Sooo this weeks assignment was to show two different exposures of the same photo. Which will then be followed up with the "Bracketing" assignment. I went head and just did a slew of bracketing this weekend, and I also have some of the Golden Gate from the week before (planning ahead). I generally like to bracket images so that I have the flexibility in post processing to choose the slightly under or slightly over exposure if the cameras meter didn't give me anything that I liked. You could go out and buy a light meter if you wanted, but I find in more useful in controlled lighting situations. When your being spontaneous out in the wilderness or where, the lighting is a bit more dynamic so the light meter can become your worst enemy. Our photography teacher confirmed this when he touched on it in class on Wednesday.

(If I'm using to much photographer jar gin please let me know, and I'll start to include "Key Terms" that might help the reading go by. I mean for this to be fun, but I can get carried away in the tech side of things.)

So I went out to the Sonoma Creek Falls the other day via public transpo which worked out really well. It was a 6 mile hike round trip from the bus stop, but it was well worth the experience of walking in the wine country and then up into the Sugar Loaf State Park. Very peaceful indeed. Usually I listen to mp3's when I'm roaming the streets of a City, but I went hippy on this one and cut out the tunes until the return trip. Listening to the sounds of nature, the rushing water, and the silence really set the mood. The rushing water was great inspiration all the way to the Water Fall.

I'm sure you've already looked at the pictures to the left and realized what they are.. First over exposed, next the metered shot, and the third one is the under exposed image. Down here at the bottom are my favorite shots of the day. Enjoy!!

(Feel free to leave feed back here or send me an email! Also in class there was a lot of interest on "Ghosting" and "Paint with Light". Over the next week or so I'll post How too do both of those.)

Be sure to keep your food out of the reach of Yoggi and BooBoo!

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So over the weekend I had to shoot a few low light shots, and thought this would be a great time to get down to SF and visit with friends. I grew up in San Leandro which is a short thirty minute BART ride under the bay into down town so I have friends for life all over the Bay. Being able to explore such a divers environment was great! I learned a lot about myself and others really quickly. The City is also full of sights and sounds different from other metropolitan areas which gives San Francisco it's own identity. I hope to share more sights of The Bay Area with everyone over the next few months.

So I arrived at the Golden Gate toll plaza around 1pm on Saturday after noon, and had some time to kill before my friends arrived to pick me up. I've been to the Golden Gate a bunch, but I never seemed to have my camera with me. However this time around I was stoked to be running around like a tourist visiting for the first time. I got lucky and a beautiful day opened up between storms. There is a surf spot just under the bridge called Fort Point, and it proved to be a great day for surf.

Time seemed to fly by while I was waiting for my ride. The hour wait felt like a measly fifteen minutes

The original plan was to go to Cyclops Tattoo to do some low light photography while my friend Susan got a Tattoo. But things just weren't meant to be, so we drove to another good look out of Downtown SF near the Mission/Potrero area. The shot was a 2 minute exposure with the lens stopped all the way down to 22. Other then a small touch up in photoshop this is the way the photo came out of the camera. Honestly the composition could have been a little better, and there might have even been a better vantage point to get this shot, but we were pressed for time and had to keep it moving into the night life.

So the Ho-Yang (no relation to the Wu-Tang crew) crew had gotten tickets to see the Pharcyde at Yoshie's in the Filmore, which worked out great because it gave me the opportunity to catch up with a friend of my Dutch Rutter Doug. Honestly one of the funniest guys you'll ever meet, but don't let his sense of humor fool you.. "You don't have an ID well you can't come in" is a fraze you'll here him say a lot. Here we are getting a ghosting effect with a 10 second exposure.

So the night was ending for some and others just beginning, but when all was said and done I completed my assignment of low light photos for the Digital Class at 2am with a shot of the bar closed up ready for a little bit of clean up. It was fun seeing my friends who I hold close to me, and meeting new people that share some of my interests as well. Hopefully the pictures get the job done when I show them in class this week.

I'll post an update with the feed back I receive from my peers sometime later this week. However you can leave feed back right now. Let me know what you think of the photos below in the comments box. What you like, don't like, or any other creative criticism that would help me evaluate. Thanks!

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Over the weekend I had an opportunity to photograph some really good paintings by Kevin Soriano. He is a Sonoma County artist that enjoys working with really large canvas. I must say that it was impressive to see original paintings of that size. Very good use of color. Photographing a painting is fairly straight forward process when it comes to set up. The canvas plain and the camera sensor plain should mirror each other. This shoot was done using natural lighting on a cloudy day which worked out perfectly because there was no harsh lighting reflecting of the canvas. Be sure to shoot on the lowest ISO setting to maximize your digital camera. Another thing to note is the aperture setting should be around 16 to get the maximum depth of field. You would be using a tripod so shutter speeds aren't going to matter. Hint: Use a shutter release cable or the self timer to trip the shutter which will reduce any possibility of camera shake.

In this experience I found that the post processing shouldn't be very extensive. You really want to let the art do the talking. Only small adjustments to maximize the digital image for the web and printing. I used Adobe Lightroom for the first time with this, and I must say that it was a learning process. It's a simplified version of Photoshop without all the nick knacks and do hickeys, but the interface can be confusing if your really used to the set up in photoshop (which I am). However once I got the hang of it I could see why so many photographers use it. There are great shortcuts to accessing your work, organization is fairly straight forward, and although I didn't use it this time around batch processing is going to make life much easier when it come to event photography.






Stay posted for Kevin Soriano's website and information on his future book release. Thanks Kevin for the opportunity to photograph your work and the bottle of wine. It was a great experience.

It was hard to pick just two, but here are my favorites of the shoot.

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I want to start of by saying thanks for stopping by, and also send a shout out to the Sonoma County Photographers meet up group! Their pictures were awesome from their outing at the Jack London State Park last weekend. I look forward to meet all of you very soon!





If your in or around the Sonoma County area and are interested in Photography, but don't really know to much about it...? Well there are some great resources that you might find helpful.



www.santarosa.edu/communityed

Has a whole bunch of one day classes from Beginning-Intermediate digital photography, Flash photography, as well as wedding photography (I'll be at the wedding one :D) class.. The prices vary from class to class so check out the the link above for prices




http://www.meetup.com/Sonoma-County-Photography-Group/

This meet up group looks like a lot of fun. I signed up about a week or so ago and I'm looking forward to the next meet up. A Really good bunch of people use the meetup.com website to meet up at take photographs. There are some really knowledgable people willing to give advice and have fun while doing it. Last week they went to the Jack London State Park, and they all came back with a bunch of great photos. You can read all you want about photography, but unless you get out there with someone who knows what there doing then it can be discurauging. If your not in the Sonoma County then www.meetup.com probly has a photography meet up near you. Check it out!!


http://www.santarosaphotographicsociety.org/
Here is another link kinda geared towards the "North Bay" as my girlfriend likes to call it. I tend to disagree cause is Santa Rosa or Rohnert Park touching any part of the Bay.. Or any part of ocean that would make up a bay? No Sir.. ;) In any case the Santa Rosa Photographic Society has been around for a really long time. They hold contest twice a month, have a rating system that you work your way through, and a place to present your work for critique. There is a fee each year, but in my opinion would be well worth it if you were looking to excel or get advice from a very talented group of photographers.


I said something about not typing a whole lot because I don't like to write, and there were going to be tons of pictures.. Well....

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So the first images of the semester where shown today for the Santa Rosa Junior College Digital photography class, and I must say this is a talented group of photographers. There were great portraits, abstracts, macro, and landscape photographs shown. Looking forward to seeing more as the semester goes on and assignments get a bit tougher. The instructor told us no use of flash, read the camera's user guide cover to cover, an get ready for a whole lot of photo taking. By the end of the semester we will have a portfolio of sixtie images that will fall into three categories with twenty images in each categories. The next assignment will be low lighting situations which will take longer shutter speeds and cause more motion blur. Time to break out the tripod, find objects that are moving really very fast like rocks, and get a cable release. Maybe some flash lights to wave around in the dark to create some random lines? We'll have to see... Please feel free to post links to low light shots, ideas, or anything else that might pertain to the subject of low lighting.

Continuing from earlier today are the five images I promised (remember I was suppose to share ten images?). These pictures were all taken over the course of 2009. I don't know if I consider them to be the best images I took last year really, but they definitely are some of my favorites. Check'em out and let me know what you think!

All of the images were take with a Nikon D80. I would honestly recommend this camera to everyone getting into digital photography. The price has gone down but the features are still there. There are only slight differences in D90 and D80 and the D80 costs less. Amazon is a great place to find these cameras. When buying a new DSLR, you want to be honest with your self, figure out what your trying to photograph, and get the camera that will give you the best tools for those photographs.

Any questions regaurding photography and the gear required are welcome with open arms!!

See the link to the Nikon D90? Click on it and check it out!!

Send Photography topics too: JurPhotographer@gmail.com

I'll gladly explain any photography topic, and give some insight to how to get the shots you want with your DSLR. Cheers!!

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Well here we are! The first installement of the Tripod Diaries. Now don't get excited, it had nothing to do with the Vampire Diaries series whatsever. That show is super lame in my opinion, but everyone is entittled to their opinion right?

This blog is going to be about photography if you haven't already guessed. I'm taking a digital photography class at school, and I'm going to use this blog to track my own progress. Probly end up posting a lot of other random events along the way to keep

things fresh.

So here we go. These four images were requested by our photography teacher. He wants us to bring in 10 images. 5 of which had to be taken between Monday mornings class and this mornings class (Wednsday 1/13/10). The other five aren't going to be uploaded so be patient. I do need to however get ready and run to class. More on todays events in a bit. Cheers!!

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