My winter break ends tomorrow, when I begin my second semester at Daytona Beach College. I’ll be taking six courses (sixteen credit hours), but three of them are with the same wonderful teachers, and one of them is Photography I, so this will be my most fun semester.

The photography course is in-class for four hours weekly, so I won’t be there till Friday. While I do some black-and-white photography, this course will be mostly black-and-white film. I haven’t worked with film before (only digital and digital editing), so this will be a useful learning experience.

The courses I’ll be in: English II, Humanities II, American Political & Economic Issues, Trigonometry, Photography I, and a one-credit course on Internet research, which is good for my intended majors (computer science, and library science as my master’s degree).

The sky makes a beautiful background for flowers. You might have to lay in grass, but it’s worth it for a photo like this. I am pleased that the yellow, blue, and green colors mix nicely.

The colors pop because of added contrast, and a blending layer with the “soft light” style in Photoshop. I cloned in extra sky at the top; otherwise part of the flowers get chopped off in the print. This is one thing you need to watch out for if you’re going to do borderless printing; don’t put stuff at the edge of the frame or it will be chopped off (bleed edge). Same for television because of overscan.

Buy a 4*6 copy for $0.95 (USA only). Lustre finish. After adding, go to your shopping cart.

Canon PowerShot A620, 1/1600, F3.5, 7.3mm, ISO50, 2006-11-06T10:30:34-05

Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp and link here.

Peter Rise has an interesting question for me:

“When you’re doing action photos, do you use the viewfinder, or an LCD display that you can look at from a distance? What are the advantages/disadvantages for each?

I ask because I’ve been *attempting to* take school basketball pictures lately, which I find extremely difficult. Much more difficult than football or wrestling photos, because basketball is much faster-paced. The ball typically switches players within 1-2 seconds, and by the time I find a good photo, they’re on the opposite side of the court. If you could think of any advice that might be helpful, I’d really appreciate it.”

I use the viewfinder, but I have a digital SLR, where you can’t use the LCD screen anyway. On my smaller Canon PowerShot A620, I have both, but I generally use the LCD, to avoid the parallax error, which is quite bad on my camera, even at far distances. If you notice the LCD screen lagging in low light, the viewfinder is better.

Of course, there is then the issue that point-and-shoot cameras don’t operate well without a flash indoors (even if it’s fairly bright). Have you ever noticed at the basketball game, or any indoor performances, that people from 40 feet away have their flashes flashing away? The flash will do no good at that distance, and they’ll get grainy, under-exposed shots and be disappointed. This is due to two problems: one, they have their cameras set to an automatic mode, and the camera does what it thinks is best, which is in this case, horribly wrong (no flash is the only way to go beyond about ten feet). Two: compact cameras have small sensors …

... continue reading

The definition of complicity is “involvement as an accomplice in a questionable act or a crime.” So these roses are not your normal, law-abiding citizens. This is along the same thread as Simplicity and Implicity, my other photos of roses, which have similar backdrops.

I spent three hours getting the rose and background to look just right. I used the kit lens as it’s the closest I have to macro, but it lacks good “bokeh” (blurring in out-of-focus areas), so I blurred the background in Photoshop, but sharpened the flowers to make them stand out. I desaturated and darkened the background as normal, and went for a less colorful, more contrasty look than Simplicity.

Buy a 4*6 copy for $0.95 (USA only). Lustre finish. After adding, go to your shopping cart.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 1/50, F5.6, 55mm, ISO200, 2007-11-11T08:13:21-05, 20071111-131321rxt

Download the high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp and link here.