Saturday, January 31, 2009

A Winter Drive

A trip to Winterset for an Xray of my wrist prompted me to get up early and take a meandering drive to 3 of the Madison County Covered Bridges. The winds were blowing clouds into the sky and robbing us of the beautiful blue sky and sunlight. I had to act fast to get these in before storm clouds took over and darkened the afternoon. Lens used was a Sigma 10-20mm, and I used Hiubbies 4X4 to get as close as possible.





A Quiet Riot

The winter winds have been blowing, and the overcast skies lend for a very subtle color in the horizon. Here are a couple sunsets I have een on my drive to work.


Lensbaby 2.0

The lensbaby is a selective focus lens, this fun lens looks like a bellows and tilt lens combined. All maual focus and completely artistic and crative. it's alot of fun to Bend It Baby...




Winter Respite...A Trip To The Des Moines Botanical Garden





Colonial...Good Bread

So...I was never good at resolutions, lol I found some time so I added new posts with several recent photos.

This old neon sign is on the closed Colonial bread bakery in Des Moines. Used a standard Zoom lens shot against a blue sky with puffy white clouds.
Good Bread

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Resolutions

FAther, I have a confession....I have all but forgotten my Blog, a deep sense of lethargy set in. But today is a new day, It's a new year, and I resolve to post photography posts again on a more regular schedule.

January 3rd I met in Downtown Des Moines with 12 other photography minded individuals for a flickr meet up. Many of the faces were new, and a few had already become steadfast friends. They group was diverse in age, background, and camera equiptment, but all of them even the newest of amatuers had a definate eye and came up with some interesxting photos. You can see the photos everyone posted here. http://www.flickr.com/groups/1014797@N22/

Here are a couple of my photos, and I will discuss the different lenses and techniques for each.
This was a display in a shop window in a gifty shop called ETC. I used a 50mm 1.4 lens set at 1.4 aperature to allow the most light in. Flash was not used. With such a narrow foacal area it is only possible to focus in one particular area, making the objects not at that focal distance blur. This is called Dof (depth of field) . This also gives you thoise beautiful circes known as Bokeh, this occurs when light sorces become out of focus. Such as the light reflecting off of the pewter figures. This effect is intensional.
The Greatest Gift Of All

This was taken in the skywalks, It is a neon light fixture in the ceiling. I used a wide angle lens. The neon was white, which made for a B&W done in color. I acheived the cool blue tones in RAW split toning, by tweaking the colors & saturations.

Neon Blues

This Christmas tree was still standing in the Hub,There were multidudes of different ways to shoot this tree and atrium.In my favorite one I used the wide angle lens again,laying down at the foot of the tree and looking up.
Up The Tree Atrium