sundae glass (tallish, flares out at the top) filled with plain tap water. I played with the angle of the light until I liked what I saw. I considered cropping it closely, but I like the bits of light arcing out at the top and bottom right.

Auto white balance, 0 Exposure Bias, ISO 80, aperture 6.3 and 0.8 seconds exposure length. Clearly, no flash.

Have you ever played with caustics?

Lighting

I caught sight of this, and just had to play with it! I took multiple images using different White Balance settings, which resulted in extremely different colours.

Exposure 1/8 second, ISO 320, Exposure Bias -1, White Balance: Daylight

Any guesses what this is a picture of?