I made a decision today!  Yes, your applause is appreciated… thank you.  For the last 53 days I have been taking pot shots with my camera hoping to get a picture for this project.  There were a few days where I actually thought about a picture and planned how to shoot it, but for the most part it has been pot luck.  I don’t think this is the actual intent of the project.  Have I been learning about my camera, yes.  Have I been learning about composition, yes.  Have I been learning about exposure, yes.  It just feels like I needed something else…

Now for my decision…  The Hobby Photographer’s Photo-Theme Page runs a bi-weekly theme where each photographer can submit three pictures for review.  At the end of the two week period everyone votes for their favorite picture.  The winner has bragging rights until the next theme’s winner is chosen.  I decided to submit photos for each theme which will focus my on creating at least three pictures with a goal in mind.  I think this will help me with composition and the peer review/exposure will help me improve my overall skills.  This week’s theme is Abstract…

Abstract Words

Scott Thomas, fellow Upstate NY photographer, has a great blog, Views Infinitum where you can read about his journey into photography, view great pictures from around New York State and learn about photography concepts.  I just discovered he uses his blog to run photographic assignments to help newbies like me improve their skills.

This weeks assignment is about the rule of thirds.  You can read about it on Scott’s site by following this link: assignment 17 rule of thirds.  As an added bonus attached to this assignment Scott will be picking a random winner from the submissions to participate in an online photography e-class.  I’m feeling lucky, are you?

Rule-of-Thirds

This was a picture I took early in my 365 projects.  As Scott mentions in his blog I purposefully composed the picture following the rule-of-thirds but as you can see from the original below I needed to crop the picture to achieve the image I wanted.  There was also a little tweaking in Lightroom to improve the mood and tone of the picture.

Original straight out of camera

Single digit temperatures and a losing battle with the sun left me with inside objects for my project picture.  I’ve discovered when shooting inside in low light I need to always use the tripod to ensure a sharp image.  I’m just not very steady at slow shutter speeds.  I also wanted to try more bracketed shots with the thought of combining them using Photoshop Elements – Photmerge Exposure option.

I found this fragrance diffuser on one of the end tables and it looked like it would catch the light nicely while providing a nice contrast to the wood grained top.  The automatic bracketing does work on my camera if you need longer exposure but I was able to get around this issue by setting the exposures manually.  Luckily for me I didn’t move the camera in between shots.

Once I had the three exposures merges in Elements I did a small adjustment to the levels and adjusted the contrast.  The picture didn’t turn out that bad and discovered another nice background to photograph objects against.  After reviewing the in camera pictures of this object I tried another bracketed shot of a candle topper with the candle lit to provide some contrasting light.

Looking at this image today I might have done a different crop to better highlight the detail in the top but overall this image works for me too.  This opens up more possibilities for exploration and with winter starting to set in here in Upstate NY, I’m going to need a lot more indoor subjects!

I took the tripod out of the car when we had to travel over the holidays and today I am regretting that it hasn’t made it back into the car.  I stopped at the cemetery in the village to get a picture of the stone house and wall at the front.  I have been passing this building for months since my interest in photography thinking it would be a great subject for a picture.  I was not disappointed after stopping.

I attempted to take a 3 exposure bracket without the tripod and the resulting picture had too many ghosts.  The Photoshop Elements program did a great job aligning the building but the background trees had ghosts.  I adjusted my strategy to the processing.  I started with the normal exposure image and processed it through Topaz Labs Adjust utilizing the Heavy Smooth HDR filter.  A few small tweaks to the levels and contrast once back in Elements to produce the final image.

The next time I pass through the village with some cooperating light I will be stopping to explore this building and surrounding stone wall more closely.  There are some iron fences in the stone wall that look promising.  It is snowing out now, maybe tomorrow will be my next chance.

A couple of weeks ago Levi Moore posted about selecting your top 10 pictures of 2011 into a separate album which he would list on his blog (Your Top 10 Photos of 2011) in a collection of photographic goodness.  Although I had only started taking photography seriously this summer I decided it would be good to see what I had created over the past six months.  The thought just crossed my mind that I should also include those pictures here as another record of my growth(?).  I’ll let the images speak for themselves…

#10 – Writer’s block

#9 – Simple and delicate

#8 – Unbelievable colors

#7 – Refusing to give up

#6 – Silhouette

#5 – 4 image panoramic over Mohawk River

#4 – Alone

#3 – The path less traveled

#2 – Cold morning

#1 – Apple field

I made a conscious effort to get outside early and explore with the camera.  It wasn’t the best conditions but there had to be some pictures out there, right?  There was!  I knew there would be.  I just used it as an excuse before today, but not any more.  I guess it is going to be part of the new year’s resolutions…  get out with the camera even when it doesn’t look perfect.

I took the damp morning as an opportunity to get pictures involving water and/or water drops.  My first few attempts did not end well.  Due to the overcast conditions I had to slow the shutter speed down and once I looked at the pictures on the computer I realized I just couldn’t hold the camera steady enough.  Normally that would have been the end of it, but not this year.  I grabbed the tripod, headed back outside and was able to capture quite a few good pictures.

This is a portion of a chain holding the extinguishing cap on a lawn torch.  I really liked the wet black look against the brown branches of a lilac bush.  Once I started examining the chain closely I found the reflections in the water were even more intriguing.

I chose the square format to help balance the picture and to remove some excess white space.  With the lighting conditions I also shot 3 bracketed images at -1/0/+1 with the thought of combining them in Elements.  Once the image had the detail I wanted via the exposure photo merge I passed the it through Topaz Labs Adjust filter to add a slight HDR look.

I have a few more water macro shots from today that I will probably be posting tomorrow for the Macro Monday theme on G+.  I needed to keep a few in my back pocket to use at a later date.

I want to say there was not a lot of opportunity to get outside with the camera yesterday but sitting here typing the words I know that is just an excuse.  When it is overcast, rainy and foggy or if the weather is not pristine I have a hard time motivating myself to use the camera.  I’ll have to work on that…

Around lunch time I went out to grab a picture of the fog that just wasn’t going to go away.  I had a vision in my head that a moody picture would sum of the feeling for the day and thought a fog filled picture of the woods would do just that.  There was not much sunlight making its way through the clouds so I knew the colors in the picture would be subdued.  Even as I took the picture I knew I would be processing it as a B&W or monochrome image.

The only adjustment in Lightroom was to crop the picture to a 16×9 aspect ratio and then I used Topaz Labs B&W Effects.  I generally start with one of the presets in B&W Effects and then tweak them to get the image I see in my head.  For this picture I used the Traditional – Warm Tone II Smooth preset.  I didn’t want to enhance the detail in the picture because I thought that would ruin the mood.  I didn’t make any further adjustments beyond the preset, it captured the look I wanted.

Overall, I’m happy with the result.  The finished image was what I was looking to achieve.  I’m still experimenting with the camera and different styles.  I will say I am becoming a bigger fan of monochrome images.  I have a feeling the B&W Effects plugin will be getting more use than I originally thought.

The weather wasn’t cooperating today and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to get outside with the camera.  In the early afternoon I decided to setup a picture inside as a backup plan even though I was still going to try for something outside.  Luckily around 3pm the sun started to fight off the clouds which allowed me to go for a short walk in the field across the road.  I was amazed at the green I was able to find among the snow.  This is the one I liked the best.

With the snow in the background and the sun not very strong I was a little worried I would blow out the highlights.  I got lucky with the exposure and didn’t have to do any recovery in my processing.  I bumped up the black, added some contrast and increased the saturation slightly.

I was able to get quite a few nice pictures on that short walk before the disappearing sun and numbing fingers sent me back home.  There was a general recurring theme of using snow as the backdrop but they all work for me.

I also found some interesting moss growing on the side of a tree.  It was about 5 feet off the ground facing the prevailing winds but that didn’t stop it from being the most vibrant object outside today.  There was some fungus on the same tree which looked interesting but I was unable to get the right focus with the zoom I was using.  That will be a project for another day.

Now for the picture I actually had to think about and setup as my backup picture.  Maybe it is because I’m such a Disney nut and maybe it is because we have way too much Disney stuff in the house but lately those are the items I turn to in a pinch.  The plaque is a much used quote from Walt Disney but still one of my favorites and the figures are Jim Shore.  The second one of these pictures is without the quote and processed as a multiple exposure HDR image with PS Elements (didn’t turn out too bad).