Weekly Photo Challenge: Descent

When I saw this statue last week, I was amused by the pumpkin decoration for Halloween, but what I was really interested in capturing was the water:

ISO 800 80mm 0ev f/13 1/80

I had used an f-stop of 13 to capture as much detail in the scene as possible.  That ended up being a mistake because in the original, which I will put at the bottom of this post, there is too much detail in the grasses behind the elephant.  I chose a shutter speed of 80 because I wanted some of the water to be frozen and some of it to still be in motion. That speed and the harsh light helps the water stand out in this photo.

The background I never managed to completely solve, but I did take some steps which I think helped.  A fiddled around quite a bit in Photoshop, but for the version above here is what I have done.  First I cropped the image and sharpened it a bit.  Then I converted it to black and white.  In honor of Halloween, I masked the orange of the pumpkin back in. That orange seemed a bit too cartoonish with the black and white.  So I then put a photo filter layer on it, using the sepia setting. The pumpkin still sticks out because sepia and orange are not the same, but that combination is less jarring.

Here is the original:

ISO 800 80mm 0ev f/13 1/80

So this week’s theme was descent.  I was originally thinking of the descent of the water, but it could also be a descent into the madness of Photoshop.  Let me know what you think of my created image in the comments below.

Cheers and Happy Halloween!

Similar Photos, Different Settings

One of the first assignments in my Digital Photography class this semester included taking two outdoor shots of the same scene, one using ISO 100, and one using ISO 2000.  Both had to turn out properly exposed.  Here are my two shots:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/10 1/13

ISO 2000 50mm 0ev f/10 1/320

Pretty similar right?  I used a tripod for both scenes.  In order to get the correct exposures I had to change the shutter speed in addition to the ISO.  The higher the ISO went the faster I had to set my shutter speed to get a good image.

I really liked this pumpkin photo.  I tweaked it  a little bit in Aperture and have put it on my website as a print and also a card.  They can be found in this gallery if you are interested in taking a look.

Thoughts on my pumpkins or your experiences with ISO and shutter speed?  Feel free to leave them below.

Cheers!

Electric Pumpkin

To liven up your Friday:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/10 4s

I shot this inside in the dark, spooky!

Anyway, I draped Christmas lights around the pumpkin and then moved them as I was taking the photo.

Scary, but not as scary as what I saw at the mall later that day.

shot with my 3G iPhone

Let the shopping season begin I guess.  I’m not ready, but I guess that is too bad.

Cheers!

Pumpkin times two

This is a photo I took of the pumpkin that my youngest chose to adorn our front step:

ISO 160 50mm 0ev f/5 85s

A lot of personality, kind of like the kid in question.  Anyway, this is an 85 second exposure because it was early in the morning, and this is a bit of a dark corner.  I had the white balance set on cloudy because I was hoping to warm up the photo a bit.  Once it was on my Mac I edited it a bit in Aperture.  Here is the same photo in black and white:

I personally prefer the black and white version but what do you think?  Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

Cheers!