Category Archives: Alphabet Photo Challenge

Alphabet Photo Challenge, Just for fun

Food coloring and water – who knew?

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One of the many photo challenges I follow, and have been pretty good at contributing regularly, had the letter W for last week’s challenge. Even though my last post was the photo of my daughter on a watery slide, that wasn’t the real photo I wanted to share for the challenge, but time had gotten the better of me.

But I grabbed a little time last night and set up a little attempt to capture food coloring splashing into a glass vase filled with water (here’s the best outcome of that attempt). However, the lighting wasn’t the greatest, and I couldn’t get the outcome I had in mind. But when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. So here is the shot I ended up with, and was pretty content with the final outcome.

061012 FlowingBlue

Canon 60D | 55-200mm lens | Sadly, I don’t have the other details (I had to clear the card for another photo assignment for work and didn’t grab the other details before deleting)

That’s one of the things about photography – you can picture the photo in your mind, but for one reason or another it doesn’t come out the way you were hoping. But that just means you have to problem solve the issue, fix it, and try again. Which is exactly what I am going to do… eventually!

Some notes about the photo – I used a zoom lens to see how that would affect the lighting; the flash kept reflecting in the glass vase, so I stopped using it; I shot in raw so I could adjust WB afterward; I placed a white tissue-paper table cloth in the background so it wasn’t as distracting with kitchen cupboards.

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge, GoPro

Alphabet Photo Challenge: W is for Watery Slide

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I had a really cool shot in mind for this week, using the word Water for W. However, it’s been a crazy week yet again, so I didn’t have the time to set up the shot and take it. But eventually I will, and I think the wait will be worth it.

Anyway, during a birthday party today for my niece, my daughter went on a trip down the watery slide (slip and slide). She was gracious enough to take the GoPro down with her; I’d set it to take a photo every .5 seconds and ended up with this one that was the best.

060912 W is for Waterslide

Did anyone else photograph something for the letter W this week? Now on to the Weekly Photo Challenge from WordPress – Friendship.

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge, HDR, Travel, WordPress Photo Challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Hands

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During a trip to Philadelphia, I wandered around the University of Philadelphia under the assumption that I would be able to find a historic looking clock or clock tower. After a three-mile walk around campus, I gave up and headed back to my hotel.

Why was I looking for a clock? For the CTE Weekly photo challenge for the letter T (Time), but also for the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge (Hands, interpreted as in the hands on the clock). One photo covers both challenges. That saves… time!

The next day I transfered to another hotel closer to downtown Philly and noticed this clock on top of the City Hall building. I thought about photographing it at night, but took the opportunity to take a few shots during the day.

051812 Philly Timeclock HDR

Canon 60D | 3 bracketed photos | HDR

My initial thoughts on capturing T for Time was to do some time-lapse photography of a clock, but my time wasn’t readily available (it was a very busy week). Since I was in Philly, I felt like Time would mean much more than the hours on the clock, but The time that’s written in the past, the present time we live in and the future that only time will tell.

Philly has a lot of history, and I was excited to check out some of the sites – like the Liberty Bell, Betsy Ross’ house, and Elfreth’s Alley (the oldest residential neighborhood in the United States). I wish I would have made it to more sites, but hey… I did get to eat an original Philly Cheesesteak!

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge

CTE Weekly Photo Challenge: Q is for Queen

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I had a lot of ideas for Q – Quench. Quilt. Quarter. Quick. Quote. But time kept getting the better of me, because I didn’t have a lot of time to really set something up. Nor did I see anything that screamed, “Photography me! I start with Q.”

One of my colleagues, Ingrid Rauter, who also does the CTE Weekly Photo Challenge, photographed a Quarry. We chatted for a bit about some option, and she mentioned Queen, as in a chess board piece. Well, I had a chess board my dad had made and thought I could take a great shot.

I started with my GoPro, placing it on the chess board and snapping a shot or two. I even added a black drape behind it to get rid of a busy background. I also tried some with my Canon 60D with two different lenses. But none of them had the setup I really wanted. Here’s the photo I settled on for the challenge.

042812 Queen_Chess

GoPro | Photo Setting

I think what would have helped would have been to find someone who would have played me in a game of chess, and then I could pause the game and photograph the setup every time I thought the Queen was in a good photographic setup. Alas, that didn’t happen, but I don’t expect to take a masterpiece in every single setup.

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge

CTE Weekly Photo Challenge: O is for Overflow

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My mind was drawing a blank earlier in the week for this week’s letter – O. I just couldn’t think of anything, so I whipped out the Thesaurus on Tuesday night, searching for ideas. When I saw my word, I began envisioning how I would accomplish this. My end result is pretty close to what I envisioned, but with less Oreo showing.

041212 Overflow r1

Canon 60D | 18-135mm lens | 1/250 | f/5.6 | ISO 400 | Speedlite 430EX II 

I set my cup on a baking sheet so I didn’t make as big of a mess on my kitchen counter. I also placed a black cloth over the oven and cupboards because I didn’t want too much additional noise in the background. I mounted the camera to the tripod, added my Canon Speedlite430EX II flash.

Using my shutter release cable, I stood ready, Oreo positioned above the cup filled with milk… ready to drop. My timing was a little off on some of the shots, so I had a good variety of splashes. You can check out my photo outtakes in my Facebook photo album.

And if you must know… I did eat an Oreo or two after I had used it for it’s intended purpose. I even drank a little milk from the cup before cleaning splashed milk up a five-foot diameter area of our kitchen (floor, counters and cupboards).

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Journey

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This week has probably been the hardest one for me since I started doing the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge. Journey is a pretty abstract term, and I kept thinking about how I wanted to capture it to be a little different, but when I ended up with was pretty typical – I think.

041112 Journey photo

Canon 60D | 18-135mm lens | 1″ | f/18 | ISO 100 | ND 4 filter

I drive up Cherry Lane every weekday on my way to work. But rather than photographing  the path in front of me, I used my rearview mirror to capture the road behind me, while looking south out my car window, which is the eventual direction I journey to my job in Murray.

The longer shutter speed allowed for the blur of what was moving, and since the camera was inside the car, the car isn’t blurred, thus allowing the image in the mirror to not be blurred. I set the tripod up on the passenger seat with the camera facing out the window. Using the shutter-release cable, I snapped a couple dozen shots along the way, but after a while, the sun got too high in the sky, and even with the Neutral Density filter the entire scene was washed out.

I’m okay with how this photo came out, namely because of the blue sky and clouds, scene through the blur of the buildings and trees whizzing past the side of the road. What do you think of the photo?

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge, Black & White

CTE Weekly Photo Challenge: N is for Night

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I really wish I could do night photography better. Mostly, I am constrained by life. In order to truly get the star photographs I want, I need to go out into the middle of nowhere and spend a few nights, sleeping during the day. But the other joys of life (i.e., family, work and responsibilities) keep me busy for the time being.

So for now, I settle into my backyard wearing pajamas and flip flops and freeze my little toes off trying new things. Could I have done it better? Probably. Would I have lost my toes to frostbite? Very likely!

Anyhow, here’s the photo. Can you tell which constellation it is?

040612 Name that constellation

Canon 60D | 18-135mm lens | 30″ | f/4.0 | ISO 100 | Manual Mode

It was a full moon out tonight, so that celestial object was enough light pollution to wipe out my vision of the stars through the view finder, meaning I had to guesstimate and take a few  ”alignment” shots. I initially set my camera ISO to 3200, but I didn’t like how washed out it made everything, though I will admit it picked up more stars – but the sky was gray rather than black.

I gradually decreased my ISO to 100 and made shutter speed and aperture changes until I got it generally how I wanted. But the tree looked gross. It was more of a bright orange yellow, which isn’t the actual color of the tree. So, to the chagrin of my neighbors (but they didn’t holler any obscenities over the fence), I grabbed my Canon Speedlite 430EX II flash and held it at many different angles, flashing probably 12-15 times in various spots, ranging from 10 feet to the left of the camera, and 10 feet to the right – all done in the 30-second exposure. During one exposure, I took the flash to the backside of the tree, but the tree turned a deep red (I’m guess that’s because it was in the shadow of the flash) and that is even farther from how I wanted it to look.

In the end, I used the photo with the flashes in the front, then made it black & white, added my signature, and uploaded it to my Flickr page.

I would love to try this again, even if it is from my backyard. But I will need to make sure it’s clear skies, no moon, and everyone in Davis County shuts off their lights so I can get my shot. That’s not too much to ask, right?

Oh, and if you didn’t catch it, the answer is Ursa Major (a.k.a. Big Dipper).

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge, Black & White

CTE Weekly Photo Challenge – M is for Music

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Life is CrAZy! If it wasn’t for the two photo challenges I am following, I wonder if I would have very many photos shared on a more regular basis. Let’s hear it for photo challenges!!

As I thought about shooting a photo for M, I thought about a few options. Mustard on a hotdog was one option, but I didn’t have any hotdog buns to get a better setup. So I thought music could be a good use of M, and what better instrument to use than our upright piano.

033112 CTE - Music BW

Canon 60D | 50mm lens | 1/20 | f/3.5 | ISO 800

One of my favorite things in life is sitting in the living room listening to my wife play the piano. Whether she is playing ragtime or religious, I find it relaxing and I fall in love with my wife all over again.

Back to the photograph – Initially I tried using my Canon Speedlite 430 EXII flash, but it was too bright and washed out the lines between the piano keys. So I turned off the flash and took a few more shots. After I set up the shot the way I wanted it, I switched over to RAW and grabbed another shot.

I opened the RAW file in Photoshop and adjusted the white balance from As Shot to Auto, then opened the image. I converted it to grayscale, increased the contrast to 50 and lowered the brightness to -30 to get the final result.

To wrap up… in the words of Julie Andrews, “These are a few of my favorite things.”

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge

CTE Weekly Photo Challenge – L is for Lucky Lego and Lights

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Do I get triple points for this week’s photo challenge post? Here’s the final outcome, and then the story behind how I got to the final product.

Lucky Lego and Lights

Canon 60D | 50mm lens | 1/8 | f/1.8 | ISO 100 | Speedlite 430EXII flash

My first interest was to see how the bokeh lighting effect changed the further it got from the focused point of the framed photo. After attaching a circle sheet of paper with a shamrock stamped out of it to the end of my 50mm lens, I grabbed my fabric green screen and laid it out on the floor with a strand of white Christmas strung across it. But the strand of Christmas lights were too close together and ended up being a whole cluster of four-leaf clovers.

I decided to use the lights as more of a background and draped one end of the green fabric up onto our ottoman with the lights in front of it. But… what to photograph!

Sure enough, my boy’s Legos were strewn across the floor, and when I stepped on one of them on my way out of the room, I was inspired. I found a green Lego guy, placed it on the gray base and set up the shot.

I quickly found I needed to light the subject, or it was too dark. I used my Canon Speedlite 430EXII and angled it at 60 degrees. It took me a few more shots to make sure my green guy was in complete focus, but when all was said and done, that was my final shot.

Happy “Belated” St. Patrick’s Day

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge

CTE Weekly Photo Challenge – K is for Knife

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I originally wanted to try some neat camera effects with my son (or daughter) kicking a soccer ball. The word Kick was going to represent K for this week’s CTE photo challenge. But time got the better of me, and I settled on photographing a knife.

CTE Photo Challenge - K is for Knife

Canon 60D | 50mm lens | 1/100 | f/1.8 | ISO 400

I didn’t want to do just I knife. I feel like I am using my 50mm lens on too many photos since starting my blog. I was planning to cut some tomatoes for hamburgers tonight and thought I would pause long enough to take a photo of a sliced tomato and the biggest knife we had.

I tried making the focal point the tip of the knife, but I didn’t like the look it yielded. I tried focusing on the tomato at various angles, but again… not the look I was going for. I ended up liking the photo shared in this post because the tomato and center of the knife are in focus, with everything else blurred.

And by the way, the hamburgers were great!

~signed, Carltonaut