The holidays have been really uninteresting and I've been out hunting for my nature photos again. Two days ago I went out a little too late and the sun was hidden behind a hill. I wanted to shoot some flowers near the farmstore which were in full bloom. I discovered that they close at the end of the day and I arrived just in time to see the last few close.



Since the light was low, I could only get some decent macro photos that were sharp. So with the last few rays of sunlight left, I tried to get something more interesting by shaking, twising and jarring the camera in random directions.



This one is my favourite.

Today Erik taught me some really nice panorama techniques involving 360 degree panoramas. I've seen them everywhere and never got down to doing them before. They're not that difficult to shoot but putting them together on the computer requires all the number crunching power the processor can give.

Of all days it had to be 80 something degrees outside. Its dry although not as hot as Malaysia yet. I sweated all the way walkin to the CLA to grab the photos. Anyway, each of these photos are made up of 27-28 images shot in sequence to get the entire 360 degree view of things, including the top (right above my head) and bottom (where my legs are). Then instead of doing the usual panoramic stitch, they're put together into a stereographic projection which is some mathematical model that is applied to the image.

This was my first ever attempt and it worked great! I missed a few parts of the photo but I cloned them in using Photoshop.



This one was the second attempt.



Then we headed to the dorms and did a pano amongst some trees. I made two different ones out of the same set of photos. First, the world through a bug's eyes.



Then through the eyes of a bird.



Interesting stuff. I can't wait to shoot more!

Before the tennis coach shoot, I had Michael Zavala the sports section editor pose for me to test the lighting setup. I just took a snap shot and checked the exposure on the histogram. "Alright, lighting's perfect". I was nearly about to delete the photo when I noticed that it had something special about it. It was definitely Mike flirting with the camera. To me, he had on him a mysterious stare with a sly look on his face. Maybe someone else who's more creative with words can add more adjectives. I got home and ran a pseudo HDR on the raw file to give it extra impact that added more mystery to the photo. The processing was the icing on an already delicious cake.

I've shot enough pictures of the women's tennis team this quarter to actually compile a small photo essay. It was enjoyable photographing a new sport especially with the right equipment. The action shots were taken with the Posty's Canon 40D and 70-200mm f2.8 lens. It was much easier to get photos with this set up than my own Nikon D70s and 70-300mm VR. For one the 40D shoots like a automatic weapon at 6.5 pictures per second compared to the 3 pictures per second on my camera. So I get to shoot alot more photos and get more keepers. The easy thing about tennis is that the movements of the players are very predictable unlike basketball so its easier to track them on camera. However, the challenge was to get the ball, the player's expression and the swing of the racquet in that split second where they're all in perfect synchrony and in the right parts of the photo. Needless to say alot of photos had to go to the recycle bin. The first one was the best of all. Everything was just perfect!













Just yesterday I had to do a portrait shoot for the women's tennis coach, Sandy Kriezel. I thought of putting her against a background with one of the players in action and it worked. This one was done with off camera flash balanced with bright sunlight. I really love the effect it has on portait photos.



Finally, an artsy fartsy still life shot.

Finals are two days away but I can't be studying all the time. So I decided to finally move my blog over here and do a HDR on one of my duck photos. All my previous posts in my other blog have been transferred here so you won't have to go back there!

I do alot of panoramic photos like those of the Grand Canyon not too long ago and I thought making those were really neat. Then I found out about panography and I was totally blown away! I just had to do some! I thought it was easy, take a few dozen photos and put them together in Photoshop automatically using the Photomerge command. I was soo wrong and it took 3 attempts (going back and "rephotographing" 2 more times) just to put one together. This is the new extension to the library that will open in Fall 2008.



So here's how its done. First you got to plan the final image in your mind before you shoot the photos. Failure in doing this resulted in the re-shoots! Set the camera to manual mode, white balance to any of the presets and make sure the focal length is fixed throughout the shots. Stop down the lens to ensure maximum depth of field. Then start taking photos as randomly as possible turning the camera to weird angles and make sure that there is overlap between shots. Most importantly, do not move your legs! Stay as still as possible to avoid perspective problems.The library shot above was created from about 30 images.



Then the real horror started in Photoshop. Like I said I thought it would be a simple photomerge command and wait for Photoshop to do everything. I was wrong. Photomerge cannot rotate and merge images together. It assumes all your photos are in either landscape or portrait orientation. Or maybe there's some hidden thing I haven't discovered. So I had to position each photo manually on top of one another. For the library photo, it took me a good 2 and a half hours to get everything done. Resize each of the individual photos before you begin otherwise the file will be too large to handle. The library shot turned into a 125+ megapixel file right before the RAM couldn't handle it anymore and the poor computer gave up.



I hope to try something other than a building. Maybe someone's face or some landscape shot.