We decided to chance it and head north to see what we could see. And we ended up at Moose River which was a really cool area and had some great little spots to photograph, including a little nature trail thing (although kinda snowy at the moment). We think it’d be cool to, maybe next year outfit ourselves better for wandering through the wilderness in the winter and head down one of the trails for a bit to see what there is to be seen.

My shots turned out all right. I got a couple of good cloud type pictures. The clouds were really cool looking yesterday, so we lucked out on that one. Most of my shots, however, turned out a bit dark and I forgot to play with the white balance settings as I was shooting, which is something I’ll need to keep in mind in the future.

My favorite shot was totally accidental as it’s waaaaay darker than what I was actually trying to capture. But it turned a scene that was pretty cool looking into an ominous, foreboding scene, which turned out looking fairly cool all things considered:

That’s moose river, looking from the route 28 bridge, just before the apocalypse, apparently.

This one here is way more true to life (taken just north of Moose River) is probably my favorite of the cloud pictures I took:

The biggest thing I need to work on, I think, is trying to brighten things up a bit without getting them over exposed. I also need to figure out how to capture a very cool looking bright sky without totally drowning out the detail of the things on the ground.

Related posts:

1. Man On A Horse
2. Photoshopping 101
3. I Could Do Without Winter

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been working on a project for my lone class this semester, as I’ve mentioned previously. It’s coming along pretty well, I think. It’s a composite image of two chess pieces playing a game of chess with little people as the pieces on the board. On Monday I was able to finally grab a good park bench type shot to act as the scene, so that was the last big hurdle.

During class Tuesday the professor mentioned how it would be cool if I could have a guy on a horse (to act as one of the knights) but he didn’t know if it would be possible to get the shot or not. Well, I happen to know a guy with a horse (my uncle) and they were able to provide some nice pictures to use which should really add to the quality of the piece. I’m kinda regretting not taking more pictures at the Renaissance Festival the last couple years I’ve went because they’d be extremely useful right about now.

I’m also going over to my grandmothers house this weekend hopefully to look through some of her black and white pictures for something that could have color added to it (as is our next assignment for the class).

I’m also starting to go all out on my 2010 City of Heroes FArt competition entry for this month. The theme is romance and I’ll be doing an advertising poster for a super hero oriented dating service. I’m trying to work out the copy on the poster right now (jotting down ideas as I think of them while I work). Oh, I just realized I never posted my entry for last month here! What If? The Rogue Isles Olympics. (Make sure you click the image to see the full sized view) You’re probably not going to get a the in-jokes unless you play City of Heroes, but I’m really happy with how that particular design turned out (still).

Related posts:

1. Lookin’ For Love (February FArt Entry)
2. Keeping Busy
3. Photoshopping 101

Nikon D3000

Had to take that picture with my point and shoot. But there it is! 70% of my tax refund! Before I get into the camera,  I need to plug the place I bought it from because they’re totally awesome.

The place: Danella Photographic in New Hartford. They’re a specialty camera store, locally run. I went in there and talked to the guy at the counter, explaining what I was trying to do and what I needed the camera for. I mentioned that I was looking at the D3000 and he brought one out for me to play with. He spent the next 45 minutes to an hour showing me how to use the camera and gave me a basic lesson in the more advanced Photography, including some very helpful tips and tricks for how to get some good results. He said once I take some shots and get comfortable with the camera that I can bring some in and he’d take a look at them and give me some advice, as well as go over some of the more advanced functions. He remembered Wassy from when she was in there a couple weeks ago too.

The camera cost me $100 more than it would have if I went over to Best Buy and picked one up. But nobody at Best Buy is going to be spending an hour walking me through it.

When I got home, it turned out that I was REALLY lucky with the lighting outdoors. I went out to see what I could do and get some practice in around the apartment complex. We have this nice little section of woods behind our building with a creek running through and everything. Wassy went down there last weekend in the morning and picked up some amazing shots, so I headed down there this afternoon to see what I could find. I managed to snap a couple of decent shots, I think (out of the 75 or so pictures I took down there). It was hard to see what I was taking on the LCD screen since it was so sunny out, but I was trying to experiment with the various settings.

As it turns out, the second picture down here is almost exactly the same as one of the ones Wassy took. I managed to find the exact same bit of plant and snap a picture in the exact same way. The only difference was in the lighting the fact that hers was frost covered. Freaky. Here’s some of what I got:

Really excited to have a new hobby to pursue. Especially one that’s in more of the creative space. And I’m REALLY happy with the camera. I was hoping they would have something used, but Wassy nabbed the one used one they had in the price range I was looking for, so I went with the D3000 (the slightly upgraded version of the D60).

Looking forward to seeing where this all takes me, and I’m very thankful to Wassy for getting me to consider these sorts of activities as something I might actually be able to do (after I convinced myself that I couldn’t) last June. I’m happy that I’m learning and doing something productive with my free time. Like I said earlier in the week, it just feels satisfying.

I need to take some shots for my Digital Imaging project tomorrow, so I’ll get another chance to play around and try out various things.

Related posts:

1. Inveitability
2. Woah. Has It Been That Long?
3. Toys Galore

I’m still a bit… apprehensive, I guess would be the correct term about dropping that much money on something. But I wasn’t planning on having the money available to me anyway, and I’m tired of coming up with excuses for why I can’t pursue something that I might enjoy.

Ever since I got my little point and shoot I’ve taken an interest in photography. Even managed to get some pretty decent shots (like the one to the right). But after seeing how much of a different a DSLR makes even if you’re just a beginner…well, I’m interested and I think I could become pretty decent at it if I keep going.

It’d be a great complement to my newfound interest in graphic design and a big help in my current classes.

So I think I’m gonna go for it now that I have the resources available to me to drop the cash. I’ve just been feeling really…satisfied with how I’ve been spending my free time. More than I have been in a while, and I want to keep exploring down this road. See where it leads. I think it’s a very worthwhile investment.

I’ll post an update on how things went later.

Related posts:

1. Decisions, Decisions…
2. New Toys, New Hobbies
3. Layout

I was dreading the first few weeks of this course since I’ve gotten fairly familiar with the basics of Photoshop in the past 6 months of me fiddling around with it. So taking a course explaining what all the selection tools and stuff do…ugh. Not exactly an interesting time in the classroom. The actual instruction has been about what I was dreading when I went in, but I have picked up a few little things that I didn’t know about previously. The teacher is good, thankfully. He’s very knowledgeable and actually excited about photography and image manipulation. And he knows how to teach. He’s a bit of a sticker for rules (no music while working during lab time?? What’s up with that??) but I can live with it.

Our first project is to do a composite image. Basically, we take one photo (the host image) and take elements from other photographs and add them into the first one to create an entirely new image. I was really stuck on an idea for something cool to do (I really didn’t want to just do a boring “take a random image and toss stuff into it” sort of project). Wassy, who was originally taking the course with me but has since dropped due to the demands of the rest of her schedule, mentioned an idea involving a chess board with pictures of monuments that I had from Washington DC. But all of the pictures that I had were from below looking up which wouldn’t work on a chess board at all, so I had to scratch that idea.

I was kinda floundering around again until, the day of class I woke up at roughly 5:30am before my alarm went off but with a cool idea: Two pawns playing chess with a board full of little people. I had to scramble around to get the pictures I needed (and I need to retake my host image because I threw it together fast and didn’t have quite what I was looking for), but I got enough to get the project improved by the instructor.

This course is another reason why I’m considering picking up my own DSLR. It seems like it’s going to require a lot of original photography (especially for the final two projects) and even though I can borrow Wassy’s camera, it’d be really nice to have my own. Especially since some of my shots might require me to travel around a bit and I don’t feel comfortable doing that with her camera (I’m deathly afraid I might break it or something). I’m going to need to take basic photography next semester too…

Whoops, there I go, rationalizing again. Anyway, I’ll post up the finished piece (if it’s not crap anyway) once it gets done.

Related posts:

1. Man On A Horse
2. Latest Goings On
3. End of Semester Crush: An Update