Monday, February 28, 2011

Disappointment

This happened at work a while back. Chris presented us a chocolate chip, claiming that it was a mini Hershey's kiss. I was so excited until Sarah pointed out it was just a chocolate chip.
I was so disappointed.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Light painting and a note

So I was going to scan a comic I drew, but I saw this posted on the VT Creative Photography Flickr page, and thought ya'll would get a kick out of it. This was taken at last night's meeting. For those who don't know, that's me :P 


http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulkurlak/5474986281/in/pool-885132@N23/


Starting work on my post that I described in this post: http://sketchedndericious.blogspot.com/2011/02/padapas-pond.html . I don't know how quickly i'll finish it, i'm hoping to be a bit more detailed than just saying "do this, do that." So I'll probably break it down into multiple posts detailing each step and how each function on the camera works so you all can use the techniques yourself. Stay tuned!

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Movement

I skipped over this picture a few times before I realized it wasn't all that bad. The intended shot was to pan with this bird as it flew across the pond, and it worked pretty well. The only problem? I didn't have nearly a fast enough shutter speed to nail that movement smoothly, and what resulted is this photo, and a very odd looking bird with double the wings from all the movement. At a low resolution, the bird looks like a blurry dot, but at full res it's much better. My favorite part about it was the captured reflection of the bird, I was pretty pleased with that.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Coughcoughcough

Justin had a coughing fit and walked into the room. Comic ensues.
On a side note, one of my textbooks is missing! >:U
You're such a jerk, textbook.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Padapas Pond


This photo was interesting in how I ended up taking it and how I even thought to take it. We made our way across this bridge, and I was so distracted by the other landscape features that I mostly ignored the bridge. As we were leaving to walk around the park more, I turned and saw the bridge, and immediately saw some sort of picture in it. I ended up taking about 10 different photos to get this one, which is a 20 second exposure to blur out the rippling water.

In another note, I'm thinking about writing up a sort of guide or at least a description of what my whole process is for photos, from capture to posting. Is anyone actually interested? If you are, or even if you're just curious, go ahead and 'like' my post on facebook for today's entry, or post here if you prefer. Anyone interested in photography or photoshop probably could probably benefit in some way.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Friday, February 18, 2011

I Wanna Be Cool Too

Taken with my little handheld camera at Pandapas Pond.
SEE, I CAN TAKE PICTURES TOO!

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Days of old

So I was playing around with my old 50mm lens that goes on my 35mm camera (film!) and i got the idea to put the lens of the film camera against the lens of my new camera. I had expected to see through the viewfinder of the old camera, but I got something else. Instead, I saw the focusing frame that exists on this camera, which makes sense, I just expected to see through that too.

For those of you who aren't familiar, this ring is what you used on old cameras to ensure your photo was in focus. The inside ring is split in half, and if the image isn't perfectly aligned, that's out of focus. Additionally, the outer ring is geometric, and if you are out of focus, the ring is dark and hard to see through. As soon as you come into focus, it gets clear and easy to see through.

Makes you appreciate your auto focus in your point and shoot cameras, eh?

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Drunk Band

Justin got le drunk the night of his last final back in the fall.
I set up rock band because he wanted to play.
I then proceeded to watch him flail about and eventually give up because he was too drunk.
Good times.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Water Drops

Emily and I spent about 2 hours taking photos of water drops, and the result was about 400 photos to sift through and check. After all that work, this is the resulting image. Thanks goes to Kristen for letting me borrow her 50mm f/1.8 for the shot. I'm pretty satisfied with the results of this photo, I will definitely be trying this one again. It's time consuming and challenging, but the results are awesome.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Cupcake pants!

I found a pretty awesome hot pink pair of pajama pants at walmart.
Conversation ensues.
I hope this becomes a form of measurement!
Also, I didn't notice that I had more room on top when I was drawing xD

Friday, February 11, 2011

"It's Artistic!"

Emily - "It's Artistic!"
Emily was playing with my camera at her friend's house and didn't know how to properly compensate for exposure, and shot an incredibly underexposed shot of this lamp. True to her form, she immediately went "It's artistic!" and left it on the camera. Today's friday post is that photo in black and white, because, well, it's artistic. xD

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Then came a baby boy with long eyelashes

Justin

Emily

I have always had a fascination with beautiful eyes, so I figured I'd try to take a picture of my own eyes or other peoples eye's. That idea originally was squashed by the lack of a decent macro lens, but it came back when I discovered the fun of the poor man's macro I've been doing. These shots were hilarious and difficult at the same time, especially that self-portrait shot above. I had Emily stabilizing a flash unit that I can't sync to my camera, so it was manually triggered for each exposure. This is definitely a shot I'd like to revisit and master, hopefully with a better lens and more depth of field. As you can see I lose focus very quickly, from Emily's eye to nose it's no more than 2 inches total. I need to find some blue eyed people to photograph.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Do me a Favor?

I was using my laptop on Justin's desk and he needed to work on his desktop so he shoved me out of the way.
Easiest favor ever.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Medicated

 

So today's pictures are the result of some fun macro work I was trying. Using a reversed 50mm lens, I was able to take some pretty decent macro shots, at the expense of my depth of field. I decided to grab a bunch of medicine bottles and shot the pills I had in them. Most of these are over-the-counter ;) so don't you worry bout that. Picture 1 is playing around with sharpness, reading the imprints on the pills, the second is a test of how color exclusion, leaving behind only the colorful parts of some of the pills. Wednesday I'll be posting another macro set, so if you like these, keep an eye out on Wednesday. ^_^

Monday, February 7, 2011

Lemon Meringue Pie

Justin and I were shopping at Kroger when somehow I mentioned I never had Lemon Meringue Pie before, and I eventually ended up buying one there.
As I was trying to cut a piece out, I realized the pie was frozen on the inside.
I literally stuck a knife into the center and picked the entire thing up.

Friday, February 4, 2011

17th Street Canal, again




These pictures were sent to me from my father a few days ago, and I thought it would be a good addition to our Friday posts. If you go back and look at my makeshift panoramic of the 17th Street Canal, you can see the various landmarks that appear in both sets of images.

These pictures made me laugh though, when he described them to me, I thought he meant that the cloud STARTED 100ft off the ground, not ended! It's pretty crazy to see though... I wanna go play in it.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Water



A nice texture photo I did after I discovered the 'sweet spot' of my lens. I'll be playing around with that a bit more in the near future, I like extreme sharpness.

Also, let me know how this photo looks in terms of colors, one of my monitors shows it as heavily saturated and blown out, the other shows it closer to normal, I don't know which is correct though.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Words in my Mouth

Based on a true story except Justin read aloud what he was typing.
To Jack: We miss youuuu, come visit us :B

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

A storm is coming...



I took this picture on the way back from class a few days ago. The ridiculous contrast across the sky is why I chose to saturate the colors so heavily, I thought it looked kinda cool. ^_^
Also, this picture helped me discover the significant color difference between my desktop and laptop screens. This is actually toned down from what i was originally going to post, because the saturation was so intense in the first image I had. I'm doing my best to not post the same subject twice, so I'll 'try' to spare you all the 80+ pictures of ducks I took the other day xD I make no promises though!