Forgetting to Breathe

In my “complex” world I get caught in the trap of forgetting to breathe.  There is so much going on when I look all around me, and it can get overwhelming very fast.  Which leads me to holding my breath.  For what?  No reason really… just because I can.  It ends up making me even more confused until I don’t know which way to start heading or which direction to dig to find my way out.

It seems like it’s not until I’m out in the clear with some space that I finally remember to expand my chest and feel my ribs creak while I JUST BREATHE!  Just simple breathing.  Not too fast, and not too slow.  Just deep, steady, and calm.

All of the sudden life can seems simple again and I can feel peace and balance in my world.

Why can’t I remember to just breathe sooner?

Learning from Leah

My sister in law, Leah (Leah Davis Photography), was kind enough to let me tag along on a photo shoot for week old baby Nora.  I enjoyed it and was sad when I had to leave early.  She taught me some great tricks and I plan to use them soon practicing on my own kids.  Next, she’s going to teach me what she does for editing in Photoshop.  Little kids are so photogenic.

f/5.0   1/320 sec   ISO 200
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 55-250mm f/4.5-5.6 IS’ at a 109mm FL from 1.4m away

f/4.0   1/500 sec   ISO 400
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 55-250mm f/4.5-5.6 IS’ at a 55mm FL from 1.9m away

f/5.0   1/125 sec   ISO 125
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 55-250mm f/4.5-5.6 IS’ at a 109mm FL from 1.5m away

f/4.0   1/250 sec   ISO 250
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 55-250mm f/4.5-5.6 IS’ at a 55mm FL from 1.5m away

f/5.6   1/125 sec   ISO 320
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 55-250mm f/4.5-5.6 IS’ at a 200mm FL from 1.3m away

HDR Sunrise

I got my new tripod yesterday!  So, I was anxious to get out and try it out this morning.  I woke up at 4 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep.  Photography is so exciting!  I can’t stop thinking about how I’d shoot something or wishing I had my camera with me or that I had the time to stop and take a picture.  I’ve been reading Jasmine Star’s Blog and her story of how she got started in Wedding Photography.  It’s very inspirational to see what she has done over the last 4 years.  I hope I can learn and excel that quickly. 

I couldn’t decide whether to shoot owls or sunrise this morning with my new tripod.  I opted for the sunrise and some silos down the road that I’ve been dreaming about shooting for a while.  When I sized down the pics for this blog they ended up looking too dark and loosing detail (such as the lights on the tops of the silos), but I was pleased with my first serious attempt at HDR.  Unfortunately, the sunrise was not as colorful as it has been in the past couple of days.  With all the clouds in the sky I was hoping for a ton of reds, oranges, and yellows.  I kept dropping my jaw earlier this week as I was jogging down the street wishing I had my camera and a clear view of the beautiful sunrises.  We’ve got a lot of great things to photograph around the house.  Unfortunately, a clear view of sunrise and sunset is not one of them.  I’m seriously thinking about building a crow’s nest that will get me up over the top of the houses and trees for a clear view.

These HDR photos where put together with 7 frames each.   I set up my exposure with my camera on my handy dandy tripod, and then I used shutter speed to give me +/-3 EV exposures in 1 EV steps.  Next time I need to find a more steady subject.  The clouds in these images where moving slightly.  So I ended up with less than sharp clouds when the photos merged.

Leapin’ Lizards

  f/5.6   1/60   ISO 100
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 55-250mm f/4.5-5.6 IS’ at a 250mm FL from 1.7m away

Long Exposures

So, I’ve had my camera for almost a month now, and I’ve taken almost 4000 pictures.  I can’t seem to put it down and I’m really enjoying the learning process.  I still don’t have the extra long lenses I want for wildlife photography when I go hunting with my brothers.  It will take too long to save up my quarters, and there is a hunt coming up in October.  So, I’m going to have to find some odd jobs to raise the funds I need.  Or it looks like I could also rent a lens.  That may be the better route anyways so that I can give it a try before I buy.

During the last month, I’ve played around with long exposures.  I’ve learned that I definitely need a better tripod.  Many times I couldn’t get a steady shot over several seconds because of the wind.  I’ve been using a cheap, light, old video camera tripod I have.  To help solve that problem, I’ve just ordered a new tripod that weighs more and I can also weigh it down with my pack by hanging from a hook.  This should help keep my shots more steady in the wind.  It’s also tall enough so that I don’t have to stoop over any more to look through the view finder.  I’ve learned that it helps to put my camera in live mode so that the shutter opening and closing does not shake the camera as much.  So far, I’ve been using the 2 second timer to avoid bumping it, but I’ve also ordered a cheap timer remote to use for this.  It will also let me do some time lapse photography.  That will be fun and cool!  I’ve seen some awesome videos of the stars moving in time lapse.  I’m always stunned by the number of stars out there when I go hunting with my brothers in the boonies.  This will be the perfect tool.

f/22   10   ISO 3200
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 55-250mm f/4.5-5.6 IS’ at a 55mm FL

f/4.5   30   ISO 10
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS’ at a 35mm FL

I tried, without much success, to capture lightning.  I got some, but nothing worth showing.  Next time I need to get out away from the city.  All of the ambient light from the city lights limits my exposure time and quickly lights up the sky in my pictures.  I never was able to get the focus quite right either.  I only spent about an hour trying though.  I am anxious to try again since it is the season in Arizona and the are so many awesome lightning pictures I’ve seen.  I’ll have to looks for some lightning tips before I go out again.  Next time I’ll post some of the sunsets I’ve gotten so far.

Backgrounds

While we were at the cabin this last time, I was looking for interesting backgrounds.  I found the unfinished backdoor that had flecks of black and green from rain damage on it.  I liked it a lot for these 2 cuties, Simon and Olivia.  I also like that the green/red contrast from Olivia’s shirt.  They are opposite from each other on the color wheel.  I need to learn the rest of the color wheel, or carry one with me, so that I can look for those dramatic contrasts.

f/5.0   1/60   ISO 800
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS’ at a 45mm FL from 0.7m away

f/5.6   1/80   ISO 1250
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS’ at a 50mm FL from 0.9m away

Further up on that same door it was just the brown unfinished wood.  Even though my brother Andy looks great, I should have had him kneel down so that the green came into the background for him too.  Or I could have tried to have him stand further out away from the door a bit so that the joint lines on the door blurred.  I also could have tried to shorten the depth of field more to make only his face sharp.

f/5.6   1/80   ISO 640
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS’ at a 50mm FL from 0.9m away

Depth of Field with lights

OK, still learning about depth of field (the distance that objects will be in decent focus).  I took the following shots in order to test out and understand “Depth of Field” more.  By adjusting the aperture to smaller sizes the depth of field increases… if I leave everything else the same.  In the pictures below I only changed the aperture and you can see that as the f-stop gets higher, more light bulbs are in focus.  The higher the f-stop, the smaller the aperture or size of the hole that lets light in.  The f-stops are defined by the reciprocal or 1 over that number.  So f/18 (or 1/18) is a smaller hole than f/5.6 (or 1/5.6), and it lets light in if you use the same shutter speed.  The f/18 picture below is darker and sharper than the f/5.6 picture.

    f/5.6   1/125   ISO 100
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 55-250mm f/4.5-5.6 IS’ at a 250mm FL from 3.1m away

f/18   1/125   ISO 100
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 55-250mm f/4.5-5.6 IS’ at a 250mm FL from 3.1m away

A walk through the desert…

Simon was helping me chase down a road runner in the Saguaro National Monument when we heard a huge rattle that scared me to death.  For those of you that don’t know, I was bitten by a rattler when I was a kid… not fun!  This 4’ long rattle snake came out hissing and striking as it cut across our path about 20’ in front of us.  It didn’t want to play nice and pose for me.  So, my exposures are off a bit I was trying to take shots so fast that I didn’t get very good composition either… but it was exciting!  Here again I wish I would have been set up for a longer depth of field so that many of my shots would not have had a blurry head and sharp body.  I had plenty of space to bump up the ISO or reduce my shutter speed slightly so that I could have choked down the aperture a bit.  I think I’ll wear boots though and leave Simon at home the next time I go tromping through the desert. 

f/5.6   1/640   ISO 100
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 55-250mm f/4.5-5.6 IS’ at a 229mm FL from 6.1m away - Cropped

My main goal is to become a good wildlife photographer so that I have something fun to do while hunting with my brothers.  So, it’s very exciting when I do actually see animals and can take pictures of them.  Of course there are usually birds around.  Flowers and insects can always fill the gaps too.  Here are some of the other pictures I took while in the Tucson desert.

f/5.6   1/100   ISO 800
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF-S 55-250mm f/4.5-5.6 IS’ at a 250mm FL from 16.8m away – Cropped

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Mushrooms at Treasure Park

I’m learning that the most shallow Depth of Field (DOF) does not always produce the best picture.  I can see that it will take a lot of practice and experience to be able to get just the right DOF.  In both pictures below I wished I would have had a little deeper DOF so that the mushrooms in the rear of the clusters would have also been sharp.  From what I’ve been learning, it would also help me out a lot if I had a good tripod for more sharpness and to also force me to slow down and really think through each shot so that I get the exposure and composition right.

f/5.6   1/60   ISO 250
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM’ at a 400mm FL at 1.9m away

f/5.6   1/60   ISO 400
Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM’ at a 400mm FL at 1.9m away

Alone?

f/4.5   1/250   ISO 400

Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM’ at a 100mm Focal Length

 

f/6.3   1/100   ISO 500

Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM’ at a 400mm FL from 7.4m away

 

f/5.6   1/200   ISO 160

Canon EOS 7D with ‘EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM’ at a 400mm FL from 1.9m away