Editing is JOY!

Playing with PSE for the past couple of days. It is pure joy to explore it, though it definitely makes me feel like those good old days when I dreaded to come near a computer and explore as a kid.

I am intimidated by the super fancy iMac and adding to it is the PSE. But no, I am giving it a hard time too. Haha.

I just brushed the books here and there and without exploring, going through the books makes no-sense.

Once I started exploring PSE, with a couple of tutorials here and there, I think I am getting a hang of it. I read in so many forums, once you use PS, you would never return back to picnic or picasa. How true, I already feel this even with the "just started" phase.

A couple of pictures that I edited in the order of original followed by edited.

And how I refrained from using my camera in low light situtation and how I cringed about popping up the ISO way beyond 200. Anything beyond ISO 200 was forbidden to me these many days dreading the noise level. But oh wow, with a click, I definitely fixed the grains in the following picture. 

I also was able to fix the tower that stands close to the moon on the unedited pictures which has always disturbed me every time I looked at it.

Editing is a sea on its own and definitely as vast as photography itself. Definitely it is a "learn as you grow and explore" field and has so much room for creativity.

Early Stocking Stuffers!

The Holiday season is here in a good swing.

The long and never ending "wish-list" for my camera bag was partly and nicely taken care during the Thanks Giving Holidays.

Got a bunch of accessories like lens cleaning kit, lens hoods, polarizing filters, remote control and the biggest of all Photoshop Elements for the camera bag. Loved the deal since most of them came on a definitely reduced price. And needless to say the best of the deal was PSE which came for half the price.

And the last but definitely not the least and definitely doesnt belong to the "stocking stuffer" category is iMac. How I love to edit my pictures in this. It shows a lot of details that I fail to notice with my laptop.

Now I have a handful of books and list of websites to go through, learn and practice PSE which definitely doesnt seem to be easy at all. Off to crank the PSE :)

All about Freezing Motion.

Capturing a moving subject allows a lot of room for creativity. It allows one to show a normal scene with a zest.

Well, it is not applicable with a tiny little busy body which is driven by a busy mind, who wont sit or stay still for a millisecond to take a picture. I absolutely donot like it when Sujaya wont pose for me or stay still even to take a candid picture.

Controlling the shutter speed is the key to this.

It is always so much fun to play with different exposure as much as to play with different f stops. A slightly different exposure from the normal ones give amazing effects to an otherwise normal scene.

Taking a picture with a high shutter speed freezes the movement of the subject and this is possible where there is ample light source - be it natural or from flash.

And with slower shutter speed, a blurry, heavenly image is delivered, actually showing the movement to some extent.

A few of the high shutter speed shots from me:









The droplet photograph is one of the most difficult thing I have ever done so far. I had not expected it to be so difficult. The set up was to allow water dripping into another bowl and capture the water dripping, or the crown formed in the bowl - which ever you are lucky to get. With super high shutter speed, not knowing where to focus, chasing crazily the water drops and to the top of all - with super low light condition, it was definitely took out all my patience. But I am glad I atleast got 2 or 3 decent ones of over 250 shots.



The Sun would not look crisp like this without a high shutter speed. With a regular exposure, it will be mostly a white white sky.  No drama.



Again no drama with the moon, without this super high shutter speed. Moon should not be underestimated for its illumination. It sure brightens up the picture. So to capture the craters shoot it up to 200.

And some slow shutter speed shots. This definitely needs a very steady set of hands or better a tripod. I thik tripod works better in my case. (I am still learning to install the tripod - that is a different story)


That is a long exposure shot (30 secs) and one can also see a bit of light trails. The SF city from twin peeks.



Definitely not a great pic, but a good example. With exposure set at 10 secs, the July 4 fireworks from a very wrong spot. I cant stop cringing about this still.



With f at 22 or sometimes at 29 and exposure at about 1/4. Going below this makes no point since it makes the picture over exposed.

One thing that made me feel lucky when I wanted to take pictures of moving water with slow shutter speed is very low sun light or a perfectly over cast day. A normal sunny day means, there is no chance of getting a long exposure shot under direct light. (outdoors). Plain and simple - it blows out the shot thoroughly.





The list of "to try ideas" seems to be ever growing. And so is the camera bag wish list. The second one is literally spurting with the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays around.

But I dont dare to touch the camera, because - I cant resist uploading them right away and fixing them then and there. But with this laptop of mine, uploading and editing has become a problem. My laptop starts to suffocate and choke and ultimately hangs in a couple of minutes once I put in the SD card.  So taking it slow. Very slow. :)

Flowers, bugs and more II !

 "Better put off the camera when the sun is high and bright and enjoy the day".

How true! I tried every single setting possible to take a decent picture when the sun was high and bright - shining with full joy. Not a single picture turned out pleasant. Every thing had blown out spots.

After wandering hopelessly in the Pumpkin Patch/Farm for about half an hour of not knowing how else to take pictures of the picturesque sunflower field, I had already wasted about half of my energy.

Well, then I slowly wandered a few feet deep into the field - nice and cozy, with full shade but enough light to take decent pictures in fairly decent shutter speed, since it was also windy. There I settled for taking pictures of the bees, bugs, buds and lovely flowers.



This picture, came out as a nice and unexpected abstract, since I gave up shooting the sunflower from the ever so conventional angle and tried it from a different angle, which avoided the glare and blown out spots.



I decided to take the picture from a completely different angle, once again when I wasnt able to keep of the mid morning harshness from the bright yellow. Instead, I made use of the beautiful contrast from the blue sky against the bright yellow.








Few more with the Blue-Yellow contrast.



One more abstract.



And capturing the bugs on the flowers was an entertainment, ofcourse after few head scratching and experimenting as which lens to use. But it was fairly easy comparing to the flower shots that I attempted.

Because, the bugs that I attempted were in nice shade of flowers and leaves.  And they were tiny so I dint have the hassle of dealing with blown out spots, they were comfortably fitting in the shade and filled the screen as well. All I needed was steadier hands against the moving bugs +  the wind. But already I was tired and this last part was a  bit of challenge after carrying the weight for about 1/2 hour now.










I did not make any major effort to take pictures of the cute pumpkins remotely. They were all sitting right under the sun, in the field getting roasted, baked or slow cooked in the hot hot sun. So no  - not this time. And more over, I was getting roasted too -  and I dint have the privilege of sitting and exploring with my own darling time in the shade.

And a last one:



The above picture, has 0 editing dont to it. It is 100 percent SOOC. That was the first ever picture I took in the farm and I later noticed that I have not changed the custom WB setting  to auto WB in the manual mode.

It was otherwise a regular set up with the natural sunlight, a yellow flower with green background, but with a different WB, it turned this way. Cool or not, this is definitely a lesson to learn how important is WB.

All those attempted pictures taken in full sunlight, I did not even bother to edit them or search for a decent one among the lot. I plainly - simply deleted them all. Very true- they were all ruined.

And again taking in RAW sure did help. Particularly in the bug shots, a tighter crop gives a crisp composition without compromise on the size and quality of the image. No more going back to L or M size. RAW is worth the space and pain to upload the pictures.

Now with the contention of having taken a few decent clicks despite the afternoon sun, hoping to get back with a Halloween 2011 post. Hopefully. Depends on the level of co-operation from Little Miss Sujaya.

Things I dint know!

A few things I dint know when I first took the DSLR in hand and started out. I learnt them one by one with after a bad shot or from various sites. I have compiled a list of all those, that my brain can recollect.

Some so very silly and minute but still makes tremendous change to the quality of the shot. Some are major and so very obvious that I have been so very ignorant about that I ended up dumping a bunch of shots after hours of shooting and editing.

- Higher ISO is good to shoot at low light situations but it makes the picture so very noisy (grainy) which certainly pulls down the quality of the picture.

- Pictures with good natural light is always better than any other source of light.

- Taking pictures is direct mid day light gives burns / skin tone wash outs. It washes out the details of the subject.
 

I concentrated on natural light while taking the above picture, but dint know about mid-day light and the washout. It is so evident in the above picture that one half of the face has lost its details. So put away the camera on mid day and enjoy.

- The last one hour of the evening when the sun is still there(setting) is called the "golden hour" and the golden lining that we get around the subject is one of the kind of natural light that is preferred.
( I am so very surprised to find that I have deleted a bunch of precious pictures. Warning myself for not doing the picture transfer job anymore after 11 pm. Lesson learnt hard way.)

- Reflection of the light source on the subject's eyes gives a boost to the picture that it doesnt require any major editing.



- Most of composing cant be done only with cropping. You NEED to compose the picture atleast partly while shooting.

- Limb chops seriously look awkward and more snapshotty.

- Majorly fix the yellow light effect with manually setting the White Balance which barely takes about 5 minutes before shooting anything in yellow light. It saves the shot.





The first one is straight under a yellow lamp, but I did majorly pull off the yellow from the shot, not by editing but with manual white balance setting. The second one is with auto white balance, which surely shows it is under a yellow light.

- Never, ever, ever use camera flash. It renders very "ameturish" look aswell a load of harsh shadows and plainly take away the life from the picture.

- Farther the backdrop from the subject, the more blurred and smooth is the background. The subject POPS out naturally.

- Not convert a regular picture to black and white without knowing the intricacies of knowing a beautiful b&w picture. I am yet to learn and explore this area, though I learnt that a plain, flat conversion to black and white doesnt make any sense and is pure injustice to the otherwise magnificent, volume speaking b&w shots.  It calls for much more details like Black, White, contrast, muddy, flat, gray and etc.,. I have stopped converting pictures to black and white blindly.

- Dump that 55-250mm lens (anything with f# >4.5) when you are attempting a portrait. It gives a lot of limb chops.



- The magic of RAW. Crop, chop and do anything to the picture without losing the size or quality of the image. Best for prints.

- The time invested in learning about composition, exposure and lighting is way better than trying to edit and fix an otherwise average image.

- And the one that I DID know - to start with manual from the very first picture. Going to auto will one lazy and reluctant to try manual mode. But I did the "auto" mistake with focusing and I majorly do auto focusing particularly with Sujaya. Hey, but seriously, with this kind of eye sight every single picture will have to hit the recycle bin otherwise.

Cant rake my brain any more. Learning every day and kindling the creativity is one major thing, that need not be said. 

Bonus Shots!

The wonderful bonus that I never miss, or try and take it myslef - the additional miscellaneous shots that come along with, when I go out thinking to take a picture of something else.

I finally found some time to go through all those miscellaneous shots that I had taken a week back along with the Sun Rise and Moon Set pictures.



The wonderful reflection of the small bunch of trees in the lake water.



One more reflection shot.



Absolutely not great, but for some reason very close to my heart.





Did not want to adjust the exposure in this shot since this was the exact color and light I had that morning.





I know I wont get enough of Robins. I dont want to miss them anywhere I see them. :) I trailed this little guy who was busy picking breakfast.

And I got some amazing portraits of my husband, only I wish we knew earlier that we MIGHT take a picture of each other too. We were right out of the bed, glad that we atleast combed our hair :)



The morning sunlight is mild unlike the mid day sunlight which is harsh and the latter tends to wash off the natural color / skin tone or to call causes burns in the pictures. Where as the morning light is very young, pleasant and gives a dramatic effect to the portait. It hasnt washed off his color, or it has not burnt the picture either.



Though he really liked the pictures of him, I know, he wont appreciate the fact that I have posted them here on the blog :)

Not a single of the above pics were edited. Not even cropped. I should admit that I am too lazy to edit the bonus shots, when I did nothing to the actual (sunrise) shots.

So what next? Indoors, Outdoors, Counter top (nay! Not now), night shots? Clueless!

At the break of the Dawn.

It has been in my "to try" list for such a long time.  Finally I decided to hop out of the bed well before the sun to capture the beautiful sky, the vibrant colors  and the early morning serenity.

Headed straight to the Shoreline Park, Mountain View to take the sunrise with its reflection on the lake. It was one of the worst planning, since it is on the west side and what was I thinking when I had earlier picturized the picture of a raising sun against the lake?! It just hit my mind when I was all set and leaving the house.

But I consider myself more than lucky, that I found a beautiful full yellow moon and it was setting when I just reached there and mounted my lens.

I did not have enough time to set up the tripod, the moon was too quick - quickly setting behind the mountain. So I shot up the ISO to 400, which made the pictures so very noisy.

Played with several ISOs, which gave me a cheese like yellow moon against a super dark blue sky and a beautiful white moon against a royal blue sky.







The noise is so very evident in the later picture, where the picture has lighter tone of the sky and water.

This time instead of altering the shutter speed, I changed the ISO. Set the shutter speed at 40 and aperture at 5.6 (possible minimum), I kept moving between ISO 200 and 400 which rendered darker night sky and the beautiful break of the dawn blue sky.

Happy with the moon shots. But wait, where do I see the sun? I saw a blend of palette on the other direction and went towards it. Aw! The beautiful pink, orange, purple, blue, yellow and a few other shades which I certainly donot know the name of or describe it.

The dawn was breaking.






Now the sky is been rendered some colors which is beyond description  but where is this BIG sun who rendered it?! Still waiting. And while waiting, a few more clicks just to keep the few minutes moving.









And now the BIG guy arrives.





By this time I was wishing and hoping for a crisp and circle sun instead of it having so much of flare around it like in the one above. Despite adjusting the settings for the nth time, I was not able to get the sun without the flare which made it look like all smudged.





And while I dint want to leave the place, I played some more while hoping for the crispy round sun.






And thought would try a fully AUTO picture while I was waiting ;)



Well, now where is the sun?!

And then ... (back to Manual, donot forget)







I had to climb on a bench nearby to discover a water body which gave a lovely reflection.





The above picture was taken the very next second after the one above that. The above picture was taken in complete auto mode and it was truly this bright when I took the other shots.  It was bright like the mid day and taking in auto mode killed most part of the picture. Where is the lake/bay, the electricity lines, towers and most of all where is the sun?

The settings that I did for the other shots was to pop up the aperture to 11 or 16 or even 22 as it got brighter as the sun came out fully and increase the shutter speed to upto 300, with ISO maintained at the minimal 100.

I have absolutely not done any editing to the above shots except for cropping, only for the sake of composing. I should honestly say, I did not know what else to do to these pictures. I liked to keep Mother Nature untouched atleast here.

I will have to do another post for the pictures that came as a bonus with this shoot - all those miscellaneous shots :) while waiting and while roaming around the park, since this post is already overloaded.