Frosty Night

Have I ever mentioned that I love night photography? It is so much fun and in the winter you don't have to wait half the night to get some good shots. These were taken between 7:00 and 8:00 tonight.


My wonderful husband doesn't even mind if I ask him to take me home so I can get my camera and then he comes back with me to stand in the cold while I take some pictures. He's the best!


Which of the panoramics do you like best?


The river was so pretty on the other side - but due to snow I couldn't get the exact shot I wanted. I do love long exposures with water though - it makes the water look so soft and beautiful.







While I was photographing - this is what Sam was up to:

He made a little snowman on each side of 2nd East. "So everyone can see one as they drive past."

A few winning photos

A few years ago this photo won a spot in the Salem City Calendar in a Salem Days photo contest. And I thought that was pretty exciting.



This year this photo won in the Rexburg Library photo contest. The new library was just finished and the winners announced last week.

This contest was very different from the other. This photo contest was judged by a few select judges - meaning that people couldn't just vote for their own photo or their friend's photo. This contest had a theme as well "A Picture to Build A Dream On."

Right now this picture is up for display in the Madison Library. They enlarged it (I think to 16X20) and it looks so beautiful. It is now much bigger than life size. There are over 50 other pictures that were entered and there are some great photos. You should really go check them out!

Wildlife

You know, there are definitely perks to living in Idaho. Yesterday we went for a drive and saw this guy.


He jumped 2 fences with no trouble at all and then posed right in front of these sprinkler pipes. Definitely an Idaho photo.

And we've seen the owls at Smith park a few times in the past few weeks. There are 3 great horned owls that I have seen there. 2 small ones and a big one. This is one of the small ones.


And this is just a fun project I learned from one of my favorite classes on campus.

Favorite Places

Spring is coming - and I'm feeling somewhat nostalgic - perhaps because I finally graduated. But anyway - here are some of my favorite places.
Rexburg (especially in the summer)


Salem Pond - even in the winter.


Mesa Falls


California/the ocean


Utah Valley - I love the mountains


Hawaii - Pali look out


Big Springs - summer camp in Provo Canyon

Fosty Morning

We had the most beautiful heavy frost the other morning. It was perfect for photographing.

A tree on Main street and the car antenna


These are our back stairs

Trees by the river and a macro shot

Temple in the distance

Down the river

Panoramic of the River

Week 2 - High Dynamic Range (HDR)

I had a lot of fun working on this project this week. First I took three photos of the same scene. I shot one photo where the camera said to meter, then I under-exposed one shot and over-exposed the other shot. Then I downloaded the free DynamicPhoto trial program. With that program I combined the three images and added some filters. After all - if you're going to edit a photo on the computer you should go all the way and make it look really edited. See post above this one for photo information.




Here's the first one I did. I applied just the Eye-Catching filter to this one.





These two photos are the same except for the filters on them. The right one has the Eye-Catching filter and the left one has a high contrast filter. I liked parts of both of these so I then combined them together and got this


I also added the Eye-Catching filter to this one and burned the edges a little in Photoshop to give the pictures kind of a Holga camera look. Holga cameras are $20 film cameras with only three focus settings and two lighting settings (sun or shadow) The film they use is square rather than rectangle, but the edges go blurry and black. I just added the blackish corners to this photo so it's not a true Holga image, but it reminds me of it. I think this bottom image is my favorite.

Orange Study

Photo 1 - Bird of Paradise, Pearl City, Oahu, Hawaii,
Photo info - Nikon D50; Shutter Speed 1/80; F stop 5.6; no flash; photo taken 6/23/07

Photo 2 - Daffodil, Rexburg, Idaho
Photo info - Nikon D50; Shutter Speed 1/750; F stop 5.6; no flash; photo taken 4/25/09

Photo 3 - Payson Fire, Photo taken from Woodland Hills Utah
Photo info - Nikon D50; Shutter Speed about 1 min 45 seconds; F stop 5.3; no flash; photo taken 8/1/08 (remote used for long exposure)

Photo 4 - Sunset, Idaho Falls, Idaho
Photo info - Nikon D50; Shutter Speed 1/2500; F stop 6.3; no flash; photo taken 10/1/06

Orange is such an intersting color. I wouldn't say it is my favorite color, just off the top of my head. However, it is a neat color to photograph because so many things are orange. As I was looking for some photos for this assignment to fit the color orange I came up with a lot of different things that fit the color orange - fires, fireworks - flowers - sunsets - fall leaves. Some of these photos have turned out so beautifully and I must admit it is due to the beautiful color orange.

The first and second photographs are both of flowers but are unique. One thing that constitutes this is the time of day the photos were taken. The first photo was taken in the late afternoon and mostly in the shade where as the second photo was taken midmorning in full sunlight.

The fire at night is a photograph I really enjoyed taking. A photograph at night takes quite a bit more work than photographs during the day. You have to play with your shutter speeds more, and you might even have to wait a few minutes for one photograph to be taken & processed. I set my camera up on a tripod and used my remote to release the shutter. I had my husband time me for 1 minute and 45 seconds and then I opened the shutter again. (We tried this at several different times) It is always facinating to me how the camera with a long exposure can capture things our eyes do not quite percieve. The smoke in the air helped the camera capture light from the fire much better than my eyes did.

The last photograph was taken of a beautiful sunset in Idaho falls. I tried shooting just about anything that was available and after trying to get the sunset and some trees to all look good I decided to go with a silhouette shot of the houses and let the sunset shine.

Cut Out

Before Photo - horses in field - unedited - Shutter Speed 1/640; F stop 8; no flash; Taken 5/14/06
After Photo - horse selected using lasso tools and quick select tool then put on white background - edge feathered


Though there are several ways to do a cut out in photo shop I started by using the quick selection tool. I used the different lasso tools, the basic one and the magnetic lasso, to help me get the edges more precise. When I had the selection I wanted I saved the selection so I could come back to it if I wanted to. Then I feathered the edge of the cut out and then copy and pasted the horse onto a new document.

Comet

This comet - named Lulin - can be seen for about the next week. It is directly west above the horizon. I hope you get to see it! It's really amazing!

Light and Shadow Assignment

Mesa Falls

Nature at home