Introducing the Animals!

So I know this is an adventures in photography blog but I thought I'd introduce you to a few of my friends. All the pics were taken by Mark or myself so it's still an adventure in our photography.

These are the various animals in our lives. To the left is our pup Macie - a now 5 month old Vizsla whom I've written about before. That pic was taken when she first came home with us. I'm amazed every day how more and more she starts to look like an adult. I swear, I blink and she grows!!!

The next pup - to the right - is the boxer Buckley. Buckley belongs to my brother and his girlfriend Caty. Buckley is a ball of energy and at 7 months has recently taken up eating shoes as a hobby - much to Caty and J's horror!

Macie and Buckley torment their older and much wiser but also cranker granddaddog - RC! RC belongs to my parents and is my childhood buddy. He's 14 now and still has quite a spark in him despite the terrier tumors that are so common to his breed late in life. You can see the second head growing on his shoulder in the pic.

The kitty below belongs to my in-laws. This is Bandit and she hates everyone but my mother in law. I'm lucky that I got this close without getting bit or swatted at. She has no claws which with her - is a blessing. Yes, I know that declawing is a rather inhumane thing to some folks but seriously, you've never met Bandito and if you did you'd understand why it's such a great thing!

The last picture in this group is our neighbors dog Cody. We had the pleasure of dog sitting Cody last summer (before we had Macie). Cody's a rescue from the local shelter and we think is a mix of lab and cockerspaniel. He's an awesome dog with lots of energy and was intrumental in getting Mark and I used to the 6:30am walks that active dogs need. He and Macie are best buds and play hard anytime we let them outside together.

Aperture Study

There are three basic parts to taking a picture on a manual camera - aperture, shutter, and ISO. I'm going to focus on aperture for this post.

One of the most basic things that a photographer needs to understand is how to control light entering the lens. It affects so many different aspects of the photo and can ultimately make or break the picture. The feature of the camera that is used to control this is the aperture.

The aperture is a variable disk in the lens that opens or closes to allow light to enter the body of the camera. The larger the opening the more light etc. However, that opening also affects the focal length of the shot too. The larger the opening the less in focus you have. You can see in the lamp shot that the lamp is in focus but the paintings on the wall behind it are not. I had to open the aperture the whole way to let in enough light in without compromising my shutter speed.

The picture to the right of the cathedral is another low light situation where I didn't want to augment with flash (because flashes in church are generally frowned upon - especially when folks are praying up at the front). To accomplish this and still get the focus to be what I wanted I had to close up the aperture (to get more focal range) but decrease the shutter speed to still let in enough light. But with the decreased shutter speed (almost 1.5 seconds) I couldn't hand hold this image. Instead I plopped the camera on the guest book pedestal:)


With the pic on the left of me and the dog you can really see the effect of the focal length difference generated by the aperture. This is shot at f4.0 which means the aperture is almost wide open on this lens. This image however was augmented by our speedlight flash because even with the apeture wide open we still didn't have enough light to hand hold the camera (and who's going to set up a tripod in the living room for a casual picutre like that right?)

Like how the dog's head just hangs? That's her favorite position on the couch for some reason. Come to think of it, we find her with her head cocked back like that lot...hmmm....

Wide Wide Angle....

Looking through our pictures I realize that we use our wide angle lens alot. It was the second lens we invested in after we purchased the camera, after the L-series that we treasure. It's a Tokina 12 - 24 F4 lens.

Some may not love this but I do. I love the way the lens distorts the picture. It makes things towards the way edges appear bigger than they really are! You can see with the blazer picture that the butt end of the blazer is so much larger than the front end. (That pic was taken in Southwestern Colorado)


With the hiking picture to the right the trees look much taller than they were (but they were still pretty big! And my legs look stretched (i'm much shorter in person). The closer to the center of the frame you are the more in proportion you are. As you fall to the edges you start to distort. (That pic was taken in Yosemite NP)


In the last picture of this set you can see how the trail seems to come out of the bottom of the frame and draw you into it. We were walking into an Apen forest in Colorado just after a hideous hail storm that left a layer of ice on the brush that looked like snow. Don't let it fool you, it was pea sized ice pellets!

California here I come - or there I was....

So Mark and I were once able to call ourselves Californians and I have to say, from time to time I miss the sun and the continuious beautiful weather and stunning scenery. However, the close proximity to our family and friends back here on the East side of the country makes it worthwhile. Plus, I still get to travel back to the sun every few months for work and Mark's lucky enough to be able to tag along for this trip.

The pics posted here are from our last trip out there. While I was slaving away making money, Mark was out playing and having a great time!

He'd gone on a backpacking trip by himself (which gives me the willies...) and perched himself on this beautiful ocean bluff. What he didn't anticipate was the cold front coming in from out at sea and the wind that it generated. Our poor little REI tent was buffeted and blown by the wind. You can see in the pic the expanded nature of the nylon.

He called me at midnight and told me the tent was hitting him in the face! If you've ever seen the inside of the tent the walls have a ways to go before they touch us so that's a huge testimament to the gusts he was enduring. Luckly all 200 odd pounds of him survived the night, albiet a little sleep deprived.

Today's theme is the W&OD trail in Maryland. Mark and I took a hike there back in October on an unsually warm day to get a peek at the fall foliage and I have to say, we picked a great day!

I was playing with focal length and aperture. All of these have been post processed to add the vignette and a few have been saturated for effect.

The image to the left is looking at the canal from the tow path. I liked how the leaves were floating at various levels in the water. I just added the vignette on this image.

The image to the below is the reflection of an amazing tree over the water. Just added the vignette on this one as well.

The next image underwent a little editing to cut the glare on the lower leaves but otherwise is untouched.

The flame orange of the fall leaves really stood out against the grey of the stone. The foreground was rather unimpressive so I cropped it out at the time I took the photo.

This last image is really similar to the previous one. It was just taken at a different
angle on the water.

Lazy blogger

Okay, so I vow time and time again to blog more and post more exciting information and time and time again I fail. I'm just too lazy or perhaps it's that I just dont have much to say so...I'm going to try something different. I'm going to pick a picture or two from the over 2000 images that Mark and I have taken over the last few years and use that as my muse, if you want to call it that.

This post is an ode to my new puppy - Macie! Macie is a 4 month old Vizsla that loves to snuggle just as much as she likes to cause trouble and run around!

This is the pup lounging on the couch. If you're sitting there, she's much more comfortable on your lap than on her own but hey, she'll take what she can get!

This is Macie out on a run in the snow. We took her out to our local park to let her do some off leash romping. I think she was ready to take flight here!! She's not entirely in focus but it's the best we could do with no tripod and low lighting.

Since this blog is supposed to be about our adventures in photography I'll add a tidbit about photoshop and how it helped me on the second phone (the flying doggy) to pull back some of the shadows on a very dark photo. Because we had low lighting the original photo came out really dark (I'll have to add the before later once I find it). Using the "shadows and highlights" tool in the new Photoshop CS I was able to bring out the underlying colors. You have to be really careful not to over do it or the image starts to look a little stereoscopic!