Mushrooms

Sometimes you have to get dirty for the shot you want. Sometimes you’re not dressed appropriately to get the shot you want and you have to make a note to return soon.

I was hiking in the woods near my house a week or two ago and saw lots of these little mushrooms around. At the time, I didn’t want to get the clothes I was wearing all dirty, so I told myself I would just come back soon in something I didn’t mind getting filthy.

I think getting on my hands and knees on some damp soil that was covered in dead leaves was worth it for this perspective.

Shot with camera+. Edited with Snapseed and ShockMyPic

Enjoying the View

I saw this old couple sitting on a park bench, one chilly morning, not long ago. I thought I’d be stealthy and sneak behind them for a cool photo op.

Lithia Park Pond

Lithia Park was looking particularly beautiful last weekend. I shot this after checking out the monster dash.

This is a single exposure from my Nikon D7000.

Its That Kind of Day

Cold and rainy in the valley. Snow on the mountaintops. This is what I signed up for.

Shot with camera+. Edited with Snapseed.

A Few Wedding Pics

First, let me just tell you that this wedding was a challenge for a few reasons. Pushy moms, an annoying aunt with a photography degree yelling at me to get out of her shot (yes, really,) and things were running late pretty much all day and there was a gay pride parade in the park that I wanted to shoot the portraits in. Since things were running late, the bride decided she would rather do pictures at the hotel than the beautiful park or nearby lake. Not what the photographer wants to hear! I tried to work with what I had, but there weren’t any great backgrounds available.

Having said that, I love this first image because it perfectly captures how gross the happy couple is together and how we all really feel around them.

The tough guy shot.

There are more images on my facebook photography page and I’ll probably add some more today.

Dahlias

For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive.  -David Herbert Lawrence

What I like about this photo above is the way the flowers seemingly transition from perfection in the front to faded glory in the rear.

Yesterday was grey and ugly all day, which is great for garden pics. I decided to give 645 Pro another try after the recent update. These are a couple of the images I was happy with.

Both of these are unedited shots from 645 Pro. I’ve been putting off that review because I wasn’t happy with the app and the pictures I was getting with it weren’t very exciting. It looks like the update may have made a difference.

Up On The Rooftop

A little storm passed through yesterday that showed us just how clogged up our gutters were. Once it cleared up, I got up on the ladder and got all the nasty leaves and dirt out. You’d be surprised how much dirt gets up there when you’re living within a mile of sand dunes.

Camera+ and Snapseed.

Oso Flaco Lake Sunset & A Tip

Its a shame most people don’t have enough free time to enjoy sunsets like this more often.

I’m heading to the Sacramento area today to visit my grandfather and cut the long drive to Oregon into 2 5.5 hour drives. I do have another post scheduled for tomorrow so you get your daily dose of iphoneography.

Today I’ll leave you with some simple, but important, advice on how to become a better photographer. Shoot more, show less. Starting now.

What I mean is, take a lot of pictures. Hundreds a week if you can. The light can change from moment to moment, so take multiple shots of the same scene. Try different angles and camera orientations.

Right now I’m taking around 500 pictures a month with my iphone, which is about what I’d do in a week with my Nikon. This is the most important part though, don’t show off all of your pictures. Right now I’m only sharing my top 8-10% of my iphone images if you do the math. With my Nikon its more like my top 1-2% get seen.

Be an editor and pick the images that you think should be in an exhibit or a magazine and share those. The more you play the role of editor the better your photographic eye will get.

Snapseed Walkthrough

I hope you picked up Snapseed today while it was free. If you haven’t yet, go do it now! This post will let you behind the curtain and show you how I use the app to edit pictures on my iphone. The app has a lot of features, but I won’t cover them all in this post or it would be so much longer than it already is. Lets start with the before and after.

This is the original image taken with ProHDR:

For this image I’ll start with “tune image” I like to add some brightness because although it may look great on the retina display, your image will probably look a little underexposed on the web. Here I added:

• +8 to brightness,
• +23 to ambience which brings back some detail in the shadows and adds some saturation. If you go in the – direction, it removes detail from the shadows which can be interesting in some cases.
• +6 Ito bump the contrast up slightly
• +10 to Saturation for now. The image looked a little lifeless so I’ll try +10 for now and see what it looks like again when I get further along.
• +3 to white balance just to warm the image up slightly. In most cases you probably don’t need to mess with this. If you end up going too far with it, you can always go to the “Automatic” panel and play with the color correction slider until it looks normal again.

Lithia Park Bridge

Today’s image was actually taken back in October with my original iPhone (which is why the quality isnt that great.) Yes I actually still had the original up until just a few months ago. Anyways, this is in beautiful Ashland, Oregon which will be my new home in a couple of months.