A picture a day every day

Over a month late, here are the pictures for April. With the impending arrival of our baby boy, things got pretty busy. I managed to get out and take a bunch of pictures, but posting them got tough. Enjoy!

Tilt-Shift photography is when you take a wide shot and make it appear as if everything is miniaturized. Objects, people, and structures look like they’re some sort of plastic model, all shrunken down from real life. Tilt-Shift is becoming pretty popular lately, but it takes some super expensive specialty lenses to pull it off…unless you know how to fake it. After looking up some tutorials, I decided to fake my own tilt-shift images. I learned how to make it happen, but my version of Photoshop is an older one and I don’t have all the necessary tools, so I did my best. Here’s what I managed to do with the resources I had.

Click on the images to enlarge.

I have more examples and will be adding more over time over at my flickr page. You can check that out here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jar155/

February was a short month, but on several days I had to scramble to keep up with the daily demands to get a picture taking. With warmer weather expected this month, I can’t wait to get some more outdoor shots, even if there’s not a lot of green out there. I feel like I’m getting a better hang of things, and I’m going to play around a bit more with some long exposure shots and nightime shooting. As always, new pictures will be added throughout the month, with at least one image per day represented. Some days will have more than one picture posted. Remember, new posts on the blog appear after this one and you can view past months using the links below.

Past Months (click month to view post):

January 2009

February 2009

Tami and I just got back last night from our trip out to Santa Barbara to visit her family. The weather was bad for most of the trip, but we had a great time. The last day things cleared up for the most part, and we took advantage by having an outdoor picnic. Some of these pictures should make it up into the main gallery for February, but here’s a few highlights from the trip. I may add to this slideshow later, so check back as I still have a lot of pictures to go through.

I made it through January, so I guess I’m not so bad at keeping up after all. Here are the pictures from February. There should be a bit more variety in the shots here, as Tami and I will be making a short trip to Santa Barbara, California for a few days. Like always, I’ll post at least one picture for each day, but some days might have multiple pictures. Remember, any regular blog posts will appear chronologically AFTER this post.

Past Months (click month to view post):

January 2009

Tami, my brother, and I all went out to the Great Salt Lake, near Magna to get an hour of shooting in despite the terribly hazy conditions. It was the first time that I’ve been able to take my new lens (Canon 18-200mm) out of the confines of my own yard, so I was excited even with the disadvantages of hazy skies and harsh light. I’m pretty satisfied with the lens overall, and I’d really like to see what I could do with ideal conditions. I did notice that at the 18mm setting there were some dark edges around the corners of my shots. I’ll have to see if this is my lens or the filter I’m using, as I’d like to avoid that going forward. Anyway, here’s a quick slideshow of some of the pictures I got.

This isn’t terribly exciting, but it’s somewhat notable as it’s the first picture I took with the new lens I just picked up. I love how sharp the picture looks, despite the lack of a tripod and a later evening lighting situation. More pics to come once I can get out and leave my house and yard…

Getting a new lens is always like Christmas morning. When a lens comes, it opens up the range of photos you can take. My new lens, which is the Canon EF-S 18-200mm 1:3.5-5.6 with Image Stabilization is probably going to be my most commonly used “walk around” lens. The range on this is awesome! Being able to go so wide is a bonus, but the zoom is something I haven’t had access to up until now. I’m hoping to get out this weekend to get some landscape shots in, but weather will dictate whether or not that ends up happening. For now, I’ll keep my fingers crossed and my batteries charged!

Here’s a stock photo of the lens:

I took my dog out in the morning to play with him for a bit before heading out to go fishing with my wife, and the moments before sunrise were giving me some nice images, so I ran back inside and grabbed my camera. I was going to do some post processing on these to give them their maximum punch, but the 100% unaltered colors were worth presenting as they were. It’s interesting to see how in the span of only a few minutes the images fade from vivid to rather bland. It’s just another example of why photographers must take advantage of every moment as quickly as possible, because often times they just don’t last.