Self Portrait

I was trying some different stuff today doing a self portrait so I thought I would put one of those up here. This is an image I was actually going to toss as the original is pretty dark but I started playing around with it bringing up the brightness, adjusting the contrast, converting to black and white and then adding some grain for a bit more of the look you get from film B&W. From all that I get this.

My new pen tablet

So I got a new toy last week with some money I got for my birthday, it is Wacom's Bamboo Fun pen tablet. One of the ways I am hoping to get a lot of use from it is on those photos where I want to mask a portion of it to do selective editing as the pen should make this much easier to accomplish than with the mouse. So this picture is one of the first ones I tried it out on. Basically I masked out the leaf so when I converted the image to black and white it would leave the color on the leaf. Using the pen takes a little getting used to but it did make it much easier to mask out the leaf.

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Here is something for you younger ones, the practicing (known to you as homework) never stops! You probably know this by watching your parents but even us adults have to practice and learn new things to keep up with the latest in our job fields or just to be better at the different hobbies or everyday things we do. The good news is the older you get the more focused the learning is on things that really interest you, however never discount the importance of learning the foundational skills of English, math, science, etc. as you will be amazed at how much you will need all these skills.
As for these photos they are an example of what I do to practice and learn more about my favorite hobby. I will at times do a table top set up and practice lighting objects using my external flashes that are not directly on the camera. For the bike I had a large piece of white paper that was on top my desk and sloped up the wall behind, then I set my flash off to the left side, probably about 1.5 feet away and at a 45 degree angle from the subject (see math!). Then I had a reflector on the right to bounce some of the light back twords the subject from the opposite side. Adjust all the settings on the camera and flash appropriately then take some pictures making minor adjustments along the way to get the results I want. For the duck I just held the flash directly over top about 12 inches off the subject and used the same white paper setup. A lot of these pictures I will delete and then I keep a couple of the better ones to play with.
There you have it now go study and do your homework!

More Reno Air Races

Couple different WW2 bombers that were flying demos at the Air Races last September. I believe the top picture is a B-17 Flying Fortress with a P-51 Mustang. The next photo I believe is a B-25 Mitchell.

This is another one of the photos I took of the F-22 Raptor. This jet was pretty cool. It pretty much stalls horizontal and then does a quick 180 and takes off in the opposite direction.

Reno Air Races

Well I have been slowly working threw all the pictures I took at the Reno Air Races last September so I thought I would post one of those. Obviously It is one of the Thunderbird's during their routine doing a fly by upside down. I love watching them and the Blue Angles do their shows. The F22 Raptor was also there and was probably the best military demo there, I am sure you have all seen one of the pictures I took of that. They also had a few WW2 era bombers flying by in formation, when I get to those pictures I will post one if I have a good one.
On another note I decided to play around with doing some matting on the image. I have seen others do this and think it looks nicer that way, once you have something that looks good at least. I use a program called Capture NX to process my raw files (tweak the levels) then for some other stuff, like adding the mat, I have been playing with a program called Gimp as it is a free open source program a lot of people use and free is a lot cheaper than Adobe CS4! I do also use an old version of photoshop 5.0.

Hannah and Rachel pose for the camera.

Well I am still figuring this blog thing out but here is one to start with. This is a picture I took of Hannah and Rachel the other day. I really need to force my self to take pictures more frequently, so this is a result of making myself take some pictures.