SideShowMom's Photo-A-Day

Snowy Trees

2010-01-08T21:59:00.001-08:00

View large, the needles are tack-sharp and full-range! I did lose the snow in the foreground, I may dodge it a bit and see what is still there in a darker exposure.

Pushing Snowball Through Air

2010-01-06T18:53:00.001-08:00

This was a neat capture, just as The Cub released the ice chunk to throw it into the sled.

Self-Portrait

2010-01-04T18:57:00.000-08:00

With the new camera, of course. The more I use it, the more I like it! I know there’s folks out who would cringe to find that I’ve bought, yet another, higher end point-and-shoot digital instead of a DSLR, given my film SLR background (I used a Pentax K-1000 knock-off and a Yashica A TLR for many years, doesn’t get much more manual than that, barring a view camera!), and it does break my heart to have my 4 x 5 Besseler enlarger in storage. The simple explanation is that I had kids. They changed everything. Light is Good. Simple is Better. I stopped using the SLR when I bought the Russian-made LOMO; both a size and creative shift! Then I went digital a couple years later. In 2004, DSLRs were prohibitively expensive for a young family (still are!) and I wanted something that others could use easily with autofocus. I still need the control of manual focus and exposure. Nikon was always my ideal choice, having longed for an N80 when they came out. The Coolpix P90 is at the high end of point-and-shoot cameras. I can’t put different lenses on it, nor does it have a RAW mode. But, it does do most of what the D90 (my DSLR dream camera) does, for half the price. I have even more manual choices than the 4300 has; color filters in B & W manual mode, P, A, M & 2 user-programmable manual dial settings, better flash than the 4300 with compensation settings, a digital viewfinder that has diopter adjustment and works great! (Am I the only one that misses a good viewfinder?) The huge LCD for my aging eyes that tilts up and down is a nice bonus!

And, best of all, don’t I look good using it!?

Reading At Bedtime

2010-01-03T21:23:00.001-08:00

One of my photography teachers told us to “break our legs,” get down below our subjects, explore different points of view. Chris Marquardt suggests this, too, on his podcast Digital Photography Tips From The Top Floor. Exploring different points of view can bring fresh perspective or let you notice new things about old subjects. I’ve had these kids a while, this was a fun way to look at them as they read together tonight. AND I tried out the high contrast B&W setting on the new camera.

Pens & Sketchbook

2010-01-02T19:40:00.001-08:00

Some of my favorite art tools are fountain pens and brush pens. Here’s a bit of fun with my choice of sketchbook and selection of pens.

Ice

2010-01-01T22:12:00.001-08:00

Family Photos

2009-12-30T18:56:00.000-08:00

We do take family photos; we have families and do stuff and want to make a remembrance of things with families. I had set out to make “good” photos each day in this blog, and sometimes “good” and family don’t quite mesh as well as we’d like. Ice skating in an outdoor rink also didn’t seem like the place to take my new camera until I have a better strap and got my larger camera bag out of storage. With me on the ice and the kidlets clinging for dear life (The Cub, anyway), the only good opportunity was during the Zamboni run. Look who has eyes for Daddy!

I did crop another child out, but there is no other post-processing. Nikon Coolpix 4300.

Oh, Not the Horses!

2009-12-29T17:16:00.000-08:00

Yes, the horses! Until, and probably after, we get real ones, I’ll keep photographing these little plastic ones. So, learn to appreciate the finesse of creating, lighting and photographing the miniature scene!

This is Monk, a bay Welsh Cob model by Breyer in 1:64 or Stablemate scale sculpted by Jane Lunger. Lit with 2-100W incandescent bulbs, one with a cotton soft-box from about 3-4 feet away. The background photo is by Eduardo Amorim, used with permission. These are show photos; we take them and enter online or mail-in model shows and compete with other hobbyists (the CORRECT spelling, btw) for prestige, points and year-end prizes. This year, we (Rianna takes some photos, too) won 2 Divisional Year-End Championships, 5 National Qualifications (for live shows), and many Top Ten finishes!

So, these little ones are around 3 inches high and 3-4 inches long. There are larger and smaller, but we have many more in this size. Model railroad scenery materials are pretty convincing and do well to blend the scene into the background photos. I use some foamboard for smaller bases and masonite for the larger ones and the background photo is sprayed with a light coat of Testor’s Dull Kote spray to kill glare. The footing board is placed about 5-6 inches away from the background photo to increase the distance and prevent shadows from the horses, not so important with the little ones, but the larger models need even more distance, about a foot or so.

The new Nikon has a wonderfully large 3 inch lcd screen…that tilts! And, in the manual modes, I can expose from one point and focus on another, without moving the camera on the tripod. I’m still shooting long exposures, about 1 second, but at f/4.5 to f/5, I can get a touch more depth of field and not worry that with the eye in focus, the feet aren’t. The lens is much larger and brighter than the E4300. I’ve changed my style in this; I used to use auto exposure and manual macro focus, now I use AF area mode for focusing (I can choose from 99 positions in the screen to focus on) and Spot AF area metering (looks at a small spot at the center of the frame) but choose my aperture and shutter speed manually with a metering scale onscreen. The first ones were a little overexposed so I dialed the shutter speed down two-thirds of a stop to keep more detail in the bright areas. Adjustments to the overall brightness and levels I make in Photoshop. I saved all of these settings as U1-one of the two programmable modes I can use without changing my single manual mode on the E43oo back and forth for other photographing outside.

Night in the Snow Forest

2009-12-28T20:37:00.001-08:00

A bit noisier than I would have liked, but I am pleased with the abstract-ness of this. Still following the Rule of Thirds, it also has lines leading the eye to the center of the image. The odd lighting is the result of a cool white security light and warm white street light, I set the white balance in the foreground for the warm shadows so the overall effect is colder.

Snow Day

2009-12-27T20:05:00.001-08:00

Snow is a difficult photography situation, normally, with changes in exposure compensation required to keep the camera’s meter from under or overexposing the photo. I tried using the Beach/Snow scene setting and am pretty happy with these results, too. Though, I could have cropped that thing out of the upper right corner, whatever it is.

Close-up Flash Photos

2009-12-26T00:06:00.000-08:00

One of our model horse clubs has a Secret Santa swap and last year our Santa Horse gave us a fun set of hand-made ornaments. Each one was a Stablemate-size foal in a plaster snow base with ribbons and a wreath or evergreen garland on them. I used the new Coolpix P90 to take a few close-up photos with flash to see what worked best.

First, I tried putting my finger over part of the flash. That resulted in the ornament having a red tinge from my blood on it’s top half and the snow over-exposed.

Next, I made a photo without any corrections—a sort-of control photo. Everything is very harshly lit and the snow base is very over-exposed, with no details.

Finally, I made one from about 3 feet away, zooming in on the ornament, with the flash in fill mode.

I still had detail in the snow base and the horse was pleasantly lit.

White Christmas

2009-12-25T17:57:00.001-08:00

Trying out the “Snow” mode, did pretty good. There are some areas of pure white and absolute black with shadow detail retained. A full-range shot. Don’t know about the composition, though.

Christmas Eve

2009-12-24T09:12:00.000-08:00

The kidlets woke up early and had to wait for their dad to get here before they could open family gifts, so they occupied themselves reading and taking photos with my new camera

“Dash”

2009-12-23T05:41:00.000-08:00

He almost got away! Taken with the new Nikon Coolpix P90! Thank you Family!

CC On the Sofa

2009-12-22T17:27:00.001-08:00

Starting off my One Photo A Day 2010 a few days early. My cat CC sleeping on the sofa gave me the opportunity for a simple Rule of Thirds composition with a simple background. Composition and photograph-making are skills and if you don’t exercise them, you loose your facility with them.

My new camera arrived today. I can’t open the shipping box til tomorrow when my family can watch, it’s a Christmas gift and they want the full watching-me-open-it experience. grrrrr. I’m not that patient and this is cruel and unusual punishment.

Come see what others are shooting in their year!

Photography Love

2009-12-21T17:59:00.001-08:00

My dad was in the Army. He was stationed in Korea, patrolling the border, during the early 60s (I'm pretty sure). He bought a Ricoh TLR (twin-lens reflex camera) while he was in the Orient and took photos and developed them in a darkroom in town. Everyone would hang their negatives up in the drying cabinet and pick them up and print them when they could get back to town. Sometimes they would print another guy's negs if they liked a photo on them... I just remember the Ricoh at Christmas, on the tripod, smiling in front of the tree with my sister. Dad had a subscription to Popular Photography; photos with filters and all the groovy models seemed so magical. He gave me my first camera, a Kodak Tele-Ektra 1, one of those Christmases.

I’ve done a fair bit of photography since then. Took classes at Community College, been in shows, newspapers, shot from the hip… My first digital, my beloved Nikon Coolpix 4300, is failing and my family is giving me another camera for Christmas this year! I will be participating in the One Photo Per Day Challenge in 2010 to learn it’s paces and to renew my love affair with Photography!