Devilish Smile

Title: Devilish Smile by Me

This is the result of an attempt to turn my bedroom into a makeshift studio last January-ish. Lighting is a combination of natural light streaming in through a window on her left, on camera flash, and a remote SB-800. The window light was coming through as a slant and wasn’t high enough to illuminate her face, and as I don’t have a stand for the SB-800, it was stuck at table height. The result isn’t terrible, but my photographer’s eye sees the problems with the lighting right away. (Her sheer beauty makes up for it though).

Moral of the story: I need me a real studio…

Overexposed Blossoms

Title: Overexposed blossoms by Me

I’ve been kind of posting things out of order lately; mostly because I have a backlog of approximately three million flower photos I’ve snapped in the last month, and I get bored if I think my Flickr stream is getting too monotonous. So I’ve been switching it up and posting things out of chronological order.

Anyway – this photo is mostly just what the title implies; a macro shot of cherry blossoms, overexposed by 2 stops.

A Tale of Two Waterfalls

Title: April’s Floods by Me

Title: Waterfall by Me

Actually, it’s the same waterfall; the bottom picture was taken several years ago in either July or August. The top picture was taken a few weeks ago in April, just after the snow melt. Quite a difference, eh?

Around the Bend

Title: Around the Bend by Me

Long Exposure night shot of the Garden State Parkway. “Garden State” is a misnomer, as anyone who’s been to New Jersey can attest. “Parkway” is pretty spot on though – frequently I’ve shifted my car into park while sitting in traffic on the thing. Sigh…

River in the Woods

Title: River in the Woods by Me

This is quite possibly the most heavily processed photo I’ve ever posted to Flickr.

It’s frustrating, because this brook is actually a very pretty place, and one of my favorite places in fact. But it’s notoriously difficult to shoot – a gust of wind will cause a lot of movement amongst trees, branches, and leaves, as well as change the alright tough lighting from moment to moment. (The contrast between direct sunlight and shadow is pretty extreme, especially when accounting for the water).

So this is a nine frame tone mapped HDR. This is why the background looks a little less than sharp – the wind blowing through the trees caused some movement from frame to frame. Also, this lens doesn’t do a great job with sharpness around the edges. In this case I like the effect though – gives the whole scene a sense of movement.

Anyway, when that was done, I wasn’t particularly happy with it – mostly because the water looked all splotchy and uneven after the HDR was processed. So I tonemapped a single frame long exposure, and copy and pasted the water from that onto the original HDR image, for a much nicer waterblur. So it’s really a composite of two HDR composites.

My Ball!

Title: My Ball by Me

The hardest part of taking a picture of a puppy isn’t the photography – it’s getting him to face the camera, pose, and not lick the lens or bite the camera. (This was shot with my macro lens actually, so at least I could keep some distance between the camera and his tongue).

Anyway, his name is Opus and he belongs to my parents. Cute ain’t he?

Self Portrait of a Hiker

Title: Self Portrait of a Hiker by Me

Wide angle lens, pointed down at my feet during a walk in the woods. The forest floor, in m humble opinion, is one of the most beautiful things in the world.

The Lonely Man

Title: The Lonely Man by Me

I don’t if he’s actually lonely per se, but he was sitting alone and made for an interesting compositional element. It was shot with a wide angle in Washington Square Park last summer.

They’re better to eat you with…

Title: My what big teeth you have! by Me

This was taken in New York’s Museum of Natural History – one of my very favorite places on Earth (I was one of those kids who was a dinosaur nut, and it’s something I never really grew out of. But even if you weren’t a dinosaur obssessed eight year old, I should hope the subject of the photo needs no introduction.

The photo itself was shot with my 50mm at f/1.8, the wide aperture creates a very shallow depth of field – keeping that front row of teeth in sharp focus while letting everything else blur in the background.

Beautiful Day

Title: Beautiful Day by Me

Flowers are arguably the most cliche subject in all of photography. Yet every time we reach the end of a dreary winter and the flowers start to bloom, I’m out there with my camera taking some of the most unoriginal shots in my portfolio, and subjecting everyone who follows me to dozens standard shots of any kind of flower I happen to come across. And I love every bit of it.

This particular one is a pretty basic macro shot, shot in direct sunlight with just a touch of vignetting added in Lightroom.