Experiments

The past few weeks have been a bit challenging. The kids are in real moods and every bit of time spent parenting them feels wasted. I did not have much of a chance to take photos this week but I thought I’d share some photos that were taken previously – mostly for experimentation. The above photo is actually an older one from before I switched cameras. I rented a couple of lenses for our Colorado trip and had an extra day to goof around with them before returning them. I walked down the street to an open desert area and began exercising my photographic eye. I tried a few things desperately trying to figure out what I wanted in my next lens when I realized that it was probably time to head home, grab some coffee, and go to work. I packed up the tripod and spun around, slinging it on my back, to see a vivid rainbow had been behind me. Here is a shot I was able to snag before sending the lenses back!

I’ve been wanting to try some HDR post processing. It seems like I’m always blowing my histogram out on both sides. This is probably due to the fact that I’m not an excellent photographer (yet) and don’t know how to frame photos (yet). I found this saguaro cactus on some state trust land nearby. It’s easily the most massive one I have ever seen but without a person or reference object in the frame it’s hard to tell. I was able to capture most of the colors in the sunrise while also keeping the color of the foreground. Perhaps I should adjust the color some to make it a touch warmer. This is a stack of three photos at varying exposures.

At some point within the past few weeks, I ran across a tree that stood out to me. When I tried to take a photo of it I was unable to get the depth of field that I wanted. A friend suggested the Brenizer method. I gave it a shot (pun intended) on the above tree. This is only two photos stitched together – one on top of the other. I took more than just these two but when I got them loaded on the computer I realized that I let my camera settings change (the key think to make this method work). Putting them all together made for a bit of a psychedelic look as the colors were different. This turned out nicely, however, and I’ll give it a try again another time. If I find this tree again, I may try to get closer and see if I can blur out the phone lines and phone pole in the back. I would feel rather accomplished. Perhaps I can go back and try to find the tree that I initially saw. It was an interesting one…

The final photo is less of a processing experiment and turned out to be more of a framing experiment. I am trying to get more comfortable with how focal length affects sizes of objects in the background of photos. This small clump of jumping cholla stood out to me for whatever reason. I used the smallest focal length I had to try and separate it from the background. Though the tall cactus probably didn’t help. Exposure stacking for another HDR proved to be the wrong choice in this instance and a single exposure turned out a better. The shadows on the ground make a nice vignette on the bottom of the photo. It’s entirely too busy, I think. However, when looking at it I get the same feeling that I get when having to walk in close proximity to a jumping cholla cactus. So the photo may work in that regard. I kept the background in focus to keep some detail in the clouds. It may have been better with more of the scene out of focus as it may have done a better job drawing the eye toward the cholla. I’m working on recognizing these details with the small camera screen. It’s unfortunate that the moment I load a photo onto a bigger screen I see things I wish I had done differently.