New material

I've still been trying to get Lightroom  organized the way I wanted it.  I didn't want to just start importing things and try to get it arranged after the fact.  I think now I have that organized the way I want it and should have new stuff coming soon.  It is a lot more labor intensive, but should work out.  Saturday is going to be a long day, but with luck, I'll have something on Sunday.

A trip and an update.

Taking my photography class took a lot of time.  It is over and I'm getting back into the swing of things.
I'm visiting family later this week so there probably won't be any updates until I get back.  After that it should be back to normal.  Well, normal for me.

The State Park Project is still a plan, though it may not be as extensive as I'd planned.  Time, as well as money, is an issue.  I hope to cover a large number of parks later this year in a trip through the U.P. and I also hope to hit some things before and after that.

Work demands a lot of time on the weekends and having a single day to visit the parks I want to cover won't allow me to cover them the way I want to.  I'm not sure what, if anything, will be cut, but I'm hoping to keep the project relatively intact.

I am also working on another project that I may cover at a later date.  But that is taking up a bit of time too.  It doesn't seem that any one thing takes too much time, but when added together, it becomes a bit much.

But as I said, with class done now I should have more time.

Photography Class Projects

I noted earlier in the year that I was taking a photography class this winter semester. We had 12 projects. Here are the images I submitted for each one. Some you have seen before. Others you have not.

The first project was 'Chicken Eggs.' The idea was to get us to know our camera better and after some initial hesitation I enjoyed this. I tried several different things, but ended up going with this image. Here I blew an egg out and stuck a Christmas tree light in it to illuminate it from the inside.

The second assignment was "Stop Action."  We used a fast shutter speed to freeze movement.  After some of my initial ideas didn't pan out, I decided to use some dice I had lying about.  I used cutting board to clean up the background dropped the dice.  They are illuminated with the flash from the camera.  If I had this to do over again I would try some other things, but all in all I was pleased with the way this turned out.

After that was 'Panning.'  We used a longer shutter speed and tracked our subject. The weather was pretty crummy and my creativity was pretty low.  I also had to go to Pennsylvania for my Grandfather's funeral.  This was taken while I was there.

After that was "Shallow Depth of Field."  I knew what I wanted so I headed to the Detroit Zoo and spent some time in the Butterfly House.  These were a lot harder to take a picture of than you would think.  They would only stop moving for a moment before taking off again.

After that was "Great Depth of Field."  I knew what I wanted to do with this more or less.  I headed over to Kent county and took some pictures of the covered bridges there.  I couldn't get the shot I really wanted with the snow, but this was good enough. 

Then we were to shoot an unusual angle.  I had a few ideas for this, but none of them turned out as well as this one.  I was leaving work and saw this train was coming as I crossed the track.  I pulled into a parking lot and walked to a spot where I could get a good shot. 

"Urban" was our next assignment.  Again, I had a number of ideas.  I headed into Detroit one cold morning and wandered around.  I went through the RenCen and took this from the river side.  I really like the way this one turned out and is one of my favorite shots from the class.

While I was in Detroit I decided to tackle "Hard Light" which was our next assignment. We were to have a hard shadow line where both the part in the shadow and the part in the light were lit. The shadow couldn't be too dark and there had to be detail in it. I took this as we headed back to the car. This is the church across from Greektown Casino.

"Soft Light" followed. This was pretty easy as long as there wasn't hard light. Unfortunately, I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do. I ended up going to the cemetery on the corner of River and Clark in Ypsilanti. I messed with this too much and I don't like the way it turned out.

For our tenth assignment, we were to do a portrait.  Again, I had a bunch of ideas.  I ended up taking pictures of my roommate.  Despite this being taken shortly before class I really like the way it turned out and I found that once again I really enjoy taking pictures of people.

"Night Photography" was perhaps the one assignment that I was looking forward to the most.  I had a ton of ideas.  Some turned out better than other.  This is definitely something I'll be working on again.  For this I headed to Windsor just as ahead of a storm.  I was hoping to get some lightning strikes over the city, but everything was hitting south of the city.  Our photo session was cut short by the arrival of the rain.

The final assignment was "Love."  Again I had a few ideas but since they were dependent on other people I had to go with my last resort.  I picked up a single red rose and took it onto my balcony.  It was overcast and rainy so I set the camera on a tripod and used a flash to light the flower.  After a number of shots I sprinkled some water on the rose. 


We also used Lightroom 4 in class.  I really like the program.  It is simple enough and you can do a fair amount of manipulation of an image.  It isn't as robust as Photoshop, but it doesn't cost as much either.  I liked it enough to buy a copy. 

So there it is.  The result of my photography class.  All in all I'm glad I took the class and I really learned some good stuff.   I'm thinking of taking a studio class this fall.  I definitely want to take more classes.