Happy Birthday

Erskine's Birthday Cake

This past weekend was my father-in-law's 78th birthday. We had a small party for him at his nursing home. I took my camera and used the opportunity to practice "event" photography. The pictures came out alright I suppose, but I still need to work on it before I feel comfortable doing it for clients.

My grandmother also had a birthday this past weekend. She is 94 now. I don't have any photographs as she lives in North Dakota. Happy Birthday, Grandma.

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More Smoke

Portal

I've been occupied this week with researching starting up a business. Lot's of stuff to think about. I don't know if I'm up for the leap yet, but I've got to do something.

Anyway, here are are a couple more smoke images from last weekend. Hope you enjoy them a much as I did making them.

More after the jump.

Rising



Nymphs

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Dig that Groovy Flow

Flow

Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. Know what I mean?

Today's image is one of the images from my session of smoke photography this past weekend. The smoke was photographed the same as I mentioned in yesterday's post. The processing was just a tad different. First I obviously didn't mirror it in this one. I liked the smooth texture and thought that it was strong enough on it's own. Second, I inverted the colors after adding the gradient. This caused the black background to turn white as well as inverting the color gradient. I think it makes for a nice, abstract presentation for this image.

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Success!

Valentine Dancers

It did rain all weekend like the forecasts said it would. However, I did set up the tabletop "studio" for some smoke photography like I mentioned on Friday. For the smoke source I used a Patchouli incense stick. Those give a nice, thin stream of smoke that you can then deform into shapes and swirls with a light puff of air or snapping your finger close to it. The base images were taken with the camera on a tripod and focused onto the tip of the incense stick. It can be difficult to focus on the smoke as you have to do this sort of photography in a fairly dark room. One of my flashes was off to the left of the camera with a snoot to restrict the light to just the area of the smoke and to keep it from causing lens flare. The flash was also flagged to prevent light from spilling on to the background; although I did still have some problems with that from time to time. I used a black, three fold "project" board for my background. This gave me the contrast needed to see the smoke in the image.

More after the jump.

The final images were processed initially in Lightroom 2 for basic tone, white balance, and camera calibration. Generally this amounted to setting the camera calibration to "Camera Standard", setting a custom white balance, and increasing the black point to make sure the background was actually black. Next I took the images into Photoshop CS4. I applied a colored gradient to the smoke. Then I just played around with mirroring the smoke so that it formed various patterns until I got something I liked.

I'm pretty happy with my results. The exercise did what I wanted it to do. It got the camera back in my hands and spurred some creative thinking. The Photoshop work was particularly good for me as I haven't used it enough yet to be comfortable with it's features. I will admit I had to have a couple of my Photoshop books on the desk to help me with some of the initial layering and mirroring. Once I figured it out though, it really wasn't too difficult. Which made the subsequent images really fun to do.

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Dancer

Dancer

The shot above is a photograph of smoke rising from a stick of incense. I took it when I was first starting to experiment with my camera and flash. The colors were added via post processing in Adobe Photoshop Elements at the time.

Since it looks like the weather is going to keep us inside this weekend, I think I'll work on some more of these smoke images. They really are not very difficult to set-up and make. Plus, it is kind of fun as you can never predict what you will get. The best thing is that doing them has rekindled a spark again.

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Slow Times

No photo today. There's not really been much happening this week. Certainly nothing to photograph and I haven't really had much to write about either. My son is getting in to the swing of school again. So, we haven't been going out much lately. I supposed that I should really do some photography around the house, but I'm a bit down about some things and can't motivate myself to do it. It looks like it is going to be raining through the weekend, which delays some ideas I had been considering. The weather will start to be more of an issue with Autumn coming around soon. I am looking forward to the colors though. Hope we get some good when the colors are at their peak.

Maybe I could do some smoke photography here at the house. Hmmm ... that seems like an idea ...

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Depth of Field

Brick Corner

One of the things that is fun to play with when taken photographs is Depth of Field, or DoF. DoF relates to the amount of the image that is in focus or appears to be in focus around the subject. The rest of the image may then fade to a blur depending on several factors or it may be "sharp" from front to back. Many landscapes will have large DoF so that the image is sharp all the way through. On the other hand, portraits and close-up photographs will have shallower DoF in order to draw the eye toward the subject and away from any distractions in the background; i.e, the subject will be sharp but the rest of the image will be blurred.

More after the jump.

To get a shallower DoF you can open up your aperture to as wide as it will go (small f/stop #). A smaller aperture (large f/stop #) will help get more of the image in focus. Zooming in to your subject can help narrow your DoF while using a shorter focal length will aid in getting more of the image sharp. The relative distance of your subject to the background is also important. If you are significantly closer to your subject relative to the background, then the subject will be in focus and the background will be more blurred. Conversely, if you stand farther away from your subject relative to the background, more of the image will be in focus. Of course you can use more than one of those techniques as well and it is a good idea to combine them for the best effect. Consumer zoom lenses, as an example, will usually not be able get an aperture wider than f/5.6 when zoomed all of the way out. This can give you more DoF than you might want and lead to background distractions. To combat that, set your aperture as wide as it will go (f/5.6 in this instance) and get as close as you can to your subject. Ideally you want to the background to be quite a bit further way from the subject than you will be to the subject. This will have your subject sharp, but the background fading off to a pleasing, non-distracting blurred field.

DoF is a property of photography that is used to help isolate the subject from the background as well as rendering a busy background less intrusive. Play around with DoF. It is can be a lot of fun.

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From Creative Tastes

Chess Pieces

This year there was a large chess board set up for people to play with. The pieces were about three feet tall. The squares were about one foot on a side. I saw a couple of people actually playing it throughout the evening. One family was trying to teach their kids how to play. Kind of neat. I don't remember it being there last year.

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Creative Tastes

Spartanburg Creative Tastes

This past Saturday, the City of Spartanburg held the Creative Tastes festival. Creative Tastes is an annual event which spotlights local restaurants and dining. There are a couple of stages for musicians, a wine tasting pavilion (which appears to be quite popular) as well as activities for children.

My wife and I tried fried lobster tails which were quite yummy. I also got a mini steak burger which was equally good. Our son had some pizza from a local pizza restaurant as well as some ice cream for dessert. We were there for about an hour to an hour and a half. I think there were not as many people there as last year, but it was a beautiful Labor Day weekend. I suspect a lot had left town for the long weekend.

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For the Kids

For the Kids

Hope everyone had a good Labor Day weekend. Friday was my birthday, but I was a bit down the whole day. After a point in your life, birthdays don't seem to be quite the joyous event they were when we were kids.

Anyway, this photograph was taken just before the start of the kid's Fun Ride during the USA Procycling Championships in Greenville a couple weekends ago. It was held when pros started on their second long lap over Paris Mountain. What kind of tickled my sense of humor was that it wasn't a "race" and that each kid would end up getting a medal for participating. Hence, this photograph of one of the race volunteers running down the street with some of the medals that would be given to the kids in the Fun Ride. The large, floppy hat was a plus too.

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Handcycles

Handcycles

A handcycle race was held when the pro bike riders started on the first of the long laps over Paris Mountain. Handcycles are special tricycles designed primarily for paraplegics. The pedals and handlebars are integrated together with the rider pedaling with their hands. The "pedals" also have the brake controls. I have to admit that I had not seen a handcycle race before. However, I was quite impressed with the riders. I don't think I could have made it through one lap, not to mention the ten or so laps that they raced. There are two kinds of handcycles which you can see in this photograph. Most of the riders use recumbent types where they were laying down. Some used a kneeling style bike where which allowed them to see over the pedals better. Still, some amazing athletes. My hat is off to them.

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Through the Streets

Through the Streets

The USA Cycling Pro Championship Time Trial and Road races were held in Greenville again this past weekend. I had forgotten about them until the Friday before when they were on the local news again. Instead of going to Cleveland Park as we had for the past couple of years, I went by myself to downtown Greenville where the Start and Finish lines were set-up. I must have read the course map wrong because I was on the wrong side of the start line for the start. However, it did give me a nice view of the riders as they turned onto Main Street and came down the hill at the Peace Center.

I didn't stay all day for the entire race. It was starting to cloud up and I didn't want to get caught in a thunderstorm. Plus, I was beginning to overheat a bit from being in the open streets. Not having a place to sit and get a drink from a cooler like the past years at the park a problem. However, the downtown area was a very different environment to watch the race and to photograph the racers in making it worth it I suppose.

Overall I think I got few shots that I like, but I can see where I still need to work on my sports photography. There is always next year as they announced the race will be in Greenville again in 2010.

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