LiveLaughLove: 12 Weeks to Better Photography

Showing posts with label 12 Weeks to Better Photography. Show all posts

12 Weeks to Better Photography- Week 3 (White Balance)

>> Friday, March 19, 2010 – 12 Weeks to Better Photography, Photography

This week's lesson is all about the color of light and white balance. The handy-dandy lesson is HERE. You see, sunlight casts different colors throughout the day but for this lesson, we focused on indoor light. Most times when I take pictures indoors at night, the pictures come out yellowish. Not very pretty. Tonight, I took a picture of a white piece of paper so my camera adjusted to that color. I'm not very good at explaining (or even understanding) this photography phenomenon so go ahead and read the lesson yourself.

Let's get to the photos. The first picture was taken on AWB (auto white balance). Notice the overall orangish tint to the picture...The next picture is taken using the tungsten WB setting. The white on Mia's paws, face, and neck are actually looking a little more white but not quite perfect yet. Finally, I was able to use the custom white mode (CWB) that I set up earlier with the white paper. Perfect :) Personally, I think this picture looks like it I took it at noon with all the windows open so light could fill the room. Nope...it was 9 pm!We celebrated Mia's birthday all day and you can tell that she is just pooped. We got some adorable pictures of her opening her presents and I hope to have them uploaded soon!

12 Weeks to Better Photography- Week 2 (ISO and Shutter Speed)

>> Thursday, March 18, 2010 – 12 Weeks to Better Photography, Photography

Better late than never, right?

This week's lesson is about ISO and shutter speed. The very helpful printout is HERE. ISO is all about lighting. You set your ISO to low numbers in low light and higher numbers indoors. The lower the ISO, the slower your image is captured and the more light is required. The higher the ISO, the faster your image is captured and the less light is required.

Shutter Speed is how quickly your shutter opens to capture the image. A fast shutter speed can capture things like sports and quick moving action. A slow shutter speed looks blurry...think cars on the highway at night. I love those kind of shots!

This week's assignment wanted us to capture water in our sink. The ISO was set to 1600 because I was inside. This first picture has the shutter speed set at 0"5 (half a second). The shutter speed is REALLY slow so the water looks blurry.

This next picture has the shutter speed set to 1/80 of a second. Much faster and sharper but still a little blurry.Finally, I set the shutter speed to 1/1000 of a second. VERY fast and able to catch a very sharp picture. Cool, huh?!? (I did have the lighten the color of the picture afterward because not enough light was getting through with that fast of a shutter speed.)Week 3's assignment will be up tomorrow!

12 Weeks to Better Photography- Week 1 (Aperture)

>> Sunday, March 7, 2010 – 12 Weeks to Better Photography, Photography

A few blogger friends are following this online tutorial and I thought it would be the perfect way to get more familiar with my camera. Meredith at La Buena Vida posts a photography lesson each week and then you try it out and post your results.

Week 1's lesson is about aperture. Everyone loves when pictures that have that "blurry" effect and aperture is the reason why it happens! Mike has tried lecturing me about this many time so I was familiar with this concept. When your aperture, or f/ (f-stop), is low, then less light is coming into your lens. Therefore, less of the picture is in focus and the background will be blurry. When your f/ is higher, then more light is coming into your lens and more of the picture will be in focus. Read more about her first lesson HERE. The printout that helped me a lot is right HERE.

I was outside enjoying the weather with my favorite pup and decided to take some shots of her adorable, little legs.Picture #1- This picture was taken with the f/ set at 1.8. This means that a small part of her legs will be in focus and the rest of the picture will be blurry.
Picture #2- This picture was taken with the f/ set at 8. This means that you will see more of her leg and hairs in focus, as well as the fence and ground in the background.

Picture #3- This picture was taken with the f/ set at 22. This means that more of the background is in focus, such as the wooden planks of the fence and the coloring of her back leg.Week 1- Done and done!