Weekly Photo Challenge: Refraction

When I see the word refraction, I can’t help but associate it with the word reflection, even though I know they are two different things.  The refraction images I made for this week’s photo challenge could really fall under either description.  This particular window, is lovely in the morning with the first light that it lets in, but in this case I was looking to showcase the trees that can be seen through it:

ISO 400 4mm 0ev f/2.7 1/80

I find the distorted view to be quite interesting.  However, in the original of this photo, the houses and trees visible through the side panes were pretty in focus.  So, when I edited this version in Photoshop, I used the Iris blur filter and adjusted it so that just the middle pane of glass was in focus.  Here is what the original looked like:

ISO 400 4mm 0ev f/2.7 1/80

I liked the dreamy feel that the Iris Blur filter brought to the photo.

When I was shooting this series of images, I pulled out all my cameras and tried a variety of settings.  This one bellow was my favorite straight out of the camera:

ISO 500 4mm 0ev f/2.7 1/60

I used my point and shoot to get this particular image and it has a toy camera setting, which is what I used here.  While the distortion of the trees is still visible, this particular setting also brought out the detail of the glass etching, which I ended up really liking.

It was interesting to me that my top two images from this particular photography session ended up being from my point and shoot camera.  My DSLR and iPhone both created acceptable but not great images.

This week’s challenge was particularly fun because it took me down some unexpected paths, and those can be some of the most interesting moments in photography don’t you think?

Cheers!

Fun at the Game

When I went to to Blues hockey game over the weekend, I knew that the theme at Where’s My Backpack? is yellow this week.  The St. Louis Blues colors are blue and yellow, so I thought maybe I would have some fun with that.  Here is a photo that I cam up with:

ISO 800 4mm 0ev f/2.7 1/50

I took this photo with my point and shoot when Louie dropped by our section.  I had set the camera to color accent, with yellow as the chosen accent color.  When I got home I edited this in Photoshop.  I went to Filter-Blur-Iris Blur.  When you are using that filter you can pick what you want in focus and then blur the rest as much as you would like.

Just a quick snapshot of a fun weekend outing, but what do you think of my editing? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Travel Theme: Symbol

Yellow is often a color associated with caution.  That might be a good thing to keep in mind if you ever run into one of these in the wild:

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/3.2 1/60

This is a Black-legged Poison Dart Frog and is actually poisonous enough to kill you.  Having said that, I also read that if kept in captivity they are not poisonous.  Do you ever read things like that and wonder who tested that?

Anyway, this particular frog is on display at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.  This was a bit of a tough shot to get because the frog was behind glass so there was a bit of a glare, and although the surroundings were bright, this particular enclosure was dark.  There were a few of these frogs on display and I decided to shoot the one closest to the glass so that I could have a small f-stop number to let in light, but since the subject was close he would still be in focus.  In my opinion, I am stretching it a bit here.  I would have liked the frog to be a bit sharper, but this is the best I came up with.  When I was editing this photo, I wanted to keep the frog as realistic looking as possible.  So while I made a few adjustments, levels and sharpening, I was really doing them to make the image clearer.  I also used a Iris blur filter, which in Photoshop is under Filter-Blur-Iris Blur.  I set the blur to 15 pixels and then added a light bokeh of 6%.  Doing this kept the frog sharp but blurred the background a bit.  Here is the original photo:

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/3.2 1/60

So what do you think of my edited version?  Is it in keeping enough with the original for your taste?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

This post was written as a response to the weekly travel photo challenge at Where’s my Backpack? The theme this week is symbol. Nature sometimes provides creatures with their own built in warning symbols, better to pay attention to them when you see them.

Cheers!