New York: The City That Stole My Heart

Ok so I finally finished going through all of my New York pictures and finished editing and what not so I am finally able to write up this blog post which was supposed to be out last week but we all know me and I was being lazy... So without further ado NEW YORK!
So there are tons and tons and tons of pictures I want to share and gush about but I cant do that because this post would never ever end! So I have just gotten a few of my favorites and I will tell you about these!

So while I was in New York I had both of my cameras with me, my D5000 was for every day use and my D7000 was for when I knew I was going somewhere specifically for pictures. Basically each of these pictures have elements I have previously talked about, how shutter affects night time shots, the f stop affecting brightness and depth, and the ISO affecting brightness.

This lovely beauty was taken while walking around so it was taken with my D5000. It was as you can probably tell a very cloudy day so my settings were F 3.5, ISO 250 and shutter 1/250. These are just simple normal settings for everyday use when its not super bright outside. The only editing I did was when you shoot in raw there is an option called clarity which I love the affect it has on the image as a whole, it basically sharpens the entire image which looks really good when you are shooting landscapes, not so much when you shoot people. I basically did this to all of my shots so I'm telling you now so I don't have to retype this over and over again.

 This shot was taken on top of the Brooklyn bridge of the sky line. It was super freezing cold that night and so worth every frozen breath. My setting for this one was F 11, ISO 250 and shutter 1.6 seconds. I used my remote trigger to take this shot to avoid an sort of shaking that can happen by touching the camera. One of the main reasons for using the remote was the shake factor the other is that I could put my hands in my pockets and trigger the camera from there, it as I mentioned was freezing cold.

 Times square, oh how I loved times square these two shots (top and bottom) were taken around midnight one-ish and as you can tell its still bright and actually quite busy for that time of night! For the top image my settings were at F22, ISO100 and shutter 4.4 seconds. Now these settings make the image super bright because it was one of the first shots I took and I was still testing settings, but in raw you can bring down the brightness so much its amazing. For the bottom shot my settings were F22, ISO 100 and shutter 1/5 I did tone down the brightness a bit in raw but not much, I swear Times Square could blind a man. For both of these shots I used my remote trigger because just like before the shutter was low and I didn't want any shaking of the camera.

 So here begins the snowy fun! all of these were taken in central park when the snow came in a beautiful cold flurry. So this day was super bright and beautiful and cold so for most of the time I was adjusting my shutter super high to compensate when the sun shone just a little bit brighter trying to blind us with the glorious white snow. So for the above picture my settings were F7.1, ISO 250 and shutter 1/1600. The image below was taken with F7.1, ISO 250 and shutter 1/800. This one ended up a bit bright so I did tone down some of the glare of the ice in the lake and turn it black and white.

 The image above was truly amazing because it was backed in central park so finding a nearly abandoned pathway was like a miracle! So my settings were F7.1, ISO 250 and shutter 1/800 just like the image above it. This is a really great time to show how the sun can be super bright for one instance and not another, you may notice sometimes with your eyes but your camera is way more light sensitive than your eyes. The below image was taken with F7.1, ISO 250 and shutter 1/320, this is a great way to look at how f stop affects depth which was earlier discussed but this is a more real world application to it.

These last two images were taken on the Brooklyn bridge just like the skyline picture was, so it was super cold but so worth it. This first shot was actually the first shot I took on the bridge so my settings were F3.5, ISO 2000 and shutter 1.3s. So because of my ISO being so ungodly high the image was super duper bright so I had to bring it down in raw which turned out quite nicely I think. The next picture was taken at F22, ISO 250 and shutter 10 seconds, this one only had to have the brightness taken down a tad on the road but not much else. And again these shots were taken with my wireless remote so I didn't have to worry about the shaking.

So I hope you liked my little tour of New York I sure enjoyed taking the pictures! If you ever get the chance to go to New York please take me with you! But seriously you should go I loved it and I so want to go back! I would live there if it weren't so gosh darned expensive. If you have any questions about how I did any of these don't hesitate to ask! Also I was thinking of possibly putting some of my prints up for sale so if anyone is interested please let me know, there are tons more pictures on my personal facebook page for more print options.

Thank you!

Some Favs

Ok so my eye has been twitching for the past 4 days now and I am about ready to gouge it out so needless to say I really don't have the patience to actually write out a whole blog post because I have a feeling I might just self assassinate... so instead I have decided to share some of my favorite pics with you from all sorts of time periods, some recent and have been posted some I haven't posted but might if I need another filler day. I will probably write a little bit about each pic but not go into detail of how i achieved it more or less just when it was done so I will try to put them in order of when I took them... So without further ado:

So these three pictures were one of the first pics that I took that kind of made me realize how much I liked photography and that was what I wanted to do with my life. Now these three pics were definitely by no means great, of course young aspiring me thought they were pretty damn good but looking back there are so many things I could change which sadly I cant do because two of these pics I don't have the original files anymore because I have a love hate relation ship with desktops and I never used to back up my stuff onto a separate drive. Can you blame me? I was in high school when this happened. Now I back everything up, twice... So if you take anything out of this trip down memory lane please learn to back up everything!

 Next in line is this gorgeous baby, this was taken in my digital photography class on our first photo shoot outing. This was my first time handling my very own DSLR which was my Nikon D5000 which I still have. I was not yet shooting in manual because I was still learning but this picture is by far my best accomplishment from that class. Sometimes I honestly cant believe that I took this pic...



























So after that sometime during Christmas of course right now i cant remember which Christmas but I was up in El Paso for Christmas and it snowed! So of course I whipped out my D5000 and ran outside without gloves on and froze my pretty little fingers off but out if it i got some amazing pictures of snow that rarely ever happens in south Texas and usually happens in El Paso after we leave. By this time I knew how to shoot manual and everything here on out was shot in manual.


Next up was night time photography, my co-worker at the time had gotten me interested in night time photos and so he took me where he liked to shoot and I came up with this baby!.








The  next time we went out we trekked up the Harbor Bridge and did some amazing pictures from up there and soon we are going back for fourth of July to take pics of the fireworks!

So these pictures were taken for one of my friends moms boyfriend, thats a mouthful... He was making a CD and these were some detail shots from the session which I love and honestly have no use for but to post them here maybe one day I will have to use these in a class or something.










This picture was taken at a convention back in November and i just love everything about this picture, the lighting the pool, the convention gave us lots of down time and if we ever film the rest of the video I will post that even though it wasn't photography.

Next up was the water pictures which is the first ever blog post that I posted. There were so many from this shoot that I loved and the entire experience was fun too!

Last but not least this picture! This pic is probably one of my favorites by far, the lighting I'm in love with, the shadows, the pose, the everything... I know there are probably things I could change but this picture but I wouldn't just saying. 

So I hope you had fun taking a trip with me down memory lane, I know I had some fun because I was unearthing things I completely forgot about... So hopefully my eye stops twitching and I might get to post up something else. Today was originally gonna be a post about graduation since one of my friends graduated this past weekend but I forgot the memory card at home thanks the the ever annoying twitch in my eye... 

Night Time Photography Continued

Ooooo look at this I'm getting on a schedule! I will be updating every wednesday! Unless I am deathly ill or I am traveling with the Doctor and the T.A.R.D.I.S. decides do drop me off 12 months from now... Anyway on to the post for today yay :D

So for today I am doing night time photography again! But this time it is more focused on long exposure and not necessarily on the light streaks and also using props.

The camera settings are pretty much similar to what I had mentioned before so the shutter on bulb so that I can control the time I want it to be exposed for, a decently high f-stop, and an ISO around 250.

Along with this shoot I also used props and a flash to achieve some images like this:

In this image what you need is:
-a table or something sturdy
-a glass (wine glasses look prettier in pictures to me)
-water
-a flash (I used my sb 900)
-a remote so you don't get shaking from pressing the shutter
-a camera (I dont know why I still post this...)

Ok so if you look close enough you can see that in the glass the bridge is reflected upside-down which is the reason for the water to be in the glass. for this particular image my settings are at ISO 500 f-stop 5.0 and shutter at 1/13.


The reason for the shutter being significantly slower than the rest of the images is due to the use of the flash, just long enough to have a flare but not too long to make the whole image go white. Since I wasn't using a really long shutter I dropped my f-stop to 5.0 which also gives me the depth of field that makes the bridge lights blurred. I upped my ISO too because I didn't want the background to get too dark.

The image above I didn't use the flash so my settings are more or less like my last post ISO 500, shutter 4 seconds and f-stop at 25.0. The ISO was kept at 500 because the f-stop was raised so high so I didn't want to lose any information.



Next up is more or less landscape photography with long exposure:

First up the settings in the camera are ISO 250, shutter 30 seconds, and f-stop 25.0. For this since my subject was really far away I used a high f-stop so nothing came out too blurry, my ISO back down to my golden ISO, and my shutter with my camera on bulb my shutter ended up at 30 seconds. For the shutter I recommend playing with it, you never know what you are going to get. Also on buildings like this they have lights of their own so the longer the exposure the more you will pick that up. Since you wont really know starting off what the lights will do it is good to experiment.

Remember my settings are always changeable not everything is set in stone, have fun on your own and just experiment, thats the beauty of having digital cameras you aren't waisting film! Last but not least i will leave you with this little nugget :D

Night Time Photography

So I've decided I will probably update once a week, either on Monday or Wednesday probably Wednesday because I have access to the computer lab. I do have a laptop at home but I rarely get online at home too busy watching Doctor Who. Anywho as of right now I am pulling from my archives because I do have pictures that I love and that some people don’t know how to do.

So this time it is night time photography, which includes light streaks like from cars or flashlights. For this setup you will need:

-Camera (duh)

-A tripod (unless you can stand like a statue…)

-A remote (so you don’t get movement when you hit the trigger)

-A street or in this case a bridge

-A lens (any will do I just used the standard 18-55)

For this shoot I went up the Harbor Bridge in Corpus Christi, less than a year ago they put lights lining the bridge which is why I decided to go up there. Trust me its not a fun trek with your camera equipment…

Next up are the settings. For this I used bulb function in the camera to control the shutter so I usually did it around 3-4 seconds, this is the main reason that you need the remote. With the remote you don’t have to hold the button down, you don’t even have to touch the camera so you wont shake it so it wont be blurred. The ISO was set at 200 just so that it will be a touch darker so I can make the shutter last longer. The f stop was at 8.0 not too high but not too low so that there is some depth of field. 

Remember for long exposure photography you are at the mercy of any of the lights around you like streetlights, they are very yellow in pictures as you can see in all of these pictures where there is a light on the subject.

Up on the bridge you have an amazing view of the Texas State Aquarium and the Lexington so I took some of those too.

Then you have an amazing view of downtown Corpus Christi.