I've been spending time at home this week and yesterday Del delivered my new filters to my office, so I was eager to try them out. The leaves are already starting to change around the city, which has it's good and it's bad. Good, as the colors are just beautiful and I'm eager to get out to the mountains and see what the tree's look like up there...and bad as our short summer is almost coming to a close and it will soon be back to rain and grey.
Putting the filters on my camera I noticed right away that the polorizer was a welcome addition. My camera took in a lot of light, making it hard to work with slower shutter speeds during the day. The polorizer has a tint to it so I was able to darken up my pictures. As you can see with the above photo, it was also a little to my detriment. When I lighten up this photo, the blue turns really teal and it doesn't give it the dreamy shawdowy look, but it's still pretty dark even in full sunlight. I still have a lot to learn, which is why I posted this so hopefully I can track my progress the more I grow.
I lightened it up a bit, just to show you. What do you think? Which do you like better? Neither one? Yeah...me either.
Yesterday at work I was reading a really great photography blog that I found while searching for tips on composure. I know...I don't work, as proved here. The site is called Digital Photography School and is a valuable resource for those of us just starting out, in my humble opinion. I've been learning so much from Del and it was fun to be able to learn somethings on my own without feeling as though I'm taking too much of his attention while out on the trail.
Tuedsay night I was watching Project Runway and they were out taking pictures with a point and shoot, searching for inspiration in the city. I saw this girl take a picture of a moving taxi and after the shot she followed the taxi for a couple seconds with the camera...all without monopod, just hand held. I thought to myself, if panning is that easy I could tooootally do it. There was this whole article on panning that I found really interesting on the blog I mentioned so I decided to head out and give it a shot. Since I live in the city there is much activity and I've been searching for a way to caputre it.
I soon found out it's not that easy.
I sat across from my apartment in someone's driveway and started practicing. I dropped about 150 frames on this attempt and was only able to get one sort of, halfway, kinda decent looking shot. Ok, it sucks, but gold star for effort?
Frustrated and a little tired after practicing for an hour and a half, I decided to head back in to the house. As the sun was setting it was bouncing off my buildings west facing windows to this east facing wall, casting shadows of the palm trees in front of it. The house is something I've been trying to capture as I find it really funny that I move to Seattle and the apartments I end up moving into have palm trees in front of it. Guess there is still a little Los Angeles left in me after all.
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