Part of my class is learning how to use Photoshop (we’re working with CS3). I won’t post everything we’ve done with Photoshop, but here are a couple things I was playing with. I used photos from recent events (e.g. I was a photographer at my church’s annual Women’s Retreat last weekend). Each of these photos took just seconds to tweak.

Lunch @ the retreat:

Magnet craft @ the retreat:

And this past week, I’ve been in Lake Tahoe. The first couple days, sharing a cabin with friends, and then the remainder of the week hubby and I have been staying at Squaw. We have this awesome studio room (580 sq ft!) in the Squaw Village for $100-ish/night, and prices go as high as $600/night during peak season, which makes our price a steal for a really awesome room!

Anyways, I digress. Here’s a little panoramic I did of Lake Tahoe (there’s some barrel distortion and other things but no matter, I’m still proud of it!). The edges are not straight because I snapped the shots by hand, about 180 degrees around. It only took a minute to put them together via Photoshop.

If you click on it, you’ll view it in it’s entirety. (And if you look closely, you’ll find my brother-in-law in there somewhere.)

And speaking of Lake Tahoe, most of the slopes/lifts are supposed to open by next weekend, but seeing how the weather has not been optimal (barely enough snow!), the season looks like it might start off very slowly.

Northstar:

Squaw:

Hubby and I brought our mountain bikes and did some riding. Here’s a self-portrait at the Squaw Valley olympics entrance:

And because we were in Tahoe, we did a day trip to Reno. And of course, I couldn’t miss visiting a very popular yarn establishment:

I also came just when the mailman was arriving. Because of the high volume of online sales, he had his work cut out for him. =)

Of course, I was too self conscious to take pics in the store. I felt like such a dork, but I was giddy with all THE WONDERFUL GOODIES they had (and I’m not just talking store front, I snuck a peek at the store rear, where their warehouse is, and it was packed with stuff!). Hubby dropped me off and spent a significant time at Toys R Us, got bored, and came back to find me, and I still wasn’t done looking around. I also have to say, the ladies working there are so nice!! I wished they still had their Truckee location, but I guess it’s not meant to be.

Tomorrow we’ll be packing up and heading home. Rushing to class and then a mountain of laundry waiting for me afterwards. Sigh… all good things must eventually come to an end, I suppose. =/

This assignment has been the most fun so far. I thought it would be difficult - everyone knows that regular everyday night snapshots either end up too dark, or, with the camera’s built in flash, the subject is too bright. The moment the sun goes down, picture-taking gets intimidating.

So the assignment was to get: 1) a shot of a building/structure at night, and 2) a shot of someone “painting” with light. I’ll explain #2 in a second. But here was one of my better shots of #1:

F5.8, shutter 1/5:

As for #2, instructions for this was as follows: 1) find a really dark area to take this particular shot; 2) set your camera for a really slow shutter speed on a tripod; 3) get a flash light or sparklers or any type of light source and wave it around during the course of the exposure.

So I did a shot in my garage where it was pitch black, and had Hubby take a tiny little flashlight and wave it around. He was trying to spell out the mirror image of my name.

Shutter speed at 30 seconds (click for a closer look):

There are areas in the light streaking where it is especially bright; I think those are the areas where the flashlight was pointed directly at the camera’s sensor (as Hubby was waving it around). And why is it that you can’t see Hubby at all? Why is it that the light is the only thing that appears? (Pretty cool huh?) =) The exposure is so slow, it catches the light, but doesn’t catch the person moving behind it.

Here’s me drawing hearts at a nearby park. I couldn’t really tell where the picture physically ended, plus it’s hard to “draw” in the dark because you can’t really see what you’re doing… thus it being cut off near the end. (Also, sorry for my really dorky looking hearts.)

Shutter speed at 15 seconds:

And because you can’t play with night photography without playing with those street exposures (Hubby insisted), here you go.

Shutter at 5 seconds:

Shutter at 10 seconds:

Shutter at 15 seconds:

See the differences? The longer the shutter speed, the more information it gets, thus the brighter and longer streaking of the car lights.

Fun, huh? =)

What makes a photograph interesting? What separates the everyday snapshots from a really interesting photo? Angles? Leading lines? Vantage points? Rule of thirds? Color? Light?

We’re now transitioning from the technical stuff to the artistic. It’s a hard transition for me. I was nearly drowning with the technical things and what makes a proper exposure and aperture and shutter speed and light and this and that… it sucked my creativity dry. Now that we’re switching gears, it’s a difficult switch for me. We are now critiquing everyone’s pictures, and learning how to give informative and good feedback (as opposed to saying “I like that photo or I hate that” and not explaining exactly why something is working or not). I’m realizing that I have a lot to learn in this department.

We did a monochromatic assignment where we had to shoot scenes from everyday life that had only one color (that one color had to take up 90% of the photo). Here was one of mine:

Other “interesting” shots:

And these were me playing with my manual focus at my largest aperture (shots of Monterey Bay framed through a fence):

I was told that it’s not the camera or the fancy smancy equipment that makes great photos. It’s the photographer who makes great photos. I’m realizing that the difficult part is not handling the equipment - it all begins with you, and that’s the hardest part. What’s your perspective? What do you see? The photo starts there.

Next assignment: Night photography.

My brain hurts.