Storm Breaks Image Sold!

Jan
25
2012
by Jessy | 0 Comments

I sold my second print on Fine Art America!  The image is an HDR of two people down the beach and the amazing clouds as the storm was breaking up.

Check the announcement page here: sale announcement

This image was taken the day after I purchased my amazing Nikon D7000.  Of course I got the camera just so that I could bracket and learn how to do HDR.  I barely put the camera down anymore, I have learned to love it so much.

I woke up very early, then had to wait for the storm to end.  Being paranoid about such an expensive piece of equipment I could not get myself to go to the beach with it still raining.  As soon as the rain subsided I was out the door and at the beach trying to figure out the bracketing.  I finally figured everything out and was getting some amazing shots of the pier when I noticed two people way down the beach, the clouds above them, and the sun breaking, it was just perfect.

Once again this sale is just amazing to me and I thank all of those that have been with me through the process, I couldn’t have done it without all of you!

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Cathedral Reflection Image Sold!

Jan
25
2012
by Jessy | 0 Comments

I sold my very first print on Fine Art America!  The image is a reflection of the cathedral in a window of a cafe.  This image was taken when I was in New Orleans for the National Geographic Photography workshop.

Check the announcement page here: sale announcement

I never would have thought to start looking in the windows and in different places for images if Tyron Turner had not told us to think of things like reflections and signs.  I immediately emailed Tyrone to let him know the amazing news but also to once again thank him for all that he taught us and his amazing support.  I never would have thought that someone as busy as he is would really take the time to continue and email the group months after the trip, but even to respond and be so excited for me and my sale!

Such amazing people have led me to this point in my life and I am forever grateful to them.  Thank you again to the buyer and all of those that have supported me through this process.

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ViewBug Hallway Photo Contest

Nov
25
2011
by Jessy | 3 Comments

The winners of the Hallway Photo Contest on ViewBug were announced today.  I did not win, however I did receive honorable mention!

The photo is below but you can also check it out on viewbug.

 

Eastern State Penn Prison hall

Won Honorary Mention on November 25, 2011

The additional information requested by an provided to ViewBug is as follows.  Once I see the updates on their blog I will link to that as well.

1. Where did you take the photo and what equipment you used (be specific by giving us the technical details)?

Taken in Philly at Eastern State Penitentiary

Nikon D7000 18-105 f/3.5-5.6 lens

ISO 200 – no flash
exposure 1/10 sec at f/5.6
Altered in Lightroom, then made HDR using Photomatix
2. What inspired you to take that shot?
The entire place had a dirty/creepy feel to it but everything we toured through had been cleaned up and didn’t seem to show the history you felt.  At the center there is a central point that 7 hallways all lead out from.  One of them was completely barred off as they had not yet begun renovations on that hall.  Pushing my lens through the bars to just get the hall, and not the bars, I finally saw what I had been feeling during the tour and took several shots.  When editing the image I kept playing with turning it sepia or black and white.  Nothing seemed to fit, then I happened upon the purple hue and it worked.  It kept with the light and airy yet creepy feeling that I had when I was there.
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New Orleans National Geographic Photography Workshop

Nov
17
2011
by Jessy | 0 Comments

I did go to the National Geographic Photography Workshop in New Orleans on November 10-13.  It was absolutely amazing!  Tyrone Turner and Krista Rossow were great as teachers, mentors, or whatever you want to call them.  They each took personal time above and beyond what was required to help each of us and ensure that they explained everything we had questions about.  Below is a list of tips that I put together from some of the lectures that we had each day that may help all of us a little.

If you check my site under the Places Galleries there is a Gallery for New Orleans, many of my photos are located there.

 

National Geographic Photography Tips

1. when shooting, take 1 shot and check all the settings for exposure and back of camera. If it looks good, put the camera to your face and don’t take it away. When you look at the back of the camera between shots you go into edit mode an not creative mode.

2. keep looking through the camera always, this allows you to see through it to take the perfect shot.

3. move around a lot, get up, get down, go to the side, etc. You may find a better shot than you initially thought by doing this.

4. When taking people pics, if you talk to them then shoot keep shooting. Don’t just stop. Eventually they will start ignoring you and go back to what they were doing and this is when you get the best pics.

5. People are not scary, you can approach them and talk to them (can you tell I’m from IT for that note? 🙂 )

6. Nat Geo photographers will send in up to 60,000 images when only 20 are needed. Out of 100 images the editors say that there should be 10 good pics and 2-3 amazing ones.

7. zoom with your feet, not your lens.

 

I think I have really learned a lot about taking images of people and even just altering my f-stop even more.  If you ever have a chance to attend one I would suggest you do, it was an experience I will always remember and something that I would like to do again.  This is a link to all of Photography Workshops that National Geographic offers.  They are all different places and lengths of times, find something that works for you.

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Halloween and Pumpkins!

Nov
02
2011
by Jessy | 0 Comments

Did you all enjoy halloween!?  We had a great party at work and there were some really neat pumpkins for the pumpkin contest.  One of the shots I did turned out pretty well so I thought I would share it.  This is a picture of the winning carved pumpkin, it’s the Death Star destroying Alderaan.  I think he did a great job and deserved to win the pumpkin carving contest.

 

Death Star Destroying Alderaan

Exposure: 0.5 sec at f/4.0 ISO: 640

 

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

 

I’m including exposure and ISO on every image here now as a helpful hint.  If there’s something else I should include as well let me know.
Thanks!

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Nikkor Lens 105MM #3 – Lens Review

Oct
23
2011
by Jessy | 0 Comments

We went out the pumpkin patches today to find pumpkins for carving.  I took my Nikon (Nikkor) 105MM f/2.8 G ED AF-S Micro lens with me to play with it a little more.  This is not exactly a need for a micro lens but I had fun with it either way.

The bokah created by this lens and the extreme aperture is definitely of a specific use.  I think I was able to pull it off in the image below of a line of the pumpkins they had.  I think this makes a nice fall style image.

 

Pumpkin Row

Exposure 1/1500 sec at f/3.0 ISO 100

The exposure was 1/1500 sec at f/3.0 with an ISO of 100.  Of course using LightRoom I warmed up the temp a little a little and added some vignetting.

Before we went I grabbed an extra lens because I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get an images I liked due to the use for the lens but I was happily surprised with what I was able to get with this lens.  I am starting to like the lens more and more as I use it and this is only day 2!

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Nikkor Lens 105MM #2 – Lens Review

Oct
22
2011
by Jessy | 0 Comments

As promised my Nikon (Nikkor) 105MM f/2.8 G ED AF-S Micro arrived in the mail!  It took a few days before I had time to play with this but I was out front taking a few images this morning.

Upon receiving the lens I did work with it a little in the house and found a few things that created a few questions.

1. Most of my Nikkor Lens’ are from Japan,  that said since I ordered this from Ebay I was concerned it may be not of the same quality.  Upon review and searching online I found that nikkor lenses are made in Japan, Taiwan, and China.  Each factory follows the same training, quality control, and standards as each other factory.

2. While focusing the lens appeared to randomly “click”, this odd noise really concerned me as none of my other lenses do that.  I did some searching on this as well and on the nikonian.org site I found that this is also normal and that it’s at standard f-stops across all of the 105MM.  This is not an issue as the lens still performs well!

When on auto focus the lens does hunt a little while trying to determine how to focus and this takes longer than on other lenses.  The hunting will take a bit to get use to but I really prefer manual focus thus far on this lens anyway.  This mixed with the breathing may cause issues for some people, but for me it servers the need and quite well I may add.

Below are a few of the images I took this morning, the only editing that was done to these was cropping in Adobe LightRoom but with extra work they may be made more dramatic and impressive.  I will continue to post about this lens with updates of things I learned as well as more images as I learn to better use this lens.  These images in raw form will give you an idea  of what you can get out of this lens with little to no experience with Macro work.

Pink Hibiscus Stamen Macro Image

Dimensions: 4928 X 3264 Cropped: 3638 X 2939 Exposure: 1/250 sec at f/3.3 ISO: 100

I have included the dimensions, cropped, exposure, and ISO of each of these images to provide an idea of the settings and any changes.  The impressiveness of images of the stamens is the little hairs that you can see in some of these images.

Pink Hibiscus detailed pollen

Dimensions: 4928 X 3264 Cropped: 956 X 973 Exposure: 1/500 sec at f/33 ISO: 100

The image above is cropped in very closely as I was impressed with the shapes of everything on the stamen.  The detail that you can see with each piece of pollen.  For those of you with macro experience I am sure this is all normal, but for people like me this is still all new and exciting!

yellow hibiscus ants

Dimensions: 4928 X 3264 Cropped: 3512 X 2875 Exposure: 1/250 sec at f/3.3 ISO: 100

 

This image shows the detail and color in those tiny ants that are on the flowers.  I was shocked when I was looking through the view finder and was able to see the color in the ant even.  Those ants are tiny and I know I would be able to see details on small items but this was amazing!

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onONe Photography – Focal Point

Oct
16
2011
by Jessy | 0 Comments

I participated in a photo contest recently that was based on using onOne Photography suite.  onOne has add-ins for Photoshop and Lightroom so that you can make all edits at once.  My favorite at this point has to be the “focal point” add-in.

This image specifically uses the focus add-in.  The entire image was in focus and it made nothing appear different or attractive about the image.  The image actually seems rather boring.

red plymouth in focus

 

 

The image below is done using onOne Focal Point.  This added oval focus areas on the grill with extreme feathering on the edges.  The focus put only on the front and grill of the old plymouth with everything else out of focus adds the much needed abstractions in the photo.  The image now has something that draws your eye to focus on an area of the image.

Red Plymouth onOne

 

 

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Photography Equipment Rental

Oct
15
2011
by Jessy | 1 Comment

Have you ever really wanted to try a lens before you purchased?  Or maybe you have a photo shoot or a vacation that particular lens would be great for but you don’t want to make the investment yet.

When things like this come up I know many people go to lens rental sites to rent camas, lenses, and other equiment.  The main place that I have heard of is LensRentals.com as they seem to have the most availability as well as the nicest site.   There are a few others out there as well such as BorrowLenses.com, TheLensDepot.com, and CameraLensRentals.  These sites allow for day(s), week, and month rentals of equipment to fit your needs.  Granted the prices go up the longer you rent but what else would you expect?

I beging to question at what point you purchase rather than rent though.  There are several lenses and cameras that if you have them for 1 week, and rent multiple times, one would be close to purchasing.  Are there particular reasons to rent rather than purchase?  At what point do you determine to purchase rather than rent?

For now my needs are not so great as to need all of these lenses and to make regular rentals so I am still new to the idea.  I definitely think a 3 day rental would be worth the cost of you are seriously contemplating the purchase of an expensive piece of equipment.  Nothing is ever as great as knowing exactly what you are purchasing.

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Nikkor Lens 105MM

Oct
15
2011
by Jessy | 0 Comments

Super excited and decided to share.  The other day I managed to win an ebay auction on a Nikkor 105MM f/2.8 G ED IF AF-S VR Micro!

The 105MM is rumored to be one of the best current Macro and portrait lenses if you look around online and read some reviews.  Per Ken Rockwell there are some minor focus breathing issues but for the cost this cannot be beat.  The option to solve the breathing issues is the 70-180MM Macro which is at a much greater cost.

I am very excited to finally have a great lens to really get into macro work as well as some of the portraits that I have scheduled to complete soon.  I think this lens is going to be a great addition to my collection and provide me with some photography options that I have not had previously.

The lens typically goes for about $934 but if you watch amazon.com and ebay.com then you can win some auctions for the lens brand new or slightly used at a much lower price.  I know purchasing on ebay and buying used lenses always seems to concern us but I did get my wide angle on ebay and it was very used!  The lens is  a Nikkor 12-24MM f/4G ED-IF AF-S DX Zoom and as you can see from the link this typically averages in cost from 1,100 to 1,200 and I managed to purchase the lens for half that.  This lens is probably my favorite lens and has a lot of wear on the body.  The glass and function though is amazing!  For the cost savings that I have managed to get from purchasing on ebay I will continue this until I get burned.

Once the lens is here (another 5-10 business days) I will be sure to start posting images and my review of the lens.

If there are other places that you purchase lenses at a discount or other lenses that are your favorites let me know.  I would like to hear about them and rent one to try it out.  I can always learn more from other individuals and continue to improve based on your feedback.

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