A New Perspective: A Broken Pine

My instructor Caryn Esplin (see her awesome website at http://www.carynesplin.com/) challenged us to find something to gain a new perspective on while on our road trip through the Grand Teton National Park. She said to try taking twelve photos from different views of the same subject. I saw this broken pine tree and thought I could try to get some cool angles of it. I also loved the texture of this tree. So away I went!

Out of the many images that I had, I found twelve that I liked best, which I posted here. I haven’t finished doing some post edits on all of them, but if you click on them you’ll get the idea of what kinds of angles I was able to get.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed taking pictures of this one subject. It was a lot of fun to get various angles and try to see the tree from a new perspective. Let me know what you think.

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-BrokenPine-Perspective1; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:01am; f7.1; 1/60; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-BrokenPine-Perspective7; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:03am; f7.1; 1/60; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-BrokenPine-Perspective11; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:08am; f7.1; 1/60; ISO 400

 

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-BrokenPine-Perspective4; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:02am; f7.1; 1/60; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-BrokenPine-Perspective8; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:03am; f7.1; 1/60; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-BrokenPine-Perspective2; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:01am; f7.1; 1/60; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-BrokenPine-Perspective6; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:02am; f7.1; 1/60; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-BrokenPine-Perspective10; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:06am; f7.1; 1/25; ISO 400

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-BrokenPine-Perspective9; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:05am; f7.1; 1/60; ISO 800

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-BrokenPine-Perspective5; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:02am; f7.1; 1/60; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-BrokenPine-Perspective15; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:10am; f7.1; 1/60; ISO 400

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-BrokenPine-Perspective13; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:09am; f7.1; 1/60; ISO 400

Grand Tetons Fine Art: Mormon Row Barns

I found some great views of the Mormon Row Barns in the Grand Tetons (Grand Teton National Park). It was kind of difficult to shoot these, seeing as the weather wasn’t the greatest. I tried to fix my images in post in Photoshop, which gives you what you’ll see below.

I had a lot of fun shooting, but by the time it got to the end of the day, my energy was waning. So once we got to Jackson Hole to the Town Square, my energy was spent. I only got one photo that I thought might be cool as my others were mostly blurry; so I played around with it in Photoshop, removing the color from almost everything to bring your attention to the bright yellow umbrellas.

For all these images, I did minor edits with the levels and the saturation. I added in the blue sky for all the images with the barns and the salmon colored house because the sky was just white from being overcast. Here are the results I got. Let me know what you think!

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-MormonRowBarns6; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 9:42am; f20; 1/250; ISO 800

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-MormonRowBarns-SalmonHouse; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 10:07am; f20; 1/125; ISO 400

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-JacksonTownSquare; Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 5:57pm; f8; 1/200; ISO 400

Grand Tetons Fine Art: Macro Photography

As I’ve said before, I love macro photography! I didn’t have a macro extension tube this time, but I still had fun getting some close up shots of the Grand Tetons area. I think many of these images of the Grand Teton National Park could be made into fine art images, especially for people who love macro photography.

For most of these images, I adjusted the levels since the lighting wasn’t all that great. I did need to sharpen a few of the images to make the focal points more crisp, but the colors turned out really well and didn’t need much editing. Check it out and let me know what you think!

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-YoungPineTree1; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 7:37am; f5.6; 1/100; ISO 800

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-MooseWilsonRoad-RedPlant2; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 6:48am; f11; 1/160; ISO 1600

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-MooseWilsonRoad-LeafWaterdrops; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 6:39am; f11; 1/80; ISO 1600

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-MooseWilsonRoad-Eggs; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 6:42am; f11; 1/200; ISO 6400

Grand Tetons Fine Art: Nature and the Mountains

Grand Teton National Park has amazing drives and views of the mountains. I love nature, and learning how to capture it was wonderful. I love taking pictures of people in front of scenery, such as family and friends; but sometimes it’s nice to have a beautiful image of the earth just to hang on your wall, especially during the gloomy winter days. The skies were mostly gray, but the clouds parted later on, giving me a wonderful blue sky to work with.

I had to adjust my f-stop a lot in order to change my aperture for the various shots I wanted. I got some close-up shots, (see my post titled Grand Tetons Fine Art: Macro Photography), which made me need to change my f-stop. See the captions for exact specs of each photo.

I did minor editing with the levels on all of these images, and some I needed to boost the saturation a little bit as well. Here are the images of mountains that I caught on camera. Let me know what you think.

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-OxbowBend1; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 11:02am; f20; 1/200; ISO 100

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-Nature-Stream-Slowshutter; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 7:24am; f20; 1/5; ISO 100

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-OxbowBend5; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 11:06am; f22; 1/200; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-MooseWilsonRoad-LakeReflection2; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 6:35am; f11; 1/200; ISO 1600

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-FallCreekFalls5; Palisades-Bonneville County, ID; 5/17/14; 7:30pm; f11; 1/6; ISO 100

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-JennyLakeLoop; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 1:12pm; f22; 1/200; ISO 400

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-OxbowBend5; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 12:16pm; f22; 1/200; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-FallCreekFalls1; Palisades-Bonneville County, ID; 5/17/14; 7:25pm; f8; 1/250; ISO 800

AliciaBingham-GrandTetons-OxbowBend-WideAngleLens1; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 11:15am; f22; 1/200; ISO 800

Macro Photography: Close-Up Greenery

I took a lot of pictures of greenery, all of them close-up, perhaps to be considered as macro photography. I used an 18-135mm lens with a macro extension tube to help get extremely close up. I had never used one properly before, so it was fun to learn how to do it and what settings to use on my camera for it.

A lot of these shots were just fun to get because I love greenery. I love flowers, water, and things that are full of life; so this shoot was extremely fun for me. I didn’t want to stop once I learned how to get a crisp, clear shot. I used spot metering on my camera; and in order to light it properly, I used an auxiliary light for most of these shots. Lights make all the difference, which was another new thing to me.

I did minor editing on all of these, playing with the levels and the saturation a little bit. I also sharpened a few of them a little bit where needed.

AliciaBingham-Macro-LilyPad4; BYU-Idaho Greenhouse-Rexburg, ID; 5/16/14; f5.6; 1/25; ISO 100

AliciaBingham-Macro-PinkleFlower6; BYU-Idaho Greenhouse-Rexburg, ID; 5/16/14; f5.6; 1/60; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-Macro-OrangeFlower1; BYU-Idaho Greenhouse-Rexburg, ID; 5/16/14; f8; 1/60; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-Macro-PinkleFlower9; BYU-Idaho Greenhouse-Rexburg, ID; 5/16/14; f5.6; 1/60; ISO 200

Light Painting: Still Life Photography

This was my first time trying out light painting. I took a lot of shots of various still life set-ups and objects, painting the light on with a flashlight. It was tons of fun and surprised me at how cool it looked. It took some practice, but I’m pretty pleased with a lot of my images.

One of the most important aspects of light painting is making sure the room I’m in is completely dark. Also, I had to make sure I didn’t over-do it. I had the tendency to shine the flashlight on the subject the entire time, but those images ended up being more blown out and had less contrast. The best images were ones that I would let sit in the dark for a lot of the time and flash the light only part of the time.

I did minor editing on almost every image, bumping up the saturation and adjusting the lighting so it looked exactly how I wanted it to look. These are the results I got:

AliciaBingham-LgtPnt-BlueJewel; Spori Building-BYU-Idaho-Rexburg; 5/16/14; f16; 15″; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-LgtPnt-Cameras; Spori Building-BYU-Idaho-Rexburg; 5/16/14; f16; 15″; ISO 200. I used two separate photos for this and placed one over the other, using the Difference overlay to get those colors. One image had red and the other was plain silver. I liked the effect this one gave me.

AliciaBingham-LgtPnt-Cowboy2; Spori Building-BYU-Idaho-Rexburg; 5/16/14; f20; 15″; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-LgtPnt-Fruitbowl; Spori Building-BYU-Idaho-Rexburg; 5/16/14; f16; 15″; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-LgtPnt-PhotoandJewels; Spori Building-BYU-Idaho-Rexburg; 5/16/14; f20; 15″; ISO 200

AliciaBingham-LgtPnt-DuckToy1; Spori Building-BYU-Idaho-Rexburg; 5/16/14; f20; 15″; ISO 200

Portrait Session 1: Graduates!

Hey everyone, check out these images I captured during our in-class model shoot! We shot this as if we were shooting pictures for graduating seniors, and our models were fantastic! They didn’t need much direction and posed for the camera like naturals.

During this shoot, we were learning about speed lights and how to work our cameras with shooting in various types of lighting. It took some time, but I’m fairly pleased with the final products of this shoot.

I shot in manual mode, and I made sure my white balance was set to flash, otherwise the coloring went way off. I had to adjust the aperture and shutter priory with each new location. We used the transparent portion of our reflector to help spread the light out.

Also, I finally created a watermark. I wasn’t sure exactly how to do it, so it’s a simple one for now. I may update it later. Let me know what you think about these pictures. Enjoy!

 

Changed eye color

Enhanced

Enhanced

Before editing

After editing, brightened with levels

Simple enhancements

Lightly enhanced

Enhanced

Enhanced, brightened eyes

 

 

Photo Book: The Finished Product

Here is my final photo book spread. I spent a lot of time trying to choose the right pictures for the book, as well as choosing which images I wanted to put in what order. I decided on what I thought were my best photos, and went from there. I paid the extra money to have a full bleed cover because I thought it would look better, and I really like how it turned out. It’s a beautiful image edited as an HDR using Photomatix and Photoshop.

As for the design, I went with simple rather than anything too fancy. I had some dark images, so that’s why I chose to go with the darker theme, in order to let the images fade off into the black background better. However, I didn’t want it to be too dark, so I added the white borders on some images. Choosing fonts was a difficult thing for me, but eventually I found two that I liked, that I thought worked well together.

If you’re interested in seeing the whole thing, click the image to see a PDF of my photo book, or click the link below to see it. Enjoy!

 

AliciaBingham_PhotoBook_Final

Photoshop Tilt Shift Tutorial

Photoshop Tilt Shift Tutorial by Alicia Bingham

I’ve created a tutorial in Photoshop, showing you how to tilt shift an image, giving it an optical illusion of being a miniature world. It’s a pretty neat effect that usually can only be achieved with a super expensive lens. However, tilt shifting in Photoshop allows the user to fake it, creating that same illusion without spending all the money for the lens.

I got the idea from this website. I really loved the images they had as examples. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to take as awesome of photos as this person did, but my hope is that someday I’ll be able to do so. I loved this effect since I first saw the images. It’s pretty sweet.

The image I used for this was taken March 21, 2014 from the Hinckley building at BYU-Idaho in Rexburg.

 

 

Here’s the PDF version of my tutorial, for those who just want a layout of the simple steps rather than watching the video.

Tilt Shift PDF Tutorial_Alicia Bingham

 

Photo Book – Full Book Draft

 

Here’s a link to the PDF of all the pages in my photo book. Ignore the extra bleed on the table of contents page. That no longer exists, since there won’t be a page to the left there. The back cover is simply black right now, but the first page is what my cover will look like. Enjoy!

ABingham_Full_Photo_Book