3rd Six Weeks

ISO:2500

Aperture: f 10

Shutter Speed: 1/80

Lens:17-50mm

This was my self portrait for the third six weeks. It took about 4 hours to do and I'm really proud of it. On the right side I had a flash in a soft box set on 1/64 power pointed towards my face. On the left side I had a flash pointed at my legs set on 1/128 power. This picture was taken in my bathroom so it was all in a really small space. Behind me is a black sheet that I pulled of my bed. The ribbons are tacked to my wall and the one around my mouth is bobby pinned in my hair. I had to go back and smooth out the background and floor but other than that I didn't any editing to it and that's another thing that makes me very happy.

Air-o-planes!!!!

ISO: 400

Aperture: f 4.0

Shutter Speed: 1/5000

Lens:70-200mm

Allison and I went to go take pictures of the aviation class for a brochure. She shot with a wide angle and got some really awesome shots. We lit all the stuff with a flash, varying depending on the subject. I shot with a 70-200 and got pictures of us and the airplanes while they were taxiing. It was pretty cool to take pictures of things other than the normal school assignments. It gave me practice of taking pictures in a possible real world situation.  

Timpaniiiiii!!!!

ISO: 800

Aperture: f 2.8

Shutter Speed: 1/200

Lens:17-50mm

Caroline and I shoot the band concert. She shot the ensembles and I shot the whole band. There really wasn't much to get pictures of because there were only 6 or 7 people I could get clear shots of so about halfway through it I started taking pictures of random things. I took a picture of a drum, which I later found out is called a timpani. I think its pretty cool. I like the depth of field.

Self Portrait Fun!!

ISO:400

Aperture:f 4.0

Shutter Speed:1/250

Lens:17-50mm

ISO:2500

Aperture:f 10

Shutter Speed:1/80

Lens:17-50mm

ISO:2500

Aperture: f 10.0

Shutter Speed:1/80

Lens:17-50mm

So these are my unedited self portrait attempts. The top two were done at 3 in the morning. I had a flash in a soft box on 1/64 power pointing at my face. I had fun colored chalk all over my face and neck and behind me I had a poster bored that had my hand prints painted all over it  in fun colors as well I took a bijillion different pictures and the top two were my favorite. I wanted it to portray that I am colorful and fun, I think the second one does that better than the first. The bottom one I did the next day after church. I got the idea for having something over my mouth from a picture on flickr and it evolved into whats above. Later on I added ribbon around my wrists and got the floor completely covered in black. My "official" self portrait will be posted later.  

Halfway Through the Year I Still FAIL

ISO: 100

Aperture: f 2.8

Shutter Speed: 1/640

Lens:17-50mm

ISO: 100

Aperture: f 2.8

Shutter Speed: 1/640

Lens:17-50mm

So I kinda hate both of these. The bottom one was attempt number one and the top was number two. The first time was just horrid because it was uber bright outside and in the car was uber dark and it made exposing it correctly awful. So, after "processing" them I talked to Erin (the girl who assigned the photo) and told her that they were horribly horrible and I was going to reshoot it. So I did it again. I still am not incredibly happy with these but it was better because it was cloudy outside, so the exposure was good I'm just not pleased with the pictures themselves.

Cheer!!!

ISO:800

Aperture: f 2.8

Shutter Speed: 1/125

Lens:17-50mm

ISO:800

Aperture: f 2.8

Shutter Speed: 1/125

Lens:17-50mm

On the day we got back from Thanksgiving break I shoot cheer practice in the morning for Woods because she was deathly ill. I got there early and they were in the dance studio. I didn't really get any good pictures of them in there because they were just running through it and weren't going full of in there dance. After a while they went down to the multi and did stunts, as seen above. There wasn't really anything interesting that happened, but these are in the yearbook!

Basketball!!!

ISO:1250

Aperture: f 5.6

Shutter Speed: 1/250

Lens: 17-50mm

Last night was the first time for me to shoot basketball. The set up for the game was facing the goal, on the right side there was a clamp with a flash on the end of hand rail shooting up towards the ceiling, on the left side there was a light stand set up, also facing the ceiling. Both flashes were set on 1/2 +1/3 power. For the first half of the game my images are underexposed, but I changed my aperture to 4.0 and it got better. One problem that Claire and I ran into was that we didn't both press our shutter buttons at the same time so some times she would get the light and I wouldn't and vise versa because it didn't have time to recycle. Even though I didn't take that many images about 1/3 of them were useable, if not kinda good which makes me happy.

ATPI

      The ATPI results came in this weekend. Over all Texas High did amazing and I'm so proud of all the photography girls. But as for me I placed second and first honorable mention in Studio Portrait and and honorable mention in Sports/Action. I'm really excited that I did that well but I feel like I could have done a lot better. I haven't been working that hard to learn knew things that will make me a better photographer. I've been so overwhelmed by junior year I've only been doing the minimum I need to in photography, which I don't like at all because photography is the one class that I really care about. Now that Thanksgiving and Christmas break are coming up I hope that I can use my free time to try new things and expand as a photographer. This time I just picked the best pictures I had and entered them, there was only two that I was really proud of. Next time I want to be proud and confident in every picture I enter.

Aww Hailey Died

ISO:800

Aperture:f 2.8

Shutter Speed:1/40

Lens:17-50mm

So today Hailey and I went around the school trying to find cool things to shoot. We ended up in the stairwell and messed around climbing all over the stairs. At one point I was at the top and Hailey was at the bottom and I instantly thought that she should look dead. When I got back to the room and started processing Hannah should me how to make "blood" on the picture by painting it red and making the exposure waaaaay low. I really like the framing in this picture, your eye instantly goes to dead Hailey. 

Learning About a Career

     Today we skyped with Morgan Walker. She is currently in college to be a photojournalist. Hearing advice and difficulties from someone who's been where I am and is going where I want to go really sinks in and puts thing into a better understood perspective. She told us about how hard it was, and how there's a lot she has to sacrifice but at the same time just by her voice you can tell that, for her, it was all worth it. She said how she went to college not knowing exactly what she wanted to do, she just wanted to take pictures. She keeps trying different areas of work and is slowly narrowing down to exactly what she wants to do. One thing I've learned by being in photography is that it's a good thing to fail. Failure is when you learn the lessons that stick with you. Sometimes you have to fall on your butt on your climb to the top. The atmosphere that Morgan described was one where everyone is constantly learning from their own failures and well as everyone else's failures and successes. All of Junior year I've been freaking out because I don't know what I want to be, and I don't know what to do with my life but, after talking to her I've come to the conclusion that it's okay. It's okay that I don't have my entire life planned out because I have the rest of my life to figure out who and what I want to be.

2nd Six Weeks!!

 

ISO:100
Aperture: f 9.0
Shutter Speed:1/250
Lens:17-50mm

ISO:200

Aperture: f 8.0

Shutter Speed:1/250

Lens:50mm macro

For our second six weeks assignment we were to recreate two book covers. The one of Liar is my favorite. it was my first time using off camera flash and it took me an hour and a half to get the exposure right but I love this picture all the more for it. I loved it so much I used it for ATPI. I explained in detail my use of the flash, umbrella and reflector in a previous post. For the Charolette Bronte recreation I made a silhouette of Caroline, which we learned how to do together earlier this year. In a few post before I explained with pictures my flash settings to get the background as white as possible. I had to do some touch ups in lightroom and photoshop.i really liked this project because I had to use lights in way I never had and I learned a lot from it.

A Picture That's Irritating

ISO:1600

Aperture:f 4.0

Shutter Speed:1/400

Lens:70-200

This picture makes me very mad. Not only did i cut our player in half, a second before this picture was taken the guy with the ball looked in my direction and the player on the ground had a hold of other guy's ankle. Normally I don't get too upset about my failures in shooting football but this one really irritated me. But, at least the subjects are both in focus.

Make Up October 31st

ISO:2000

Aperture:f 4.0

Shutter Speed:1/250

Lens:70-200mm

This picture was taken at the Senior pep rally. This was during the video that talks about the whole year and i was told to shoot tears. There were only a few people crying but Cydney was crying her eyes out. I have at  least 5 useable picture of her crying. I wish I would have been shooting with a 50mm cause I think it would have emphasized her tears more to have the aperture at 2.8.

Make Up October 17th

ISO:800

Aperture:f 2.8

Shutter Speed: 1/160

Lens:17-50mm

I shot the Alumni Breakfast for PR. As far as the event it was pretty cool, the guys were really nice and good speakers, but it there wasn't much to take pictures of other than them talking so I thought I'd take some of the people in the audience. I had a 17-50 so I was limited on how many people I could shoot with out getting up and disrupting the talk so I shot Amy. I like this picture because you cant tell she's looking the speaker and I like the depth of field, but it kinda urks me that her leg is cut off. 

Make Up October 6th

ISO:2000

Aperture: f 2.8

Shutter Speed:1/4000

Lens:17-50mm

All the Juniors shot homecoming and it was quite interesting. We took 15 minute shifts and for those 15 minute we basic just sprayed the whole cafeteria and hoped we got at least a few good pictures.  I took almost 100 pictures and had 9 that were decent. But maybe Sadie will be better.

Caroline as Charlotte Bronte

ISO:100

Aperture:f 8.0

Shutter Speed:1/250

Lens:17-50mm

Flash at 1/8

ISO:100

Aperture:f 8.0

Shutter Speed:1/250

Lens:17-50mm

Flash at 1/4

ISO:100

Aperture:f 8.0

Shutter Speed:1/250

Lens:17-50mm

Flash at 1/4 +1/3

ISO:1/250

Aperture:f 9.0

Shutter Speed:1/250

Lens:17-50mm

To do my second book cover I made a silhouette of Caroline. To do this I had to expose for the white background by making my ISO 100 to get rid of al my ambient light, making my shutter speed as fast as possible (1/250) and changing my aperture to balance it out, in this case it was 9.0. My flash, which was set on 1/4 +1/3, was placed behind Caroline so I was lighting the white background and not Caroline.  

A Night of Firsts

ISO: 1250

Aperture: f 2.8

Shutter Speed: 1/200

Last Friday was my first time to shoot an away game, my first time to use the Bigma! and the first time that Woods shot and I taught her what to do. The drive was a lot of fun and we spent most of the trip talking about photography. The Bigma was a big challenge. It was crazy heavy so I didn't move from one spot very often. It was also a harder to get pictures in focus, but the pictures I did get were alot better than my previous games. My favorite part though was when Woods decided to shoot 3rd quarter. She had no idea what she was doing so I had to pass on the knowledge that Smith has given me and that I myself have learned from experience. Overall even though I didn't shoot any ATPI worthy sports/action pictures this was probably one of my favorite games.

Assassin!!!

ISO:100

Aperture:f 10.0

Shutter Speed:1/250

Lens:17mm-50mm

I was assigned to shoot a picture for the online newspaper of a kid who wants to be an assassin. I wanted to do some creepy lighting so Ruth and I found a picture we liked and we copied the lighting. I had a flash behind him on 1/2 power and a flash on the right side on full power. The lighting was fairly easy but working with this guy, not so much. He was very reluctant and it took a lot of persuasion from Ruth to get him to take it.   

Lighting Wooh!

ISO:200

Aperture:f 8.0

Shutter Speed:1/250

Lens:50mm(Macro)

This was my first time to use flash. It was quite difficult, in fact it took me about an hour and a half to get my exposure right. But this is my first book cover and I'm posting it as the lighting, not my six weeks project. What I did was I had a flash in a soft box umbrella on 1/4 power on the left side and then I held a reflector on the right side of her face to lighten up the right side but still have the shadows. It didn't think it was going to turn out as good as it did, especially since it was my first time with flash, but I am really pleased with how it turned out.

You Learn Something New Everyday

BAD!!!!!

ISO:800

Aperture: f 4.0

Shutter Speed:1/1250

Lens:70-200mm

BETTER

ISO:800

Aperture: f 4.0

Shutter Speed:1/1250

Lens:70-200mm

The top picture is super under exposed  and cropped very badly. I was completely unaware until Ruth showed me why it was crap. After her and Smith explained to me using the histogram why it was underexposed and why the crop was not flattering for the picture I now understand why I edited it horribly wrong and I went back and fixed all the other ones I needed to make better as well.

I Like Swim

ISO:100

Aperture:f 1.8

Shutter Speed:1/500

Lens:50mm

ISO:160

Aperture:f 1.8

Shutter Speed:1/500

Lens:50mm

This was the first time I got to shoot swim. At first I was a little bummed out because I had to shoot with a 50 instead of a 70-200, but after a while I realized that even though there are some limitations with shooting with a 50, the advantages far out weigh them. Because I shot with a 50 I could make my aperture 1.8, which is awesome when shooting water, and I didn't have to worry about zooming in or out while they were moving. I just focused on one spot and started shooting when the got near it. When I was editing my swim pictures I also learned how to use the brush tool, which I have to say is amazing!

Six Weeks Project

ISO:400

Aperture:f 1.8

Shutter Speed:1/30

Lens:50mm

ISO:1600

Aperture:f 2.8

Shutter Speed:1/40

Lens:50mm

ISO:800

Aperture:f 4.0

Shutter Speed:1/20

Lens:50mm

ISO:800

Aperture:f 5.6

Shutter Speed:1/13

Lens:50mm

ISO:1250

Aperture:f 8.0

Shutter Speed:1/15

Lens:50mm

ISO:1600

Aperture:f 11.0

Shutter Speed:1/8

Lens:50mm

I shot pool balls for my six weeks project. As I increased my aperture I ran into the problem of my shutter speed getting so slow that my pictures were blurry because I moved my hand. As a result my ISO is all over the place and my 5.6 was just a complete fail. I think for this particular picture the 4.0 aperture looked the best because the background is blurred enough to where the 8 ball pops off the page but not so blurred to where you can't tell what it is.

Ball o' Light #2

ISO:100

Aperture:f 16

Shutter Speed:30 seconds

Lens: 28.0-75.0mm

This ball of light picture was once again a failure. In this picture I tried to make it look like Hailey was holding a ball of light and use that "ball" to light her face. It didn't quite work out the way I wanted it to. This is the best one of all the pictures I took. Her face isn't lit as much as I wanted and the light in her hand over powers everything else and you can't even see her hands. But I will try again.

Sideline Sadness

ISO:1250

Aperture:f 3.5

Shutter Speed:1/500

Lens:70.0-200.0mm

We were losing very badly by the fourth quarter and a lot of people were very upset. Smith told me that I could turn off my flash and snipe people while they look all sad and stuff. So thats exactly what I did. I think it might be a little bit under exposed and I'm not real sure what was going on with my settings, but I this picture, and I'm glad that even though I'm not good at shooting action (but I am getting better) I can shoot something slightly well at football games.

Bubbly Coke

ISO:100

Aperture:f 16

Shutter Speed:Bulb

Lens:17.0-50.0mm

I found this coke bottle in my room and I decided I wanted to use it for painting with light. The more I thought about it the more I wanted bubbles coming out of it. At first I tried shining the flashlight directly at the camera from different depths, but it just turned out to be a bunch of white circles that were the same size. So I got a piece of cardboard and cut out a bunch of different sized circles and then covered the edges with tape, put them back in the cardboard and shone(shined?) the flash light behind it, creating the effect above. I wanna try it again and light the bottle more.

Looking Into the Future

ISO:800

Aperture:f 2.8

Shutter Speed: 1/25

Lens:17.0-50.0mm

I saw a picture similar to this that was black and white and when I saw it i decided I wanted to recreate it but in color. So I made her lips really red and put on these long fake eye lashes and did her make up really dramatic. She was inside while her sister and I were outside. Her sister held a flashlight on her face because I didn't have a light stand. Im quite happy with this. 

Extreme Reading

ISO:400

Aperture:f 2.8

Shutter Speed:1/100

Lens:17.0-50.0mm

I love to read so I decided I was going to do something with a bunch of books. At first I was going to have books everywhere, but I thought it was distracting too much from Haley. So, I made the books more organized and it framed Haley. For this picture I was going for a comfortable, antique chic kind of feel, so I told her to wear that shirt and sit in that big fluffy chair and then put an antique filter on it. The reason she is upside down is I didn't want it took look like just any picture of someone reading a book and I read upside down all the time so I tried it and really liked it. All in all I'm quite happy with this picture. 

I'm Going To Get Better

ISO:100

Aperture: f 6.3

Shutter Speed: 1/250

Lens: 28.0-75.0mm

In my previous post I talked about how much I suck at football, this is going to help make me better. In this picture I made my settings to where without flash I would get a black image, but with flash I could stop Brianna in mid-air. This helps me with football because it helps me anticipate when the right moment to take the picture would be. Brianna was a great model and I've learned I really like her when doing action shots.  

Stop Action

ISO:2000

Aperture:f 4.5

Shutter Speed:1/500

Lens:70-200mm

I suck at shooting football. Right before this picture was taken there was an awesome tackle with feet flying everywhere. It was quite awesome, but I took the picture too late. I'm really bad with my reaction time, but I'm working on it and at the Texas vs. Arkansas game I want to beast it up.  

ISO :100

Aperture: f4

Shutter Speed:1/1000

Lens: 28.0-75.0mm

This picture is from the water balloon palooza. This was my first time shooting action and I had to play with the settings a little to finally get my exposure right. At first I was terrified to get anywhere close to the people throwing balloons cause i didn't want to break the camera on my first assignment, but after a few minutes I learned how to get closer without fear of getting the camera wet. This was one of the only decent pictures I got, and I hope to do better on my next action assignment.

Painting With Light #1

 

ISO:100

Aperture:f/8

Shutter Speed:30 seconds

Lens:17-50mm

This was my first time painting with light. I attempted to make it look like Claire was holding a ball of light, but it needs alot of work. Next time I'm going to try not using a flash of light and have all the light coming from just her hand. It was hard knowing where to light and then getting the flashlight to come on but this is one picture I want to get and I'm going to keep working on it.

Froggy Feet

ISO: 400

Aperture: 2.8

Shutter Speed: 1/2500

Camera Lens: 28.0-75.0

This was one of the very first pictures I shot after Photo Boot Camp. I really like this picture but I got it exposed correctly on accident. I really like how shallow the depth of field is because it makes the feet and the frog stand out. I also like the fact that the grass is dead. Over all I really like this picture, but in the future when i take pictures that I like I want to be able to say I did it on purpose. 

ISO: 400

Aperture: 4.5

Shutter Speed: 1/500

Lens: 17.0-50.0

ISO: 400

Aperture: 4.5

Shutter Speed: 1/500

Lens: 17.0-50.0

My assignment was to shoot the Watermelon Supper. As you can see both of the pictures have the same settings, but they shouldn't. The first picture was taken under the awning in the shade and the second was out in the open under the clouded sun. I failed to take into account the difference in the lighting in areas that were just a few feet apart, therefore I messed up what could have been a good picture. I am ashamed to say that this is not the first time I have done this, but I hope in the future I can say that I pay more attention to my surroundings and the lighting around me so I won't pass up anymore opportunities and good pictures.