Category Archives: Photography Tools

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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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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Site Organization

Sep
18
2011
by Jessy | 5 Comments

What is the best way to organize your site?  I have been moving around some of my galleries so that the list of “galleries” is shorter and things are easier to find.  The fist example of this is the new “places” gallery and the Savannah gallery under that.  I have several images for Philly about that are about ready to go up as well.  Is this the best idea or is there something better?

How d o you organize your site for your own photography?

I know the more information about each gallery the better, this always helps with SEO, but they can be divided so many different ways trying to determine which is best is difficult.  I have also found it’s very difficult to keep the home page updated with new things to keep returning visitors interested.  Without updating the home page users will have less reason to view further into your site.  I’ll keep researching some of the best practices and I’ll let you know what I find.

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Selling Photography #2

Sep
13
2011
by Jessy | 1 Comment

I have been playing with the FineArtAmerica site some more.  I think I’m starting to like this and the printing options are impressive!  It also has a great community of other artists that reiew and provide feedback on your art.

Check out some of the HDR here:

hdr art

FineArtAmerica also offers some different logos, and slideshows that you can place on your site to lead people back to your FineArt site. Below is a copy of one of these and if you notice it links to my FineArt site to purchase images. One thing that I do not like is that I cannot incorporate this into my site or remove/alter menu items to go back to my own site. A perfect example of this is the blog, I am not one to copy/paste to another blog, but I do not have enough time to work on 2 blogs.

Sample “slideshow” for FineArt

Art Prints


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Selling Photography

Sep
11
2011
by Jessy | 0 Comments

One of the hardest questions to answer: How do I sell my Photography?

I have been doing some research and found a site that I really like.  Granted my site now has commerce capabilities but I have them disabled because I don’t like to manage that. I  would prefer to take my images and work on processing and SEO rather than on printing, matting, framing, shipping, etc.  FinArtAmerica allows for a $30 site for you to have and takes care of all the printing for you!

This is something new that I’m just trying out (yes you get a 90 day free trial), so please view it and let me know what you think of it.  Of course I’m not sure if I will keep it going but it’s easy to set up and something that might work…

 My Fine Art site
Sell Art Online


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National Geographic Weekend Photography Workshop

Sep
10
2011
by Jessy | 1 Comment

Have you ever been to a weekend photography workshop?  I recently found that National Geographic offer photography excursions and workshops.  I am thinking of attending one but am very torn on which location to go to (Paris, Rome, New Orleans, Tucson, etc) and which type of photography workshop would be best suited for my skills, or  lack of skills.   Each offer something different in the way of photographing architecture, people, landscape, etc.  If you have reviewed any of my images please provide any comments that you have about your experienced at these workshops and types of photography that you think are best.

A full list of the workshops can be found here if you are interested: National Geographic Photography


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