Rural Decay 2

For the first couple of years living in our current house I took a certain route to work.  Every day on my way home I would notice a certain old car that was a little ways off the road.  This was a car that was really unremarkable in almost every sense of the word.  It was completely rusted out, in the middle of nowhere with no real hope of ever getting restored.  Anyway, there was always something about that old car that drew my attention almost every time I drove past.
Now for the last year or better I have been taking a different route to work that does not take me past the old car.  I had almost completely forgotten about it until the other day when I was in the area with Elena and my parents (in another car) and again noticed the old car.  I didn't have a good chance to stop at that moment because E was on the verge of a melt down and it would have required leaving her in the car unattended (apparently that's frowned upon.)
So the following Friday I walked out of my workplace and noticed the layered clouds of an overcast sky and decided right then to try and get a good picture.  As I got to the place on the interstate a few things were going through my head that had nothing to do with photography.  Should I really be parking my car along an interstate?  Can this really be safe?  Am I prepared to trespass on private property?  Is it really trespassing if there are no signs?  What if a state trooper sees me (what are the chances of that actually happening?)  What if the owner of the car spots me and starts to come down there?  Like I said, nothing to do with photography but everything to do with my surroundings.  As you can tell, I decided that no, I should not be parking on the interstate but I was going to anyway.  I was prepared to trespass, and yes it is still trespassing even if there are no signs.  I will accept whatever a state trooper decides if that should become an issue.  I would ask for forgiveness from the property owner if they confront me.
After scoping out the scene and deciding which lens to use, I got my camera setting set and took a few pictures.  I started shooting in color but decided B&W might work better and switched to monochrome.  B&W was definitely the right setting for this scene.  I recomposed and took a couple more.  All-in-all I only took 6 total shots.  I figured if I can't get it figured out in those shots with no interruptions or distractions then I deserved to have to come back and try again and maybe I would learn my lesson.
When I got home I waited 'till that evening to process the photos and when I did I immediately had a favorite.  I went through my typical processing techniques and showed my wife the photo.  She thought it was pretty good and so did I.  It was sharp and had plenty of contrast.  So I stopped and went to bed.
Fast forward to Monday and I wanted to show a couple people from work.  When I showed the picture to my buddy Matt he thought it was pretty good too, but when I was tabbing through the pictures he caught a glimpse of the very last photo I took that day and said it was his favorite.  I asked him to explain why and he did.  After looking over the two photos again I couldn't help but agree.  It was a much better composed photo with stronger visual cues and fewer distractions.  I hadn't even given this photo a chance when I initially reviewed them and I'm glad I waited for someone else to see them before I sent it to the cutting room floor.  I went through the same processing techniques for this photo and cropped it down a little and came up with the photo you see below.

IMHO I think this is a great photo (not just "pretty good") and I am one very happy camper.

Upon further review...

One of the things that several blogs and websites have talked about is saving your RAW files so you can go back and take a second (or third) look at pictures when you've learned something new or gotten a new program or whatever might produce a different/better resulting image.  As I've been trying to work on my post-processing techniques I have picked up a few things that have helped me get better results on my finished pictures.  I still don't want to over process my photos and I'd like to stick with basic editing techniques so I was extremely excited when I learned how to get my finished photos as sharp as I thought they should be.  Previously I was struggling to get my photos from RAW files to look even as sharp as the JPEG's straight out of the camera.  Imagine my elation when I was able to get a photo to look better than my camera could.  That meant I was finally starting to get some real benefit from shooting in RAW.  One of the photos I had previously been pretty disappointed with was the photo of Buxton park that I took last winter.  If you remember I was on my way to work and I stopped and handheld my camera out my car window and took the shot with my 50mm (no IS) lens.  After PP the shot just didn't look as good as I had hoped and printing it off at 8 x 10 confirmed my suspicions.  It was such a cool scene and I was pretty bummed about the lack of quality.  Fast forward about 8 months and I decided to "re-process" the photo and see what I would get.  The resulting image was much better than before and about as good as I had originally hoped.

Here are the before and after shots.

Before...

...after

Beautiful Fall

This is possibly one of the most beautiful times of the year.  All of the leaves are turning colors and the farmers are in the field for harvest.

The other night I saw a post on Facebook from my cousin regarding the farmers in the field and that it was one of her favorite memories as a child.  That really got me thinking about how much I enjoyed being out in the field with my grandpa (either in the tractor or combine.)  I truly loved it.  I would take naps in the cab next to him and the next thing I knew we were headed in for lunch (or dinner.)  So I set my sights on getting a good picture of a combine in the field.  I was keeping my eyes open on my ride home from work last Friday and that is when I noticed this scene.  It was perfect.  I love the expanse of the field with the beautiful trees in the background.

Later on, I couldn't help but notice the beauty of fall on display once again as I entered the more heavily wooded area of my bike ride.  I decided this one was also too good not to attempt so here is what I got from that shoot also.

Ride to work

I've been trying to ride my bike to work on Friday's because it is a great way to get a couple workouts in and save a little gas at the same time.  So I get my happy ass up at 3:30 am and try to hit the road by 4:00.  It is a 33 mile ride that usually takes me about 2 hours.  I've really enjoyed the experience and I look forward to getting to do more of them (at least until the weather gets too cold.)

Anyway, it took me a little while to decide to ride the entire distance from home to work (I had previously been driving to a location and then riding the remaining distance) but after I made the big decision I haven't looked back.  On my first full ride I was riding along and got to a particular bridge in Des Moines and happened to notice the Des Moines skyline.  It was beautiful.  I had caught that time of morning where the sky was a stunning, deep blue.  So I pulled my camera out of my backpack and took several shots using the bridge handrail to steady the camera.  I was pretty excited.  When I got to work I downloaded all the pictures and every one of them was blurry.  DAMMIT!!  I decided to try again the next week (weather permitting) but I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.  I purchased the Pedco Ultrapod II from Amazon and carried it and a remote shutter release with me the next week.  The next week was also a great morning so when I got to the bridge I had my shot all planned out.  I was going to use Auto Exposure Bracketing to attempt an HDR image and I would also attempt to just get it right in-camera.  I was determined to get a good shot.  I also realized that part of the problem the last week was that I had underestimated how much the bridge shakes when cars drive over it.  So I had to time my exposures till there wasn't a car in sight.  I turned on my mirror lock-up and also used my LCD screen to focus (since it can zoom and my viewfinder can't.)  This time when I got the pictures downloaded they were awesome.  After attempting to HDR the images I couldn't get them to align perfectly and the HDR image was simply too soft to consider using.  Then I played around in Paint Shop Pro X4 a little while with a single RAW image and I was ecstatic with the results I got.  I immediately sent it to Costco for large scale printing (12 x 18) and after receiving the print I loved it.  I hope you like it as much as I do.

Street Photography

So I'm really wondering if I have it in me to try street photography.  I've always been told I have a natural ability to talk to anybody and it's true, I really can talk to just about anyone.  I don't know how I do it necessarily but I think I just pick out something about them to mention and then try to start a conversation built on that.  It could also just simply be an "excuse me, do you mind if I sit here?" and from there talk about whatever I see.  Anyway, I'm wondering if I have the chutzpah to pull it off.  Talking to someone and then asking them to let me take their photo is two entirely different things.  I remember watching a video of Jimmy Hickey regarding how to start doing street photography and it got me interested.  So now I just need to find a way to translate my "gift of gab" into "just shoot."  Stay tuned....

Quick Post

I just wanted to put this picture out here.  I took it this morning on my way to work.  I propped my camera on the window sill of the car to steady the shot.  After a little post processing and a little cropping, this is what I got.  I kinda like it.

Food Photography

So a natural area of photography is food photography.  I've got an amazing wife that loves to cook.  I've also got an amazing appetite and I love to eat so why not blend these two areas of my life into one.  This spring my brother discovered an enormous black raspberry patch on the outskirts of town and decided it was too much for just his small family and disclosed the location to our parents and me.  To skip most of the details, Kim and I picked for a total of about 11 hours and got a ton of raspberries and quite a few scratches.  Afterwards Kim decided she wanted to macerate some of the berries and eat them almost immediately.  I told her I wanted to photograph them and these are the two best photos.

This first one is the picture she wanted.  The traditional "cookbook" type of photo from above.

This picture is the more "artistic" photo that I really wanted.

I honestly love them both and the best part is that they are both straight out of the camera with no post processing.  =)