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-Perspective2; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:01am; 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-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-Perspective6; Grand Teton National Park-Jackson, WY; 5/17/14; 8:02am; f7.1; 1/60; ISO 200

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

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

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

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

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

Action Blur and Freeze – Bannack Ghost Town

Action Blur: 

I took this image in manual mode, adjusting settings as I saw fit. I used a fast shutter speed, 1/500, in order to capture this moment. Many others were taking pictures as well, so I was pretty proud of this image. I edited out someone’s hand and another person’s shoulder using content aware fill. Then I played with the levels and saturation, adjusting the exposure and color intensity. I had to mask out part of the saturation on their faces because it made their faces too red, but I wanted the color of the building to stand out some more.

Freeze Motion

 

Blur Motion (Ghost shot):

For this image, I also used manual mode. This one was tricky because it was so bright in the place I was taking the image. I used a four second shutter speed to get the image and had him run down the stairs after two or three seconds. It ended up being a pretty bright image, so I brought it into Photoshop and dimmed down the walls so they weren’t so bright. I used a mask to choose only the walls, and then I reduced the opacity on the brush so it wouldn’t take out all the brightness and went over his face and body because it was also bright. This is the result I got.

Ghost shot

 

Photo Specs: 

AliciaBingham_Bannack_Blur_Ghost; 2-14-14; Bannack, MT; 1:08pm; f/5.0; 5.0; Canon T3i
AliciaBingham_Bannack_Freeze_Motion; 2-14-14; Bannack, MT; 11:28am; f/5.6; 1/500; Canon T3i

 

Case Study 1: Priority Modes

The following are pictures I took using the various priority modes on my camera. The first two were taken using the aperture priority mode, and the second two were taken using the shutter priority mode.

Large aperture Christmas lights_1; 1/14/14; 8:28pm; f/5.6; 1/30; Canon T3i

Small aperture Spori_1; 1/15/14; 4:53pm; BYU-Idaho; f/22; 1/40; Canon T3i

Slow shutter play bridge_1; 1/15/14; 5:35pm; Rexburg, ID—Porter Park; f/22; 1/2; Canon T3i

Fast shutter ice droplet_1; 1/15/14; 5:54pm; Rexburg, ID; f/5.6; 1/1600; Canon T3i