Over the past week or so, I’ve been learning quite a bit from the book that I bought: Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera—one that I highly recommend for amateur photographers who have been reliant upon the [P] setting on your SLRs. Learning some of the fundamentals behind why you should choose certain apertures or consider different shutter speeds has been quite an epiphany for me.

One example the author Bryan Peterson talks about is the range of aperture and generally what they’re of use for. If you set your aperture to a more open setting (like f/2.8), you’re going to increase the isolation of your subject. He calls this single subject photography, where your intention is to isolate a subject and make them the focal point of your exposure.

He also talked about what he calls “storytelling” exposures—the narrower apertures, like f/16 and f/32, the settings you may use for landscape photography. But with settings like that, your shutter speed will generally be slower not only to get a proper exposure, but to help bring a wider range of your subject into focus. Bryan suggests that when you’re shooting a landscape setting, choose the mid-ground of your shot to be in focus as this will give you a more evenly focused image from your foreground to the background.

The author also goes into detail about what he calls the “who cares” apertures of f/5.6 and f/8—middle of the road settings that might seem ordinary compared to the extremes. But Peterson is quick to point out that using an aperture like f/8 will help increase the intensity and contrast in some exposures.

I’m learning more and more and hope to get a better handle on choosing proper light readings as well, something I’m currently reading about. I also want to become schooled in journalistic/documentary style photography, learning how to capture someone’s story in a photo—shoot, even just being able to get the courage to talk to strangers and asking them about “their story” and getting permission to take their pictures. I occasionally will see people on the street that intrigue me, whether by the way they dress or by the expression on their face. Unfortunately I can be pretty reserved and getting the courage to talk to strangers isn’t exactly a natural ability—I’ve always been a bit shy.

So to try and curb that shyness and become more comfortable around people I don’t know from Adam, I’ve become more active in seeking out musicians or songwriters who might want some free photos for their press kit; or finding people who would like to have some nice photos to give to friends or family. Maybe someday that’ll help me become better at being more comfortable with strangers and uncovering their stories that they’ve been just dying to tell someone.

I was particularly inspired by a photographer I met on the Saint Paul Art Crawl last weekend. I can’t remember his name—only that he was on the second floor of the JAX Building—but his photos simply captivated me. He was able to capture such a wealth of emotion and tell a story about that person or those persons in his photos. One such photo was of a couple, one of whom had cancer with her head bald from the chemotherapy. The picture was a close-up showing the couple looking into each others eyes, each with a real subtle, but solitary tear on each of their faces. It was incredibly moving for me; and I’d love to be able to someday capture photos like that. Someday.

I’ve set up a new gallery of some of my better photos here: http://www.designbymichael.com/gallery/. I’ve still got my other one here, but am keeping that for more personal use, like trips or family get-together functions and such. But I’ll be posting more and more of my work over the months to come at the new gallery.

Oi… look at the time. I guess I won’t be getting up early tomorrow.

Filed under: Photoblography, Photography
No Comments

It was indeed a beautiful morning here in Saint Paul, the warm air moving into the atmosphere and the fog filling the valleys and waterways. And taking the advice of a photography blog I read regularly, I got out and relished in the mysterious moods and settings that only fog can convey.

What I particularly enjoy about photography is not just taking the pictures, but messing with the RAW data—tweaking contrast and saturation values, adjusting the brightness and shadow levels, and extracting the kind of mood and emotions I want the photos to convey. Some purists might frown on manipulating the photos to create something that wasn’t there; but that’s what painters do in a sense. Some take real imagery and recreate it to accentuate feelings or ideas—it is the same for me when I manipulate my photos.

Enjoy some of the newest works I’ve uploaded:
Morning Fog Gallery
No Parking Gallery
Bench

Filed under: Photoblography
No Comments

I spent the evening in Downtown Saint Paul taking some night time photos with all the holiday lights. I think I came up with some decent shots if I do say so myself. Twenty or so decent shots out of about 85 altogether.

View the gallery >

Filed under: Photoblography
No Comments

We’ve added a number of new flowers to our backyard garden and also laid down the mulch to help keep things looking nice and moist as well. I’m excited for the number of photo opportunities that this will provide.

See more photos from my garden

Filed under: Photoblography
No Comments

I’ve tried a couple applications locally on my machine for managing photos in a gallery style manner with options like commenting, syndication, etc. Two in particular that I’ve tried that are noteworty is Gallery (sourceforge) and Plogger. The thing with photo gallery apps, is that there are hundreds of them out there, all with various features.

My buddy Jamison is using Gallery, one that has a ton of possibilities — plenty of modules with various functions. It’s even capable of allowing you to sell photos, send them to shutterfly and loads of other features. However…it’s also a heavyweight. The basic application with a few modules stood at around 14 MB. With my lackluster bandwidth (courtesy of Comcast — blazing upload speeds of 45 kbps…zzzzz) it took forever to upload the app.

I tried plogger as well and that one was much easier to manage, not nearly as complicated and was relatively easy to customize the look (if you know a little PHP and how to edit stylesheets). It certainly doesn’t have the power and options that Gallery does, but it’s easy to use and quite lightweight. But knowing PHP and seeing how lightweight the code is, it shouldn’t be too hard to add some minor features to the app.

But the main function of compiling selective photos into a gallery is accomplished.

Filed under: Photoblography
No Comments

After finishing up my taxes this morning, I took my Canon Digital Rebel XT out to the old Schmidt/Landmark Brewery down on the south end of Saint Paul, near the Mississippi River. That place, though run down, is piece of Minnesota’s history and has a lot of cool photographical opportunities. Check out the new galleries I’ve set up [buildings & structures -- abstract art] at my digital photo gallery. I’ve still got some customization work to do, but the application “Plogger” sure seemed like a cool PHP app for managing photos. It’d be cool if it stored more information about the photos, but it’ll do.

Filed under: Photoblography
1 Comment

Yesterday I decided that I’d spend several hours taking photos today, getting used to the new camera and the various settings. When all was said and done, I took around 150 photos today — man, I love digital SLR’s. The thing I enjoy particularly the most about digital SLR’s is that you really don’t have to worry about using up your film and wondering how the photos will turn out. Granted, of the 150 some photos that I took today, it’s fair to say about a fourth of them turned out. Anyway, here’s a few of the photos.

(more…)

Filed under: Photoblography
No Comments