Weekly Photo Challenge: Serenity

As I was thinking about how to respond to this week’s photo challenge, serenity, it occurred to me that I would say serenity is an idea that shows up a lot in my photography.  For this week, I chose this image:

ISO 100 185mm 0ev f/5.6 1/100

The image itself was taken this past fall.  I stopped, looked up, and saw this lovely pattern of light that I thought would turn out well in a photograph.  This final edited version is actually a fusion of two identical images shot using different exposures and then edited in Photomatix Pro.   Here are the two originals:

ISO 100 185mm 0ev f/5.6 1/100

ISO 100 185mm 0ev f/5.6 1/100

I felt that creating an HDR image would bring out the jewel tones in the leaves and the bokeh effect in the background of the image.  When I took the original photos, it was a bright day so I had lowered my ISO to 100.  It was also a bit breezy, and in this case I wanted the leaves to be still, so that is the reason for the fast shutter speed.  I settled on an f-stop of 5.6 after a couple of other tries, because I felt like that was the right balance of bokeh in the background and clarity in the leaves.

As for serenity, it’s been a bit elusive in my life lately.  I’ve missed the last few photo challenges.  It’s nice to be back, and I’m looking forward to getting caught up on my comments and visits to other blogs.  As for serenity in a photo, this particular image works for me but what do you think? your comments are welcome below.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Gone But Not Forgotten

Interesting topic this week for the Photo Challenge.  It made me think of grave stone markers, so I went back to work on a photo that I took a few months ago:

ISO 100 70mm F/3.5 1/160

This edited version is an HDR photo.  I was interested in creating an HDR version because I thought that the detail of the stone would match the bokeh of the background in an interesting way.  The edit is a slight and subtle one.  Here is the original, middle exposure of the three images that I combined:

ISO 100 70mm F/3.5 1/160

I think that the HDR treatment gave the grave marker the bit of pop that it need to separate from the background.  What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment below.

I love looking at grave stone markers, especially weather-worn ones, monuments to those who are gone but not forgotten.

Cheers!

Christmas Tree Bokeh

I was having some fun with bokeh again.  A few days ago I blogged about it with some hints on how to achieve the effect, you can check that out here if you like.  This is another image that I took:

ISO 400 50mm 0ev f/1.8 1/30

What I liked about this image was the texture of the ornament competing with the texture of the lights.

Happy Boxing Day!

Cheers!

Travel Theme: Festive

Since festive is the theme this week at Where’s my backpack? I decided to give the whole bokeh thing a try.  Here is one of my photographs that I took last night:

ISO 1000 50mm 0ev f/1.8 1/80

For those of you who are not familiar with the term bokeh, in this photo it is the dots of light that the tree lights and tinsel have become in this image.  In order to get this photo, I first read this article that is on the Digital Photography School website.  If you ever have a basic question about photography, I think the DPS website is a good place to start.  What I liked about the bokeh article is that it includes specific examples of bokeh with each of those photos linked to the flickr image.  Flickr (the link there is specifically for bokeh) is a good place to look at images because the camera settings are often included in information, which gives you an idea of where to start when making your images.

For my photo above, I used a tripod.  By setting my f-stop to 1.8 it was easy to have just the bird in focus, thus creating the bokeh effect with the lights an tinsel.  This was a fun image to make, and I will be working on some more while we have our tree up.

Cheers!