Favorites Part Eight

I took this at the Danville VA before the sun rose. It was kind of cold that morning (for being August 1st) so I stayed in the car and took it from there. I do like the composition of it better this way though as I think the street and sidewalk help to frame it a bit at the bottom.


The vignetting was natural, though exagerrated a bit in photomatix. You guessed it, it's another HDR.

Favorites Part Seven

Welcome to the next repetitive installment of my favorite pictures series. This photo was taken on an early Saturday morning that I first spent at the Danville Veteran's Hospital campus, then moved out into the countryside around Danville.





This is at some train tracks on east Winter, under an overpass. It was taken a little before 7AM and is another HDR shot. I knew it was only a matter of time before I took my cliche train-tracks picture and I wanted mine to have a little something special in it. I thought having the overpass mixed in, as well as the grafitti helped to make it stand out a bit.

Favorites Part Six

This was taken at the boardwalks in North Danville, on West Newell Rd. I got up early that morning and took this around 6:10 AM. It is an HDR shot that I thought turned out great due to the colors of the sky, the glassy water, and the rising steam.

I took this picture inbetween the hand rails, and I caught a piece of the rail in the top right corner, which I am going to eventually photoshop out, I am not sure why I have been so lazy as I took this picture over a month ago. Oh well, it happens.

Favorites Part Five

I took this one morning at around 6:15 AM. I had been driving around quite a bit that day, started out in North Danville, at the W. Newell boardwalks (which you will see in my next post) and finished up on the West side of Lake Vermillion.

I set up on a small bridge, with my camera mounted on my tripod, hanging over the guard rail in order to get close to the plants. It was taken about a foot off the ground.

This is an HDR shot, so it was taken with three exposures which I combined using Photomatix. I was really happy with how tropical all the colors seem. It is not what you'd expect to see in Central Illinois.

Favorites Part Four

This one is a little personal. Of course, it is only because it is a picture of myself. There is a bi-weekly photo contest on a web forum that I frequent, and the theme for the week was "Self-Portrait."

Up to this point I had pretty much zero experience taking pictures of people, and absolutely no experience with manipulating light. I think I was at work when I got the idea for the picture, I had the idea for a picture that says "This guy just got off a hard day of work. He is relaxing and getting drunk."

So I figure out which room of my house I wanted to use (the computer room) and started figuring out the shot. I tried a few test shots where the only light was coming from my computer monitor, and I tried it out using a few different colors, blue, red, and green. Of course the problem with that was I could not sit still long enough for the 5 second minimum exposure necessary to get enough light to see me. And even then it was a pretty boring photo.

So I improvised a bit, and found this lantern flashlight and put it off-camera right on the ground. I then took a regular flashlight and placed it on the computer desk and aimed it at my face. I had read an article on the strobist blog earlier that day about how shadows add interest to a photo so I put a crumpled-up duffle bag near the lantern on the floor.

I took the photo with a 1 second exposure at 1600 iso, so I didn't have to hold the pose too long. The photo was pretty noisy so I used this program called Noise Ninja to remove most of the noise, but doing so gave the photo a real soft, almost hdr look. Later in lightroom I slightly increased the contrast and clarity.

I still don't own any nice flashes, so whenever I need external lighting I once again use a ghetto setup of flashlights. I will probably be picking up some sort of flash system this December to hopefully increase my ability to take fun photos like these.

Favorites Part Three

This photo was taken several weeks ago, on the same visit as my last favorite. It was my first night there, and after suffering driving up during the most beautiful sunset ever (and not being able to stop) I had major photography blue balls and needed to take some pictures ASAP.

I set up out in their cow yard, which was empty at the time. Messed around and underexposed a few shots, and then when I finally got the exposure where I wanted it, I took this picture. "Holy Crap" were the words I uttered after viewing this on the LCD, so I named it after that. This is probably the best night sky I've ever captured.

I had to desaturate the greens in this photo, because the silo was incredible green due to a light overlooking the cow yard. I guess I could have asked them to turn it off but that would be rather selfish, plus it helped add some fill light for the barn, which I think the red turned out rather nice on.

Favorites Part Two

Several weeks ago I was at my Uncle's farm and had some spare time. During some of that time I took pictures of his farm and various other parts of the countryside.

They have a very nice, old barn that I had been in when I was a lot younger. I had gone up in the hay loft with my cousins where we jumped around on the bales of hay. I hadn't been up there in over ten years, so I figured it would be a good time to revisit it.

I was up there for around 30 minutes, despite it being around a hundred degrees. I wasn't jumping around, instead I was trying my hardest not to trip and fall, breaking my camera. None the less it was a really nice environment to photograph and it was nice to go somewhere I hadn't been since I was a small child.

Favorites

This is part one of over 30 where I am going to go through my most favoritest pictures I have taken and talk about them or something...

Unfortunately the list keeps expanding as I always take more and more, so this could go on for a while.

Let's start in reverse, from now:

This is a picture of the same bridge from the last blog, just obviously from a different angle. This picture is one of my favorites because it reminds me of the movie the Jungle Book. No not the animated cartoon, I mean the one that starred Bruce Lee's son that came out in the mid 90s. That movie was badass, and seeing the ruins of this bridge standing out through the trees really reminds me of some ruined temple peeking through a jungle.

It was originally taken in color, but the green in the photo made the brush more distracting, and took even more attention away from the bridge in the back. I desaturated the photo and then increased the contrast levels to help create a big difference between the lights and the dark.

Hope you like.

Getting Out

Yesterday afternoon I was incredibly tired.

Faced with the decision of taking a nap or leaving the house, I chose the latter. I originally planned on walking along some train tracks on the west end of Danville, but after walking for 20 minutes, I was quite bored of the landscape and took no pictures.

I had been searching for this old bridge that runs through/next to Elsworth park in west Danville. I figured some old train tracks ran atop of it, though it turns out I was wrong.

I started walking this different path, down a road towards Danville Metal Stamping, and I finally find the bridge! For being next to a factory, I was impressed with the view:

Large Version- http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2916200833/sizes/l/

I spent the next twenty minutes walking next to a chain-link fence lining the Metal Stamping property. The sides of the body of the water in the picture are very steep hills, probably around 50-60 feet high. I just walked along the top of the hill until I finally reached the bridge itself.

There are numerous signs around it warning of falling debris, but I am willing to sacrifice safety for a cool subject. I was able to snap a few cool pictures, but I am going to head back there with a tripod later this week and hopefully get something real good.

Large Version- http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2916195407/sizes/l/

A bored night at home

Leads to some weird stuff.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/myotomy/2905682833/sizes/l/

I had just recently received the viewed mask in the mail for Halloween. At the time there was also a contest going on with a theme of "Lapse of Time." Mandy was in the living room watching the Cubs/Dodgers game and I didn't have much else to do.

My camera was set up on a tripod on my front porch, and for lighting I just used two flashlights. I wasn't feeling very patient, so I just threw the camera on landscape setting. Subsequently the pictures were taken at a 1.5 second exposure at f3,5 Sharpness is still pretty good on them, though we aren't viewing particularly large versions.

I did get a good laugh out of them.