Dinner is probably my favorite meal with Gabriella because it usually that moment in the day when I really begin shutting down for those hours before she goes to bed. Sometimes we sit quietly like the above pictures and sometimes we sing and clap our way through the meal. No matter what we do as long as we do it together as a family.
This Fourth we found ourselves in bed before the stroke of thirty minutes past eight, which by all accounts felt later than it should, so I ended up playing with the camera a little trying to create fireworks of our own. Success was mild but the long exposures of Gabriella more than made up for my lack of a lens with a huge aperture. Though the real highlights were seeing her riding her trike through no encouragement on our part and photographic proof of her crush on the David Tennant Dr. Who.
Sometimes like to amuse myself with the dream of whiling away my hours and days as a photographer. Just wandering about snapping pictures of people, places, and events without a thought of bills or even supporting myself or my family. Damn my lack of a trust fund.
Lately, I have been playing around more with re-touching my photos, mostly with color, contrast, and hue levels. The first shot was fairly washed out, the clouds were indiscernible and the trees a flat brown. The middle picture suffered from the same washout but both managed to become a little more dramatic after some contrast and color work.
The last is one of my favorites. It was shot in terrible indoor lighting near nightfall at 85 MM. In order even get anything recognizable I switched to black and white and shot at 1600 ISO with the result being more than a little grainy and muddy. Playing around heavily with the color curves created a scene of stark contrasts and along with some cropping yielded a really nice product from a rough start.
Exposure: 0.025 sec (1/40)
Aperture: f/25
Focal Length: 85 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0/2 EV
All four shots were done on full manual mode (well, shutter an aperture since I’m not so confident with my manual focusing skills). My aim was to get a clearer understanding of the relationship between aperture and shutter speed in the hopes of creating some dramatic lighting. The toys were placed on a stack of my daughter’s blocks, faced towards the southern exposure, and shot from an upwards angle.
Later in the day I headed outside to see if I had actually learned anything and while I had mostly junk shots this one came out just about right.
Exposure: 0.003 sec (1/320)
Aperture: f/6.3
Focal Length: 85 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0/2 EV
Granted, there is plenty of room for improvement but I at least feel like I have a better idea of how to coax the camera to capture what I am seeing.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. —Voltaire
There are men - now in power in this country - who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression as long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit.—John Lindsay
Mac Mini is in hand and the Post-TV project begins. #
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Nightfall (Bantam Spectra Book)
by Isaac Asimov
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
by Naomi Klein
