Technical stuff and patterns

You know what I wish? I wish that I had set my camera to AUTO for a few of those sunrise shots on Hilton Head Island---just to compare a before and after. The first morning I was out there, all my pictures were black. I kept making adjustments and it just wasn't happening. Additionally, there ended up being too much cloud cover to show much of a sunrise. In the end, it was kind of comical because about an hour AFTER sunrise, and after a couple cups of coffee I realized I was "adjusting" the wrong thing! I blame it on blurry vision and jet lag??

Ok, so maybe someday I will read all these notes and see this photos and feel a little embarrassed at my lack of skill. But in keeping with my intentions for this blog to be somewhat of a learning record and journal of what captivates my attention, I wanted to write a little about what I did to get the sunrise shots.

First of all, none of them have been altered at all in Photoshop.  I know for certain that if I had a tripod with me, I could have taken some really neat, different shots. The lighting could have been lower and I was so desperately wanting to slowww down that shutter speed to show the motion of the waves and the spray in the low light. But, it just couldn't happen without my tripod. I would have also liked to get the moonlight reflection off the water. I'm pretty sure that shutter would have had to have been open for many seconds-- 20?? or so??

In order to get enough light into the picture so that it wasn't black, but also deep enough so that the colors weren't washed out, I had to use the spot meter and read light from a moderately shadowed area. I found the shadowed sea dunes and and part of the unlit sky gave me the best balance. So, I focused the spot meter on that spot, locked in on that reading, reframed the shot and took it.  I had to try that several times to find a reading that was adjusting appropriately.  In the meantime, the light is continually changing and quickly! I was getting distracted- the fire in the sky, the reflections on the sand, the play of light in the sea grass, ooohh, back to the the cloud line and rising sun!! Fun!  So, I had to keep making adjustments. I also found that as the sky was filling with light, my eyes could see those deep hues of color on the horizon but the camera wasn't picking it up- everything looked very light and washed out in my viewfinder. I quickly adjusted the the exposure compensation- trying first to bring it down about half of a stop, but in the end, I think my favorites were around -1.7.  In review/summary- exposure compensation is the camera's ability to make balanced adjustments of the 3 components necessary for proper exposure (aperture, shutter speed, and ISO-or the light meter's sensitivity to the light.) 

I'm trying to think if there were other technical things in my mind that I was responding to while shooting those pictures... and right now I can't think of anything else. I am going to try to attach a couple shots of fun patterns that I found on the beach and wanted to capture in case I wanted to use them creatively sometime in the future.

You know, there was a better pattern of sand/silt that I was sure I had on my camera. Bummer. It must have been one of those shots that I appreciated and took only with my "eyes". :)

More Hilton Head Island

Here is another one of the waves catching sunrise light.  The contrast of colors is beautiful to me.

In this shot I was trying to capture the "fire" coming out of that low cloud line. It really looked as if the distant puffs were aflame. You can kind of see it, but not quite to my satisfaction. I wonder if a longer telephoto lens was needed? I also like the play of colors here and reflection giving appearance of texture.

I took this one, enjoying the reflection on the sand, the suds, the texture of twigs against smooth sand.

Same draw to this one, especially liking the bird  but wish I could have quickly changed my focal point as it seems the focus is set more on the waves than the bird..

Some first favorites - East Coast Beach Sunrise

This is one of the first shots I took on the morning it actually wasn't cloudy.

The wind was blowing and without a tripod in such low light---there was no way I could get this to focus. But I LOVE this shot. I am so lacking in artistic ability but THIS!!, this seems artsy to me. I would frame this or print on canvas to hang.

I wanted a shot of the surf and I was happy to get one that wasn't dead on but with some interest in a slight diagonal. What I was really trying to capture on this one was that beautiful, warm sunrise sunlight backlighting the waves. Isn't it such a picture of hope? His mercies are new every morning.

I have so many more I would love to post, but am out of time.

Hilton Head Island

Dunes, Ocean Spray

This is my favorite of the trip so far... sweet, tender, yellow flowers on the dunes  AND this butterfly!

My new niece

Rainy Day

Here's a few pictures I took during and after the rain last week. It was really, really fun. I look at the images now and it is amazing to know that light came from overcast skies!!! I love the color saturation of these photos. I did not do any photoshop enhancement/editing.

update

I felt an update was in order. I keep avoiding new postings because I haven't had any pictures to attach. For a few weeks, I just wasn't motivated toward photography or anything creative-- different priorities surfaced. Over the course of the past week I have felt inspiration creeping in but I am a little stuck. I feel disabled by photoshop. I took those maternity shots of my sister. Each of them needs a little editing but I am just not skilled in the photoshop tequniques yet. I have been reading a lot and experimenting. One in particular, I did a lot of editing to, in multiple layers-- smoothed skin tones, patched a blemish, darkened the edges of the frame to highlight the subject, etc. I printed it on paper and saved but apparently saved in a format that doesn't remember photo shop "layers." So, basically, the editing is gone.  Also, those layers are costly in terms of space/memory. I know I need to figure out a way to save the images I take but pretty soon, my computer will be so bogged down. Do I get an external hard drive? Do I put them on a jump drive? Do I upload to a "cloud" type resource??? I just don't know! 

I feel like I need to research to the point of a decision

• storage
• photoshop basic editing
• saving format for my photos
• ** light, lense, focal length

The whole light thing....it's nuts. There is a mathematical equation regarding aperture and shutter speed. It makes sense in the simplest terms-- smaller opening needs longer length of time open to let in appropriate lighting. But, there are degrees of opening and shutter speeds.   

So, to just say, "I want to bring that background out of focus to highlight the subject's face in front of me, therefore I will use a lower aperture" means that all of a sudden your picture is overexposed (too light) if your shutter doesn't close faster. So, you need to adjust the shutter speed. And there are varying degrees of adjustment that come into play based upon an exposure wheel.  So far, I have read over this a couple of times when I have been tired. I am not making progress so far. Same thing for getting your subject in focus and calculating the focal length. Something about the image sensor, something about a conversion factor with Nikon... like, your lense says 200m but with conversion factor (no idea why at this point) with Nikon there's a 1.5 increase so really you are looking at 350m and this is important when determining how far from your subject you can get with a certain shutter speed and maintain focus without having to bump up the ISO which can create "noise" in the photo. Is that a run-on sentence?? ;)

So, I really want to take a photo shop class. I think it would be a concise way to cover the ground I need to cover.  My trial by error, teach myself approach is taking a lot of time and is frustrating. 

I HAVE to get a handle on the measuring light issues and get comfortable with making quick, effective decisions for exposure based upon those readings.

I LOOOVE to think about composition and just the fun part of capturing those things that stir my heart, but I have to say, in a large part right now, I feel like my inspiration toward that angle is stilted because I know I have these other barriers that prevent me from getting those images to print or even saved in a way that is going to work.