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i figured lets take a break from all this financial stuff.
since we have been into photography the last few years we find it just keeps us so busy.
marilyn and i find everything we do just revolves around it. if we arent out shooting then we are home learning and developing new techniques.
anyway thought id share our latest new styles..thats not to say we dont take normal looking stuff too but we just enjoy bordering art as well. we are just learning basic photoshop elements and are expirementing with various software effects such as hdr
Oh my goodness, they are GORGEOUS! Can I ask what kind of camera you have? I have been thinking of upgrading from my point-and-shoot to a digital SLR -- primarily for action shots of my dogs, nature, macro and scenic shots like yours. However, I don't want anything too complicated that will frustrate me. I would love to get into it as a hobby, like you are. Great job!
Don't have a clue where you are - but it doesn't look like Florida . FWIW - up here in NE Florida - we have a world class bird rookery at the Alligator Farm in St. Augustine (birds figured out decades ago that the gators protect their nests from predators - and moved in). Lots of pros taking bird pictures for publications like National Geographic. And amateurs like me too. Bird season is pretty much beginning of April to end of June. May is perfect - and I'll be going there next week. Robyn
I'd like to know what camera system you use (Canon or Nikon?). Let us know some technical details on camera and lens, and techniques you use. Are you more artist (frame it artistically, let the camera set the details) or technician (setting aperature manually, etc.)? It looks like you did some post-editing, too: Photoshop? Really enjoy the photos!
NH, yes, me too....I had a Canon SLR (pre-digital days) and I was always trying to take "artsy" photos, but when I got them developed, the pictures were never as good as my "vision" of the scene. But I'm sure it was because I was just using auto-focus, and not playing around with different lenses, shutter speeds, apertures, etc.
Look forward to hearing more details from Mathjak.
Oh my goodness, they are GORGEOUS! Can I ask what kind of camera you have? I have been thinking of upgrading from my point-and-shoot to a digital SLR -- primarily for action shots of my dogs, nature, macro and scenic shots like yours. However, I don't want anything too complicated that will frustrate me. I would love to get into it as a hobby, like you are. Great job!
i use a nikon d300 with 17-55mm f2.8 lens and marilyn uses a nikon d80 and 18-200mm but the camera is really irrelevant. unles we are shooting in low light or moving objects even a point and shoot gives similiar results.
in camera we shoot raw and as flat as we can ,very little contrast and saturation.. why?
because the sensors in digital cameras overload pretty easy and so you have to becareful not to over expose or under expose...
we count on the histogram to show us whats going on and since the histogram can be fooled by alot of contrast and saturation and make you manually adjust the exposure to compensate when you really should not.
we try to expose as far to the right on the histogram as we can, our pictures even look horrible in the little lcd being washed out and flat looking.
we then use nikon capture nx2 and the nik color effex filter set to put the life back in. because we expose as far right and with as much exposure as we can the photos stay low noise and allow us to post process them with no ill effects.
the end result is we can take those flat ,lifeless , images we started with and give them any look we like after the fact.
the last one with the flowers was done in photoshop elements where we used the magic extractor to cut the flowers out of various photos and put them on a new black background.. thats a new technique we just learned.
Last edited by mathjak107; 04-28-2010 at 03:38 AM..
heres a few more of my favorites. they range from hdr where up to 7 different exposures are merged to get 1 super exposure to using light inversions to using different filters
they range from full blown art to normal looking depending on what we feel like doing that day. it certainly opens up sooooo much that you can do limited only by your own creativity. yes it takes lots of time but heck when retired you got plenty of that.
Last edited by mathjak107; 04-28-2010 at 03:57 AM..
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. FWIW - up here in NE Florida - we have a world class bird rookery at the Alligator Farm in St. Augustine (birds figured out decades ago that the gators protect their nests from predators - and moved in). Lots of pros taking bird pictures for publications like National Geographic. And amateurs like me too. Bird season is pretty much beginning of April to end of June. May is perfect - and I'll be going there next week. Robyn
