Catching up on my Capture Your 365

1/320, f/2.8, ISO 800, 50mm

 

For some reason, I have not been able to upload any photos on my blog since last week. So I uploaded this photo I took last week to my neglected Flickr account and was able to add the HTML code and voila! I can work around the problem and still upload a picture! Took me a few days to figure it out... :o)

 

I am still borrowing a 50mm lens from a friend. On the day that I took this picture, I had been listening to an instrumental CD from Mark Schultz. I just love a good instrumental CD! Listening to the CD was the inspiration for this photo. I wanted something with sheet music and piano keys. I did apply an antique black and white preset to the photo in Lightroom to give it an aged look, otherwise the photo would have been just black and white.

 

What have you photographed lately?

 

 

 

The Walt Disney Family Museum

Today our family drove into the city (San Francisco) for a day trip to

 The Walt Disney Family Museum.

 

 The museum is located on the grounds of The Presidio which is a beautiful area in San Francisco.

 

 We started off in the hands on studio where Kev and Matthew worked on a stop motion video with Kelsey looking on.

 

 The subject of the movie short, very colorful!

 

 While they were creating, I took a walk around and found a couple of fun things to photograph. Wouldn't this look great on someone's bedroom wall?

 

 Kev's dream desk...animation desk at Disney!

 

 Matthew ended up working on his little short by himself

 

 One of the very few things I was able to photograph in the lobby area

 

 A replica of the apartment that sits above the fire station at Disneyland. While we were at the museum, we watched an hour long movie about Walt and his love for Christmas. This was included with the admission price. After the movie, we toured the museum. Like a lot of museums of this type, no photography was allowed.

 

We learned a lot about Walt's early life, saw a lot of pencil sketches that had been saved, and saw many old family photos. The museum had many different rooms filled with a lot of history and artwork. Toward the end of the museum, there was a large model of Disneyland with a few things that I remember from my first trip a long time ago.

 

 I was able to take this picture from inside the museum. It was a beautiful clear day!

 

 Once we were outside the museum, I took just a couple more photos...

 

Wish I could grow these at my house!

 

Again, I took these photos in RAW and did a quick edit in Lightroom. I was really hoping that a book that I had ordered would have arrived today to help me to establish a good workflow in Lightroom. Guess I will need to wait until next week.

 

This trip will be a great topic for my next letter to my Compassion kids! And I will be sure to get some of the photos printed to send to them. Which photos do you think I should send?

A little photography experiment

Today, I did something I haven't done yet with my photos...I shot RAW! This morning, I formatted a memory card (which basically erases everything on your memory card). This way I was able to start with a fresh, empty memory card since RAW files take up a lot of space.

 

Then I went into the shooting menu on my camera and changed the image quality to RAW. According to my 'Nikon D3100 for Dummies' book, shooting RAW will give you 'greater creative control', 'higher bit depth', and the 'best picture quality'. Shooting RAW requires you to edit them since you can't share them like you can JPEG images.

 

When you first import your RAW photos into Lightroom, they will look very flat. So after a little bit of editing, here are some photos I took today:

 

 1/10 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100, 55mm

 

 1/6 sec, f/3.2, ISO 100, 50mm

 

 0.4 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100, 200mm

 

0.8 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100, 200 mm

 

I wish I could show the before photos on each of these! Once I figure that out, I will try to post the before and after photos so you can see the difference also.

 

The January photo list has been e-mailed for the Capture Your 365 challenge. I am looking forward to it! Will you join me?



December Photo Project - Day 24

Going to be playing a little catch up on my December Photo Project posts. This picture happened completely by accident! I am borrowing a 50mm f/1.8 lens from a friend. I was intending to take a picture of our tree, but didn't even have time to readjust the settings on the camera before I pushed the shutter button. After doing a quick edit in Lightroom, I have to say that I just love my accidental picture!

 

One thing I am considering doing in 2013 is a Capture Your 365 challenge. It is not really a challenge, but in a way it is. It will be a way for me to challenge myself to take at least one photo everyday. It will give me a chance to try some new things with my photography. After all, if I can accidentally capture pictures like the one above, I am thinking the challenge will be a lot of fun!

December Photo Project - Day 15

 Today was the last meeting of the photography class I have been taking. The instructor brought along a couple of his former students. They helped us with some posing, lighting, and tips on when to use fill flash. Taking pictures of water using a slow shutter speed was one of the first assignments we were given back in August. Well, weeks later, I think I finally got a good one today! The photo above is straight out of the camera.

 

I did just a little bit of adjusting in Lightroom and came out with this second photo.

 

I am so glad I had the chance to take this class! Using the manual settings on my camera is not nearly as scary as it was months ago when I started the class. In fact, I hardly ever have my camera set on anything but the manual setting now.

 

I am thinking a day trip to Yosemite needs to happen soon to practice some photography :o)

December Photo Project - Day 4

My husband and I were able to attend a Lightroom seminar in Sacramento today. At first, my husband thought it was funny that I decided to bring my camera along. I am so glad I did!

 

This Christmas decoration was between the escalators. I had to do a bit of maneuvering to get between the up and down sections at the top of the escalator to get this shot! Did just a little bit of editing in Lightroom and voila!...my day 4 December Photo Project photo!

Window Light - Take 2 Edits

A couple of weeks ago, I took some pictures of my kids using window lighting as part of my photography class assignment. I was pretty happy with the results, but now that I have been playing around with Lightroom, I am really able to see what just a little bit of editing can do to make these pictures 'wall worthy'. And since our current class assignment is to play with our current photo editing software, this has given me a chance to learn more about this new program!

Here is the before picture of Matthew, straight out of the camera...

...and here is the after picture.

 

 

 Here is teh before picture of Kelsey, straight out of the camera...

 



...and here is the after picture.

 

Can you see a difference?

Update: 1/9/13 - I am entering the picture of Matthew in the I Heart Faces Photo Challenge!

A quick Lightroom edit

Last weekend, while we were walking out to Mirror Lake, there were so many fallen leaves all along the path. I thought it would be fun to try something, like take a picture of the kids throwing leaves up into the air...

 ISO 800, 32mm, f/4.8, 1/1250

 

We had a lot of filtered light along the path, but it was still pretty dark, even with the ISO up. I wanted the fast shutter speed to try to capture the leaves in the air after the kids had thrown them. With a little work in Lightroom, here is the after picture...

In the 'Develop' mode in Lightroom, I adjusted some of the basic settings (exposure, contrast, highlights, etc.) and was able to brighten up the photo, which is something I wasn't able to do straight out of the camera.

As much as I was dragging my feet on this photo editing stuff, I might just be a new convert!