31 Days of Photos: Jan 2010

Day 31: MIJFrog

2010-01-31T20:22:00.001-05:00

Yeeeeeeeeeeeee!! 31 days done! Awesome! 

Day 30: It’s Bird!

2010-01-30T11:42:00.000-05:00

(think Ren and Stimpy Log Song, then continue)

It’s bird, It’s bird
He’s plastic, pink and cool.

It’s bird, It’s bird
He’s better than bad, he’s good.

Everyone wants a bird. You’re going to love it bird

Day 29: Reflections

2010-01-29T19:44:00.001-05:00

I tried taking a photo of something reflective today. You can see the orange-y color of the cabinets in the steel, but I think I managed to avoid any other major distracting things shining in there.

Day 28: Another Nice day

2010-01-28T21:06:00.001-05:00

Had another lovely day today, but the snow is coming tomorrow!!

Thanks for the well wishes. I’m sure we’ll all be right early to late next week.

Day 27: Sweet Stuff

2010-01-27T20:20:00.002-05:00

Lots of injuries at my house this week. Don’t want to quit, but probably won’t have the most interesting stuff the next few days.

Day 26: Dogs a sitting

2010-01-26T20:00:00.001-05:00

Dogs.

Day 25: Retro Style

2010-01-25T20:22:00.001-05:00

Barbie, 80s rocker style.

Day 24: Motion Blur: Fail. Alt is another exercise is focus

2010-01-24T20:09:00.001-05:00

My daughter and I worked a while trying to get a good motion blur photo of her and Luigi playing. I wanted to blur around the toy, but needless to say a six year old and puppy are not the best subjects for something like that. I got one that is close to my intention, but by the time I got it we had moved around to the worst part of the house for background (open door into the laundry room!) Since I was short on time I tried another focus exercise because I thought I could finish up in less than an hour. :)

Day 23: Lots of Pages!

2010-01-23T20:29:00.001-05:00

Spent some time working with several of the new tricks I’ve learned. Still just toiling away at figuring out some of the basics and ways to get the in-camera image as prepared for post-processing as possible.

Day 22: Digitutor, Page 2

2010-01-22T20:09:00.001-05:00

Page 2 has a reference to Nikon’s Digital video tutor at www.nikondigitutor.com/index_eng.html I watched a few of them and I wouldn’t say they are poorly done, but I would say I could really do without the bow-chica-bow-bow background. One of the topics was using the close-up mode. While playing with the feature, the puppy insisted on helping. I thought this was cute despite not being terribly technically interesting.

Day 21: A Milestone.

2010-01-21T21:07:00.000-05:00

100 flowers on a shirt for 100 days of school parade. Busy week, lots of projects taking up all my time. I don’t think I’ve ever been this busy in January before!

Day 20: Don’t wake the puppy, It will pee!

2010-01-20T20:01:00.001-05:00

Tough puppy day… he’s finally resting and I’m taking advantage of it by moving as little as possible. Lucky for me, the camera was on the coffee table right next to a lovely spongebob book. I can't wait to go to bed. :)

Day 19: Something New!

2010-01-19T21:17:00.002-05:00

Today we added this guy to our family. So far so good, he and my older dog are getting along quite well. Right now we have been calling him Brains which is subject to change at any moment!

Day 18: Noise Reduction, Page 108

2010-01-18T19:59:00.002-05:00

Tinkering with turning the noise reduction feature on and off at different ISO speeds under low light. It’s not a magic bullet for noise but it does make a slight difference. A better setup would probably yield much more drastic results.

Day 17: Rear Curtain Sync, Page 66

2010-01-17T20:59:00.000-05:00

Thanks for the comment and suggestions Eury, I really appreciate it. You’ll be happy to know I found the SINGLE sentence in the manual about rear curtain flash. There is no MANUAL section of the manual. There are about five pages that cover PSA and M modes, but nothing specific to what you can and can’t do in manual mode. :( I think Nikon may need some documentation specialists!

Anyway, I tinkered with rear curtain and ended up with this. I know its not great, but it is the best of the bunch and I think it demonstrates what rear curtain does. I’ll try something else tomorrow and see if I can get a better subject/setup.

Thanks again Eury!

Day 16: Page 62, Metering

2010-01-16T20:08:00.003-05:00

I tinkered with switching between Matrix, Center Weighted and Spot Metering this evening. I don’t know that it made a huge difference for this particular photo, but I am glad to finally know wth it means! FYI, the dust is on purpose… yeah, that’s it, on purpose!

Thanks for the advice Eury, I didn’t see anything about curtain sections of the manual. The topics are: First Steps, Basic Photography, PSA and M modes, Changing settings, playback, Connecting to PC, Menu Guide, Setup, Retouch, Accessories. I’m somewhat disappointed, I suppose I should have read it before I picked it as a topic! I’m thinking about one of these titles if anyone has any experience with them or suggestions of better titles, I’d love to hear it:

One

Two

Three

Day 15: Meh.

2010-01-15T21:12:00.000-05:00

What a hard day for a photo. The camera manual is not so inspiring. I can do all kind of tricks with the image files, but it isn’t really much of a ‘help you set stuff up’ manual. I perused one at the bookstore written for my camera that would be much more appropriate for this theme. I will try to pick up before we are done, if not, maybe next time.

I was so depressed about not finding any inspiration I just wandered around the house shooting down all of my possible subjects. I have no idea why the coats caught my eye, maybe it’s the near stripes they make, maybe it’s the slight chaos, maybe because it doesn’t even attempt to be a technical shot. Anyway, he’s my snapshot for the night. :)

Day 14: Outside! Yay!

2010-01-14T20:40:00.002-05:00

It has been freezing here with crazy overcast and depressing colors outside. Today, we got a break, 60 degrees, sunshine, and fluffy white clouds. It’s the kind of day that makes you want to drop the convertible top, crazy up some good old 80s music and hit the road. In celebration, I bring you an outdoor photo.

I didn’t’ find anything that really applied in the camera manual for this one. Most of the things that refer to outside are about making adjustments to the photos on the camera itself. While its nice to know about those features, they are generally useless to me. I would much rather work on my fancy PC with my fancy Photoshop. :)

Buff, there isn’t anything particular in the manual about the white. I came across the gray card preset instructions on page 152 and I haven’t been able to quit messing with it yet because I think I can do better. :)

Day 13: More White

2010-01-13T21:31:00.000-05:00

Still tinkering with photos of white. By the end of this thing I should be pretty darn proficient with white stuff. :)

Day 12: Very Important Business

2010-01-12T21:08:00.001-05:00

As you can see, I’ve got really important business tonight. I’m almost ashamed to show this one, see how “clear” my HD cable is?! Grrrrrrrrr.

Day 11: White + Clear = failure

2010-01-11T21:26:00.002-05:00

I upped the ante and tried to get white and clear plastic. I think I picked a terrible photo for a night with such limited time. Will try again tomorrow. :)

Day 10: White!

2010-01-10T21:10:00.001-05:00

So it’s rushed and generally unimaginative, but it IS white!
(Bet you thought I wouldn’t make it. Heck, I thought I wouldn’t make it!)

Day 9: White? Page 152

2010-01-09T18:38:00.000-05:00

Almost got it white. Getting closer. Maybe by tomorrow I will have success! :)

Day 8: Stripes

2010-01-08T19:56:00.000-05:00

I picked a bad month for a hard theme. Way too much going on this week so I'm having to divert to a bit easier of a subject. I thought about just stopping, but I couldn't live with myself if I did! :)

Day 7: Family Day

2010-01-07T20:11:00.000-05:00

Tonight’s picture taking time was used for puzzling with my daughter. It’s so hard for me to not help her with things like this and let her do it herself, but we both managed… I didn’t touch it and she finished it! :)

Day 05: Preset Manual page 105

2010-01-06T20:26:00.001-05:00

I tried again with the white balance and still did not get the results I wanted. This time the color came out with a very blue hue. At least I got a DIFFERENT result. I decided that I wanted it in the same colors as the previous 5 (a blue one hanging on the end of the week string would seriously mangle my foo) so I changed it in PS and called it day. Maybe, just maybe I’ll get it tomorrow. I’ve got a work light that is fluorescent, I’m curious to see how blue that comes out!

Day 05: Preset Manual page 105

2010-01-05T17:09:00.001-05:00

I tried to set the white balance by creating a preset based off of a white object. I'm not sure I actually did it right because my results were a bit unexpected. I'm going to try again tomorrow and see what happens with different light sources.

(PS - Kimbomac, I know you don't like these shadows and I agree, but I can only take on one learning experience a day! :) )

Day 4: "ISO" page 52

2010-01-04T17:15:00.001-05:00

Today I started working with page 52, ISO settings. I have the attention span of a gnat so it did not take long for me to get sidetracked and start tinkering with other things. I looked at the clock and realized I had about 20 minutes before I have to be somewhere. ACK. I present for your viewing displeasure, “My Dinner”. Promise to do better tomorrow!

Day 3: "The Basics, Point and Shoot" con’t Page 26

2010-01-03T15:51:00.002-05:00

I started trying to use the automatic Digital Vari-Programs such as Portrait, Landscape, Child, Sports etc. I was not successful in getting a picture using one of those modes I was happy with. So I just started tinkering. I took this picture roughly a zillion times using different modes, ISO speeds and shutter speeds then picked the one I was happiest with. By the time I was done, I couldn’t really remember what I had changed when. I’m not really sure I learned much more than how to maneuver around the settings a bit faster, a useful skill indeed. :)

Better? Tried lmorrow and ratbar's suggestions:

Day 2: "The Basics, Point and Shoot" con’t Page 38

2010-01-02T17:34:00.005-05:00

This section describes situations where auto focus features do not work as expected (low contrast, geometric shapes, foreground objects, low variations in brightness, etc). It describes using focus lock and the mysterious button AE-L. This is a photo of Lamb hair pelts using the AE-L focus lock feature

Day 1: "The Basics, Point and Shoot" Page 32

2010-01-01T19:18:00.003-05:00

This section of the camera manual talks about how to use the auto features of the camera. Turns out, there is stuff on page 32 I didn't know. I picked up two useful tips about autofocus and how to change which point the camera focuses on. I demonstrated with this Luigi statue by forcing the focus to his feet rather than his head though it is hard to see, he's only about 2 inches tall. :)