Monthly Archives: February 2012

Alphabet Photo Challenge

CTE Weekly Photo Challenge – H is for Hands

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I’m a day late, but I still wanted to participate in the CTE Weekly Photo Challenge for the letter H. I tried doing Heart using some Bokeh photography with a romantic setting for two, but after an hour of trying, I wasn’t pleased with the outcome. I then thought it would be fun to do Handwriting, but I didn’t have the supplies I wanted for the photo idea I had in mind.

When I saw my son playing with his Ninjago guys on the table, I thought Hands would make a great letter H for the photo challenge. So after all the shots on Friday night for Heart, and then changing my subject to Hands a day after the photo challenge deadline, this is the photo I ended up with, and that I am pleased with.

022712 Hands Photo

Canon 60D | 50mm lens | 1/40 | f/1.8 | ISO 100

I must add that my son has so much fun playing with Legos. He spent about three hours of the beautiful Sunday afternoon sitting ON the table playing with Legos. He is passionate about his play, and it’s the funnest thing to hear him say, in his very serious voice “Ninjaaaaaa GO,” before spinning his guy and watching him take out this little snake guy.

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun

Street/Public Photography Contest Voting

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Earlier this month I entered my all-time favorite photo into a monthly photo contest coordinated on Static Instants. Voting for the competition ends next Wednesday, so I wanted to take a moment and invite everyone to check out the photos and vote.

February M.C.S. Street/Public Photography.

Simply post a comment listing the number of the photo you think is the best. I’m not asking you to vote for my photo specifically, because I really want people to vote for the photo they like the most for the topic of Street/Public Photography. If it happens to be my photo, great. If not, then I’ll try again next month.

Static Instants is also a great blog to follow, and if you’re interested in entering a photo into the monthly photo contests on the blog, then go for it. It’s fun to compete and challenge yourself to submit your best.

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun

Model Train Photography

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I have enjoyed taking my kids to the Hostler’s Model Railroad show in Ogden, Utah for the past few years. It’s an opportunity to check out some fascinating layouts, all of which I would never be able to do myself.

They have also hosted a photo contest, which I have enjoyed entering, but never really done well. However, I still keep trying and hope for the best.

Here is one photo I took of an old-time HO Scale locomotive at the show one year, and entered it into the photo contest the following year. The tight shot, combined with a narrow depth of field is what I think made the photo.

Model trains

Maybe I’ll take my two boys to it this year, too. After all, it’s next weekend (March 2-4). If you live near Ogden, Utah and want to check it out, you should.

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun, WordPress Photo Challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Down

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While contemplating various ways of participating in this week’s The Daily Post at WordPress.com weekly photo challenge, I decided a family trip on President’s Day to Boondocks for a little bowling would be perfect. Nothing like throwing the bowling ball “down” the alley, hoping to knock “down” all of the pins, right?

Down the alley

Canon 60D | 18-135mm lens | 1/5 | f4.5 | ISO 500

Bowling alleys are notorious for low-lighting situations, so I knew that going in to it. However, I didn’t want to set the ISO so high that the quality of the photo suffered. I also thought a little blur on the bowling call could be a cool effect, but I wasn’t about to set up my tripod in the middle of my family’s bowling match.

I took about two dozen photos of my kids bowling, and this was the one that I thought came out the best. I like the blur of my son’s motion, and the way he moved the ball made it blur less, so it provided more of a “floating bowling ball” look to the photo.

I would probably have kept going with the photo-taking, but I am a serious bowler, and I wasn’t on track to even break 100. So the camera was put away and my bowling skills brought me back up to beat everyone else (yes, that included my wife and three young kids) with 124 points. But my daughter was second place at 106. It was a great way to spend the weekend.

~signed, Carltonaut

Travel

Flags at Washington Monument

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In honor of President’s Day, I thought I would share this photo from a trip to Washington, D.C, in February 2009. Before the trip, I rented a fish-eye lens from Pictureline in Salt Lake City so I could play with it during my trip to determine if it’s worth adding to my lens repertoire. That lens explains the outer-edge curves of this photo.

Circle of Flags

It was a very blustery night at the Washington Monument. At one point, I actually dropped a lens cap and the wind kept it rolling across the floor, with me chasing after it, for a good 30 yards. I felt like an idiot chasing after it, but retrieved it and continued shooting.

Thinking back on it, I wonder how a depth of field change would have enhanced the photo. Maybe keep the first flag in focus, and the others ones more blurred the further away they got. I guess this just means I need to take another trip there to shoot a lot more photos.

And, I decided that I wasn’t quite ready to own a fish-eye lens – mainly because of the price and the amount of use I would get out of it. I’m thinking a macro lens may be next on my list.

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun

Depth of field in food photography

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My wife makes one delicious apple crisp. The recipe is simple, and with a few substitutions, it’s dairy free because my youngest son has a dairy allergy.

Apple Crisp with Whipped Cream

I must note that in this photo, the whipped cream is obviously dairy, but if you leave that off, it’s as dairy-free as needed. If you are interested in the recipe and substitutions, let me know and I would be happy to send you more details.

After looking at the photos, I came to realize that depth of field is vital to succesful food photography. Depth of field allows you to focus on one dessert, while the other elements of the photo (in this case other dessert settings and some green apples) go to support the overall image. It’s amazing how a little change in aperture can affect the overall feel of a photo, and enhance the part you want the end-viewer to notice.

The photo was taken back in January 2009 using my Canon Digital Rebel XT. It was part of a photoshoot for an article in Wasatch Woman magazine related to food allergies.

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge, Just for fun

Weekly CTE Photo Challenge – G is for Game

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The CTE photo challenge letter for this week was G. I had a few ideas in mind, but Game is the one I landed on. I thought of games like Candy Land or Scrabble, but for weeks I have been thinking it would be fun to incorporate my son’s Lego Star Wars guys into the photo.

All that said, here is the photo, which I’ve titled, “About to lose.”

About to Lose

Canon 60D | 50mm lens | Manual mode | 1/250 | f4.0| Speedlight 430EX II | ISO 100

Lego hands aren’t the easiest to work with, so I had to use putty in their hands to help hold the cards in place. I also used putty under the winning guy to help him lean just enough to be looking around his card. Balancing the guys was a little tough, too.

You’ll notice that in this photo, titled “About to lose,” the guy who just called UNO is out of focus, thus drawing the eye to the loser. I had another version where the winner was in focus and the loser was out of focus, which would have been titled, “Uno.” But I liked this one better. What do you think?

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun

UTA’s Trax in downtown Salt Lake

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I’ve seen many shots where the moving subject is clear and crisp, and the non-moving objects around it are blurred. Well, this was one of my first attempts to take a photo like that, and I think it turned out better than I thought it would (but it took me a bazillion shots and a lot of time to get this one good shot).

Downtown Trax

This photo was taken a few years ago on the corner of Main Street and South Temple in downtown Salt Lake City. I decided that a corner would be best, because as the train makes the turn, I could follow it better than if it was passing in front of me on a straight path. I consider it luck that a pedestrian with a backpack happened to be standing between me and the train, because he made a nice feature of the photo.

I’ve been interested in trying this shot again now that I have a Neutral Density filter (ND4) that would allow me to try a longer exposure. This initial shot was taken on a very cloudy day around high noon, but either early in the morning or later in the day (or even a night shot) may lend itself to a new take on this photo. The trick will be finding the time… or maybe it’s more of “making the time!”

~signed, Carltonaut

 

Just for fun

Valentine’s Day Bokeh Photography

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I had never even heard of bokeh photography, and when I saw some bokeh photos from DailySnaps: 2012 blog last month , I thought I knew how to do it. So a few days later I went to Wal-Mart and picked up some Valentine hole punches and some paper.

I punched a bunch of heart-shaped holes into a sheet of red paper and then tried it out in my office. Boy, was I way off. I couldn’t get the effect I had imagined in my mind, let alone the effect I saw in DailySnaps. I did a little more “How-To” research on it and tried again.

This time I punched a heart-shaped hole in some chipboard and cut it out to fit nicely over the end of my 50mm lens. I hooked it to the tripod, put it at table level, then set up the background. Two strands of Christmas lights draped over a broom and this little bendy guy standing about 3-4 feet infront of the lights, and 1 foot from the camera. To help reduce the glare on the table, I put a sheet of red paper on the table before setting the bendy-guy on it.

Here is the final result

Bokeh Hearts

Canon 60D | 50mm lens | 0″3 | f/1.8 | ISO 100

That is one of the things I like about photography: there are always new things to try and different techniques to try and master. Photography is a life-long pursuit, and it’s worth every shot (okay, almost every shot!).

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge, Just for fun

Star-spangled Bottles

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This photo has been years in the making. I thought of the concept a few years ago, spent a few months buying Jones Soda so I could collect the bottles, then stored them in the garage for more than a year until I got the motivation to actually do it. This weeks CTE photo challenge was for the letter F, so I bring you FLAG.

Bottles_4

Canon 60D | 1/40 | f 1.8 | ISO 400 | 50mm lens | AWB

I collected 45 bottles, pulled off the labels, then filled them with the appropriate colored water while arranging them in this layout.

I’m not sure I totally love how it turned out. My backdrop was a folded table cloth, so you can see the folds. My studio was my kitchen floor, so my lighting was tough. I didn’t want to have a shadow on the bottles, but I wanted the table cloth to be bright white. Trying to hold the tripod at an angle so it was directly over the bottles was another challenge. Here’s how the straight above photo eneded up.

Bottles_7

Canon 60D | 2″5 | f 1.8 | ISO 100 | 50mm lens | White Balance: Tungsten Light

So which one do you like better? Any advice on making this better? I don’t want to hold on to the bottles forever, but I don’t want to have to try collecting them again. I have a few other variations I am thinking about doing with this concept, so we’ll see what happens.

Want to know something ironic about this photo? The bottles I used to make this American Flag is from a product made in Canada. Weird, eh?

~signed, Carltonaut