About photography Number 3

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LovelyLadyLux
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Post by LovelyLadyLux »

Ohhhhhhh - H - I think I missed that part about the ND filters (OR more probably I was paying full attention and the OLD grey matter didn't retain it! ;) ) And now that you mention it all the photos he was presenting were water falls.........DUH! Learning all this photography "stuff" sure is fun!! (Be easier if I had a clue or half a brain!)

He also advocates a program called "Lightroom 3" and actually teaches it. His opinion is it is one of the most user friendly editing programs going. Cause I'm a 'student' right now I was able to get it at a student price!! :) So will be taking it in the spring however I might also be taking 'Intro to Digital Photography" again too! This time I'll get the half I missed! ;););)


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Post by LovelyLadyLux »

BTW - Terrific photos Ken! Super wonderful!!
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Post by Horus »

I am glad it cleared up a few things for you LLL, :) you do seem to be thoroughly enjoying your camera course. Getting back to the ND filters, if you play around with them, you can get some interesting results and not just with running water, try fitting one and setting up a long exposure, then writing your name on a wall with a laser pointer as the shot is being taken!
I have also played about with the same technique, but using the laser pointer to pick out parts of a flower such as the ends of petals, will see if I still have any pictures to demonstrate this.
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Post by Horus »

Here you go LLL, I only have a few examples of what I meant and to be honest they are not very good as I was only messing about at the time. I was trying to see what sort of effects I could get by dispersing a light through crystal glass, but it may give you an idea or two? They were all done with an ND8 lens filter fitted.

This one shows the effect of dazzling a laser light on a crystal glass goblet to disperse the light.

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I used a sheet of opaque drafting paper as a background and bounced the light so as to reflect it off the glass and onto the paper, I was attempting a sky effect.

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In this one I quickly flashed the laser pen light onto various points in the centre to try and highlight the stamens.

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Finally I tried out a Silhouette effect with some back lighting through the opaque paper.

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Post by LovelyLadyLux »

Wowwwwww H, beautiful! What I admire most is your creativity!! In a bizzillion years I'd of never thought of doing some of the things you do. The effects you achieve are marvellous though.

As for me, I'm still in the process of learning. I was at a child's birthday party last evening and brought my camera to take photos. When I first got to this event I tried to take photos using "A" on my camera BUT in very short time I found out that the kids were moving so fast and the action happening so much and so fast that I switched to automatic cause I just wasn't able to figure out fast enough how to get the settings right AND capture what was happening. (And it was highly unlikely I was going to get these kids all hopped up with Birthday fervour to slow down and/or repeat the cuteness they just did).

"Practice makes perfect" is what keeps coming to my mind that I can see that being automatically (and quickly) able to change settings is necessary and I know that my knowledge of the camera isn't sufficient to allow me to quickly do this (soooooooo I caved and switched to automatic).

I appreciate all the 'effects' and special shots I'm soooooooo anxious and wanting to be able to achieve something like this myself! ;) I know I will one day I just wish my own learning curve was steeper and swifter!
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Post by Horus »

Thank for saying so LLL, but I think the creativity just comes by playing around with different things, a bit of lateral thinking so to speak.
Since posting the above examples I have added a few more pictures to give you some idea of what I mean, just take the basic idea, in this case a laser pen and expand it out a bit and see what you might come up with. All of them involve reducing the light entering the camera by using a ND filter and setting it up to get the longest exposure you can.

These are some beans that are a mottled black in colour and quite shiny, so a long exposure macro shot and a bit of artistic effects with a laser pen and they look to be electrified.

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A similar effect with my finger nearly touching a battery, ouch that hurt!

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In this one I decided to electrocute Sponge-Bob Square Pants

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You can write messages too.

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And finally, I used the idea of making the contacts of this old Intel processor chip look like they were too hot to handle as my entry into a photo competition.

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There is nothing wrong with switching to Auto when things are happening a bit quickly for you to deal with it. I often do it especially taking wildlife pictures, better to have that shot than nothing at all. Try dividing your camera shoot time up a little bit by say shooting on auto when the kids are running around, but later on try for that more candid shot when you have more time to think it out beforehand. Maybe the mother is setting up the table with a cake and candles, so take a few minutes to look at the setting and compose the picture before the kids all pile in, or maybe look for the child engrossed with a toy and sitting quietly and take several shots. :)
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Post by Grandad »

I have not been out snapping for a couple of weeks other than some pics at a local junior school for a brochure they are preparing. Most enjoyable but just little kids in cooking, music, ICT, dancing, sports and gardening classes.

Did venture out today and had a great time visiting a place that was closed last time we were there.

Here is a little challenge, can you guess what sort of place we went to????? :) :) :)

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Spoiler
A lighthouse (At Dungeness Kent)
Haven't read the thread lately so apologies for not commenting.....will catch up soon. ;)
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Post by Horus »

I did manage to Guess Grandad, although it was the one on the left that jogged my memory of the one at The Lizard in Cornwall, but without the colour tints, nice photo :)
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Post by Grandad »

It's one image Horus. And they are not tints, just as taken. I took about 30 pics of that item. Beautiful piece of engineering. :)
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Post by Horus »

I didn't mean you had tinted them Grandad ;) I should have been more precise and said that the one at The Lizard was made from just a clear heavy glass in a similar circular shape to the left hand side of the picture and showed no visible colour when you took a picture of it.
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Post by LovelyLadyLux »

Grandad I haven't looked at the 'answer' yet - but this photo is ONE object? Ewwwwww I'm thinking and thinking and thinking. Going to my last photo class tonight (probably going to take it again!)...I'm going to think on what it could be..........Are you going to give clues? ;););)
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Post by Grandad »

LLL, everything you see is glass. :) Think nautical.......

(Edit, there is a small amount of steel but the greater part of the image is optical glass)

Will post some more pics later today of the same object from different angles, I took dozens. :lol:
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Post by Grandad »

I know that I have mentioned Dungeness in Kent before and there are some pictures way back in the photography threads. Unfortunately, on previous visits the Old Lighthouse has been closed but it is open all this week for school half term, hence our visit there yesterday.

The lighthouse was built in 1904, the fourth to be built on that site. During the late fifties/early sixties the two Dungeness nuclear power stations were built and, because they partially obscured the light, a new lighthouse was built about half a mile from the old one such as to allow its warning to be visible around the point. The old lighthouse ceased operation in 1960 and became a visitor attraction.

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It is about 150 feet tall with, I guess, around 200 steps to the top. Thankfully there is oxygen provided for strugglers like me. :) :) :)

I like pictures with pattern and colour that tend to be abstract and the lamphouse and lenses at the top were a happy hunting ground for me. Here are a few examples of the many……..

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Dungeness is the end of the line for the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch light railway. The smallest public railway in the world. The first section of its 15” gauge track opened mid 1927. The loco’s are one third scale and they now have 13 loco’s in service. While at the top of the lighthouse Loco #8, Hurricane, hauled a 13 coach train into the station. This loco was built in 1927 and in my engineers eyes is absolutely beautiful.

These two (heavilly cropped) pictures show the deception of scale, before and after the driver stands up from his little seat on the foot plate.

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Post by LovelyLadyLux »

Wowwwwwww - without the other photos I'd of never guessed. Really interesting photo Grandad. Gorgeous colours!

I'm off to Trinidad this Saturday for 2 weeks for Dwali. I'm hoping for a bizzillion shots! Well - maybe not that many but LOTS! Only three more days 'til I'm gone - everything super hectic trying to get it all in order and ready too.........I'm taking the monopod and am hoping that will give me a steady enough hand for any real delicate or fast shots........ :):):):)

I LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY!!!
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Post by Grandad »

Hi LLL. I have just looked back to when you started this thread 9 months ago.

We have covered a lot of ground since then haven't we? :)

Back in February you mentioned Diwali in Trinidad and that lead on to a lot of discussion about photo editing.....and I think we all broadened our horizons with that.

After you have been to this Diwali, how about telling us a little picture story about it......There's achallenge for you. ;)
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Post by Grandad »

Just to catch up on what's been going on recently. I have never used ND filters and could not really see the point of them.....Horus has put me right on that with some great illustrations of extending exposure times.

Mind you LLL I still can't get the suggestion from your tutor that they are preferable to CP filters????

Regarding Lightroom 3 LLL, I downloaded a 30 day trial to have a look. It is one of a very wide range of Adobe programs and is exactly what it's title suggests......a Lightroom for colour and light manipulation without all the other editing gismos. It DOES look excellent for its purpose with a very easy to use pallette to the right of the workspace. And a very nice grey screen that makes viewing very restful.

Personally I am happy to stick with Elements 7 and PSP2 that meet all my needs. However all of these programs can be a bit daunting. I purchased Kelby and Kloskowskis 'The Photoshop Elements 7 Book' on Kiyas recommendation and find it invaluable.

With PSP2 I lean very much on our good friend Horus who has helped a lot to get around many problems. Many thanks to him. :) :) :)
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Post by Horus »

Thank you for your kind comments Grandad, always happy to help. :)
I agree with your urging of LLL to take plenty of photographs and to give us all a recounting of her visit to Trinidad as there must be so many great photographic opportunities whilst she is there.

Thanks for posting the shots of the lighthouse, it was the circular clear glass on the bottom right in your series that I remembered from my own visit to the Lizard lighthouse some years ago.

The scale sized locomotives are always a treat and like you I am always enthralled by a steam engine, I could make your engineers eyes green with envy on that score, but that’s another story, I will save it for one of our future correspondences. ;)
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Post by Grandad »

I wanted to avoid moving Horus' Autumn Leaves thread into techie stuff so have responded to some comments here. :)

JOJO, I do use Picassa a lot but also have Elements 7 and Paint Shop Pro 2.

For the collage I grabbed half a dozen leaves from under the maple across the road. Photographed them and then used the image to create layers that look like a carpet of leaves. (in Elements 7)

The central overlay is just a vignetted circular selection from another picture. This is another 'layer'. The whole thing is then 'flattened' to produce a single jpeg... I did try the central image behind the leaves appearing through the leaf edges but preferred the overlay.

If you have never tried layers you can have endless fun but, be warned, it can be very time consuming. :) :)

Horus I used Elements only because it was open on my desktop. I have since tried Picassa and it doesn't quite do it. Works sometimes but not always. Something else I did to that 'old oak' picture was to reduce some fencing along the green grass area. It was very white and offended the eye. It is still there if you enlarge the picture.

And Jewel, I don't HUG trees but DO appreciate them in all their shapes and sizes and hate to see an old tree felled that might have lived for well over 100 years.....
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Post by Horus »

Thanks for that Grandad :) I agree with you about Picasa, it is a bit of a 'one hit' sort of thing and does not always fit the bill, but for general contrast adjustment I find it quite good.

If she does not already own any photo manipulating software, JoJo (or anyone else) may be better using something like The Gimp :) as it is free and fairly easy to use, it can be downloaded from here:

http://www.gimp.org/

It does quite a good job of dodging and burning, but like anything else it needs a bit of practice to get the correct results as each operation is done seperately, whereas Picasa will perform the changes in an 'Auto' mode so you do not need to do anything other than click the button for 'Auto Contrast' but of course you get what the program decides is best rather than the specific changes that you may wish to make.

Like many of these applications half the fun is in getting to use them and seeing the results from messing about. I have posted a couple of examples over on the Autumn Leaves topic as they are more in keeping with that particular thread.
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Post by Grandad »

Where is LLL :?: :?: :?:

I have been waiting patiently for some Diwali pictures..... :)
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