Around

While I was away I sure took a lot of photos. Were they all pro shots? No. In fact a lot where just regular so-so stuff you'd take on a mediocre vacation. :-\
Now, did I get some pretty decent shots? Yeah, though some styles are a bit repetitive, like food and plants, haha. But that makes sense since I was working on a farm (CSA).
Did I manage to get a few amazing shots? You bet I did! Most are macro, but that's okay - it's what my camera is best at.
I hope in the future to borrow a few various cameras that some of my friends have (Rebel XT, Mid-class Nikon, etc) to take some varying shots, like better portraits for example. I will, though, have to ask the people I take photos of if I can post the end products. lol.

How has everyone else been? Busy? Hopefully plenty of photos? Please do tell!
I hope to be adding photos soon, though. Maybe even some unedited stuff, as I plan to go back where I was working in a short while - however I will have access then to some editing power. XD Slow upload time, unfortunately. :-\

Away, away, off into the sky

Okay, no sky besides these pictures, but I will be going away, away off to someplace for awhile. lol. Hope to be back in a few months, but in case you get bored please visit my DeviantArt page below! I have more photos on there than I have posted here (minus some of the really old ones), and I'd love for you to stop by. :-)
http://oneofakindknight.deviantart.com/gallery

This is a silhouette photo of my sister in a jacket looking towards a sunset.There really isn't much to it other than that I told her to look thataway and spread out her arms as shown. I like that pose. :-)

Anyway, here is the original size of that photo, and another set of shots I thought really cool:

Please view full size! ;-D

Hope you liked them, and see you in a few months!

Celebrating 50 posts!

This here is my 51st post, so I'm going to write it celebrating my last entry "Trees" being my 50th! ;-D

I probably could/should post more often, but it seems editing my pics in batches is the easiest.

In other news, it is possible that I'll be gone for up to a month at a time in the upcoming seasons, so I'm notifying you that I will not be able to post at those times, and I do not know how many pictures I would be able to take.


Thank you all for for commenting and appreciating my photography, :-)
~OneofakindKnight

Trees

I really like trees. XD And sunsets combined with trees are even better!

These first two are similar to my last entry's "Twin Shadows" photo, but I call them "Look Into The Heavens" and "Twins Aglow", respectively.

Please view in full-size!

 These two are pretty cool and vivid. The one on the left could maybe make a good text border.

Same tree as the last two shots, yet different. Quite plain.

Two AWESOME silhouettes! My favorite photos in this entire entry.

 Decided to have some fun, lol. The top one is the original color.

 Same place, slightly different shots. Kind of randomly done and not very spectacular.

I hope you liked these photos! Which are your favorites? Why?

Gotta Love Sunsets

Sunsets are my favorite type of pictures! The lighting is just so warm and awesome. XD They are also not all that hard to take, if you time it right and your camera is halfway decent.

Isn't it interesting that when you look at a nice scene, your eyes are actually being selective? It is a good scene, but often it has objects in it that aren't as pretty - but your mind just ignores them and sees the beauty of it.

Not so with pictures. It is much easier to see the things that don't belong. :-/

Please click to view full size! :-D I love the grass in the foreground.

Now to the beach! Again, please view full size!(ignore the ppl in it :-P)

My sister and a friend of hers. These silhouette pics didn't turn out quite like we wanted, but oh well. *shrug*

So what do you think? What are your favorites? Why?

Fog?

So I was bored one day someplace and decided to take these two shots with my little camera. Do you think you can guess what I was doing and what kind of place at I was at? I bet you can't! XD

 In color.

Black and white (sure looks like fog, doesn't it?)

Hint: I took them from inside our vehicle.

Film

This is more of an introductory entry for the topic of Film rather than just one single one about film, I have more shots in film that need to be developed as I speak and I hope to have several more in the upcoming few weeks.
For these pictures here (and some I haven't finished with yet) I used a 200-speed roll of film (in my Minolta X-370 camera). For those unfamiliar with film, the number for the film-speed is equivelent to the ISO - or it's sensitivity to light.
Years back (or so they say) when film was the standard in photography, 200 and 400 speed film were the standard. 200 is less sensitive to light, and will often be darker if a longer exposure or adequate lighting is not used, 400 can take shots in the shade as well as capture some movement, and 800 (more rare 20 yrs ago) can do fast action and long zoom situations.

Anyway, here are all the non-portrait photos I took with this roll. I don't have permission from the model (my sister) to post the one's I did of her here yet.

Enjoy!

This one is a tad dark, but it is one of my favorites.  

Squirrel!

 An amazing shot, if I do say so myself. ;-D

Sort of a random shot, I guess....I call it "You Will Never be Forgotten".

High Key pink flowers! Perfect for this last holiday, yes?

Non-high key version.

Another shot of the blossoms. :-)

 Blue Jay! Well actually it's a "Shrub Jay" but it's a Jay and it's Blue, so yeah.

Another shot of a Jay (please click to view full size).

I hope you all liked them! I did pretty good with my first roll of film ever, don't you think?

Harps

Sorry I've been neglecting this blog, our video card went out on our desktop and I wasn't able to access my photos for awhile.
Anyway, here are some of my most recent shots, of a harp.

I was going for a controlled "studio lighting" style for this shot, where it looks like I used a light on the harp in a dark room (though in fact it was just a regular room with a chair in the background, and the lighting actually came from further to the right).

This unique angle was pretty awesome in my opinion, except for the part of the window down in the corner.

Did You Know? An actual harp lesson was going on while I took these photos. ;-D

 Same angle, edited in "duplex" coloring, whatever that is. I love the accents it gives to the mechanisms in the center left of the photo (when viewed full screen).

 Another duplex-colored photo, this time with the harp being played! This photo is actually my favorite I think, though the metal part of it looks much better if the photo is turned sideways:

So that it, and not the hand, is more of the main focal point. But that doesn't make much sense, now does it? Since harps aren't played sideways.

I hope you enjoyed these, and I would love your feedback! :-D

Oh, and make it quick...I've got more photos coming since I am behind. lol.

HDRs and a Tutorial

HDRs! For those new to the concept HDR means High Dynamic Range, which in my mind is a good definition as your main objective is to get a large range of exposures for a scene and put them together to get the best of each one.

This can be accomplished with only a few photos, and here's an example from my PSPX4 program:

Recently, I've been trying my hand at making these things, with a little success, but I know I can probably do better.

Here's my 2nd HDR of some clouds (my first stunk too bad, lol).

I rather like it, actually.

And now for my best one so far (at least in my DeviantART watcher's opinion, as I have more favorites on this thing than any of my other photos EVER).
The downsides are that the color is kind of unnatural, and it could have gone more sunset style than I did, but oh well.
Also, I kinda made this a tutorial, but as I'm no pro it's really just showing what I did. Please click it for Full View or view it on deviantart HERE.

After the processing I actually went and did more contrast and noise removal, as well as a few other minor things I don't remember. XD

I hope you like it!

P.S. These are all edits of the same image to resemble actual seperate exposures on only a slight scale. I haven't gotten the hang of actually taking a bunch of shots with a tripod. It would be too slow with my camera for a sunset.

The Many Edits of Watered Grass

Should have posted this waaay earlier, 'cause now I've forgotten how I did it. XD Oh well, I'll make a few notes on what I do recall.
The photos are of a small patch of wheat grass near us, and the edits I did aimed toward a darker "movie poster" style of feel, though I can't really place where I've seen a movie poster of this hue specifically...

 Minor edit of the original (contrast, color, clarity).

 Increased contrast and vividity (I also used a foliage vibrancy plug-in, which is why it's so green).

I took the foliage vibrancy back off and increased the colors for this one, probably stuck it through a filter for sunsets, too, then took some of that color and changed it with another plug-in (Or I just used the Sunshine plug-in to do both effects...).

This is even more contrasted and the color brightness and vividity toned down to make a nice shade of forest green.

Added even more contrast and played with another plug-in (Probably "Tonal Contrast").
Notice the shine on the nearest leaf, it doesn't look like a realistic reflection that much. I'll be changing that in the next pics.

This one is much darker and spooky-ish, lol. However, the reflection still isn't quite right.

This is my last edit (besides my Cold one) and the reflection is much better. The darker hue and toned down color makes good focusing for the water droplets. I lightened this one up a bit compared to the last one which was too dark.

I hope you guys liked some fo them! Which where your favorites? Some of the peope who've seen themalready liked the first vivid ones best.

Edit Me Challenge

Edit Me Challenge Week 1 (of 2012)!
The photo was tough, and I think I did a decent edit, but I missed it.......
I was going to submit on Saturday, but forgot. :-/

Anyway, here's the original and my edit:

I am not good at fixing lighting on my own photos, let alone this one. Look at that brightness! :o

This edit was the hardest I can recall ever doing. I tried SO hard to bring out the face, but failed (however, I see now that I did better than quite a few submissions, and the only one with a really good face uses CS5. Cheater! lol, jk). My methods here used contrasting, hue change, and a lot of small work you won't notice, hehe.

Main advantages of mine over the others? The sun spots!! I manually removed all of the main ones and de-colored the others, which makes it a very good edit in my opinion.
Main drawback? The face. I couldn't bring it out. the gal with Photoshop even made the eyes an awesome blue when you can't even tell in the original photo! :-P

Anyway, I hope to try again soon, and I would like any and all comments about this edit.