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.  =)

52 week project Week 2 - Sound

This weeks topic was a pretty easy one (sarcasm) - sound.  When I showed the list of topics to Kim, she immediately looked at me and said "sound?"  As in, how the hell are you going to photograph sound.  Well, when I told her that it needed to be an image that invoked the thought of sound then she understood a bit more.

Anyway, I'd had some ideas and I tried a couple of them but they weren't really all that successful.  We've got a beautiful grand piano and an even more impressive organ at our church but after attempting to photograph our sanctuary and other items in our church, I have yet to find a really great way to capture the grandure of either.  I  really feel we have a great looking church and when you walk into it in the afternoon with the sunlight coming through the stained glass windows and shining onto the beautiful wooden pews, it really is beautiful.  But for the life of me, I can't figure out how to capture that beauty with a camera!  DANG IT!!

Back to the weekly project - so I realized I had a great opportunity for "sound" last Friday night when Indianola was having their monthly Bike Night.  Motorcycles from all over the state (and some surrounding states) converge on Indianola for about 4-5 hours and make ALOT OF NOISE!  You can only imagine how loud it gets with a couple thousand Harley Davidson, Honda, Victory (and even crotch rockets) all gathered around a simple town square.  It may not even be legitimate to compare this to Sturgis but it's pretty impressive nonetheless.

So Kim, Elena and I walked the 3 blocks to the square to see what we could find.  I told Kim that if she thought she saw a good picture, then she should let me know because I'm definitely open to suggestions.  I took a couple dozen pictures trying to get pictures that show the size of the group, showing bikes in a line, individual bikes that were super original and everything in between.  Nothing really felt quite right.  Finally after we decided to start heading out, Kim spotted one last interesting bike.  It wasn't really an original bike (paint job, construction, etc) but it did have lots of chrome with some interesting light.  I took a few pictures of it trying to get something original and usable and this is what I got.  I think this works pretty well for sound, what do you think?