We tend to leave our laptop open on top of our TV console in the evenings, and half the time I’m as drawn to the slide show of the “pictures” file as I am to whatever drivel is on TV. (Tangent: June TV? Painful suckage.)
The one really nice thing I can say about the Windows Vista operating system is that it makes a really lovely set of random slide shows. It doesn’t just display the pictures, but wraps them up in fancy transitions, adds backgrounds and frames, varies how the images are displayed, and even displays them occasionally in black and white. Looking at some of my favourite images in black and white, together with a couple of books I’ve read on getting more out of black and white digital photography, encouraged me to try some monochromatic images this week. It was supposed to be a week-long theme, in fact, but my attention span is simply not that long.
Last Friday was rainy and dreary (again) and I went out into the drizzle at lunch time trying to see how the rain changed the “look” of things I look at every day. I ended up wandering down to the Notre Dame Cathedral and took a couple of pictures inside that I didn’t end up liking very much. But when I came out of the cathedral and noticed how the Parliament Buildings lined up under Maman’s legs, I knew it would make a neat composition. Unfortunately, despite my best stink-eye I couldn’t get the gaggle of school-group tourists to move out of my frame, so I had to cut Maman off at the knees. (Maman is one of my favourite Ottawa attractions, a 30 foot tall bronze spider who lives in the courtyard of the National Gallery.)
I liked this picture of Tristan blowing bubbles (I never would have guessed that my ‘big boys’ at five and seven would still love bubbles as much as they do!) but I didn’t like the big planter in the corner of the image. When I ran one of the Pioneer Woman actions that turned the photo into sepia tones, though, it really seemed to minimize the mostly brown planter into the brown fence behind it, while giving the image a nice classic and timeless look that I thought complimented the subject.
I blogged about this image the other day, but I love it so much I thought I’d include it again. This is the fourth of my images that have made it into Flickr’s Explore.
On the days I drive downtown, I drive right past this dairy farm. I’ve actually taken dozens of pictures of it — I’m fascinated by it. I love the fact that we get to drive past cows and horses whenever we go from the city to our house! I’d love to live on a farm some day, if it weren’t so much work!
There are lots of ways to play with an ordinary photo to make it more interesting. I’m learning to embrace them! False tilt-shifting is a way of processing the image so it looks like a miniature or toy-model version. It didn’t quite work out on this image of the Alexandria Bridge and the Museum of Civilization as well as I’d seen on some other images, but it still perks up a rather ordinary photo. To get the effect, I just ran the photo through on this website. To get the full effect, click through and view it large and up-close!
And when one picture of pretty flowers is just okay, a mosaic of them is somehow more than the sum of the parts. These are all from my garden, and some of them may be weeds, but at least they’re pretty weeds. The one in the top left corner is a bleeding heart, and the white ones are on a shrubbery near my front door. The others are just purty.
Last but far from least: Lukey in black and white. If you’re looking for some really great light for baby portraits, consider shooting in the car seat! Your subject is immobilized, the light is bright but diffuse, and you have baby’s undivided attention. In this case, you can plainly see Baby is far from impressed in having my 50mm lens half a foot from his nose. Again. But the b&w really favours that creamy smoothness of his skin — don’t you just want to touch it? And I should have stopped down my aperture just a bit because my plane of focus was so small (I’d been shooting flowers up close) that while his left eye is perfectly in focus, his right eye is blurry. A smaller aperture would have given me a larger area in focus. Oh well!
And if you look closely, you can even see me reflected in his eyes!
Re: June TV. Watch So You Think You Can Dance. Best summer tv ever.
Agreed on the SYTYCD recommendation.
I have the same trouble with a too small plane of focus. I’m such a bokeh-wench that my aperture is always at the smallest possible. I think I need to stop shooting in A-mode just to make me thinking more about it. I have several pictures that would’ve been way better if -like your- BOTH eyes had been in focus, or the focus hadn’t ended up on the nose or ears because of the too small plane.
P.S. I bought the 18-200mm AF-S yesterday. EXCITED.
Wow Dani, those photos are amazing.
All great photos, but particularly like the bubble shot… perhaps because my boys have been blowing a lot of bubbles lately and I’ve tried to capture some of it myself.
love the one of t blowing bubbles – the sepia really makes it and you caught the bubbles beautifully.
Wow I love that last picture… stellar portrait, you should print it out and frame it. Lovely. I also like the bubble one but I’m so in awe with the tilt shift… I’ve seen it done before and your version is good too. I need to try that one day.