Where in the world am I?

Any guesses as to where I am?

Click the image for the entire picture.

HDR Castle

Hey guys, long time no post, eh?

Here is a HDR of a castle in my town:

Hdr Castle by ~vanpaun on deviantART

Sport Photography

While it may be challenging to get shots in the moment, here are some tips on getting the perfect shot of what you want in outdoor sports.

1. Take a few test shots to get your lighting all right, you wouldn't want to mess the shot up, would you?
2. Use the highest shutter speed you can, without raising ISO or EV (too much).
3. Use burst mode to maximize your chances of getting the right shot.
4. Make sure to focus BEFORE the shot, even if it is in AF mode, aim on the spot and hold shutter halfway down (or whatever other AF control you have).
5. Don't take too many pictures. You are there to enjoy it, not just photograph it.

Finally, here are some shots I took at a recent Unicycle and Bike trials festival.

What goes up...

must come down.

Documenting Your Life

Without any questions, the best way to become a great photographer is by taking lots and lots of pictures. Take your camera everywhere because you never know when a great opportunity to shoot is going to occur whether it be a beautiful sunset, or a family of geese that you come across randomly.

I take my camera when I visit my friends, knowing that they love to get their pictures taken. These shots are all candid, though some can be casually posed. These settings are a chance to shoot people in their most genuine state.

The other perc to photographing your friends is the capturing of memories. Seeing people together smiling and having a good time is incredibly uplifting. Here are some examples:

For indoor setting I set my ISO to 800 at the max to avoid noise

For outdoor settings I set my ISO to 400 max

Cheapness & Post-processing

Here are some helpful programs:

UFRAW - Free RAW studio with many manual controls in Linux, Mac, and PC flavors.

http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/index.html

Gimp - Free photoshop equivalent with lots of documentation.

http://www.gimp.org/

QTPFSGUI - Free real HDR creation software (can work for fakes too)

http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/

Here are some helpful programs I use to edit pictures. I will give an example of how I use them together.

 Open Raw Image file in UFRaw. Save 3 times with different ev's.

Open up in QTPFSGUI. Merge together into an HDR photo.

Post edit in gimp.

As you can see, these programs are all valuable tools that cost you nothing.

I might add more later if I can think of any.

Drop a comment if you want me to add something you know of.

Alright, Jeremy here:

So you may have been wondering how I made those lighter pics? Did I buy a sound sensor? Light sensor? Make one? Or did I do something where I only used my camera and a tripod?

If you guessed the last one, you are right!

Heres what you do:

1. Open up your on board flash.
   
2. Put your camera on the tripod.
3. Set the shutter speed to maximum (this will be lower than without the flash)
4. Now there are two ways to go, timer, or shutter. Shutter is better, so I will talk of that mainly, but I will mention the other.
5. Focus in on a proper place, you can use any kind of lens you want.
6. Take about 20 pictures of you performing the action (in raw). Let the water drip, spark the lighter, and each time take a picture. Figure out how to do it with one hand or get a volunteer ro do the action.
7. You may get 1 good one, 5 good ones, or 20 good ones (it could happen).
8. Delete all the bad ones on your camera where you missed the action.
9. Post editing:
10. Look through all your pictures.. Choose the best 3 (an outside oppinion helps here)
11. Edit them boosting an aspect (I use UFRaw, a free linux program). Lighters=hot, hot=red, make it more red. Water=cool, cool=blue, make it more blue. You get the idea.
12. Just play with it untill you like it.
13. DO NOT be afraid to crop it and rotate it for effect!
14. Save it to a full res JPEG.
15. Post them here so I can see!

* Devient art is being stupid, so click on the large thumbnail to see the picture. I will have this kink worked out soon.

Ali's turn

Hello! My name is Ali and I will be tackling this blog with Jeremy. I've been taking pictures since my mom bought me my first camera in the eighth grade. Since then, I've taken classes, adjusted to digital photography, and acquired new cameras. I will be the blogger who is bad at giving tips, though I will gladly explain things if need be. However, I find the subjects of every picture to be far more beautiful then the technicality of my photography. My interests lie in documentary photography as well as portrait photography. To start us off, here are a few recent pictures I am proud of: