Project 365: April 5, 2008

A fallen log on the north trail at Messenger Woods in Will County. I went hiking and looking for birds today.

Project 365: Feb 15, 2008

I went shooting down at the pioneer settlement off 9th Street in Lockport, along the I & M canal. I was shooting b/w film, but brought along my point-n-shoot so that I could snap a shot to represent my day for Project 365 (since I won't have my film developed and printed for at least a week). I converted the shot to black and white in Lightroom to be true to what I shot today.

Shooting the Sunny 16 and Light Meter Assignment

We finally got a few rays of sun cracking through the clouds today - enough for me to go out and do my photography assignment. Not that I wait till the last minute - we need 2 rolls of film shot by Monday, and tomorrow the temps are supposed to drop below zero again.

The first assignment was supposed to be a Sunny 16 assignment, but it was more of an Overcast 16+3 assignment due to the weather. We haven't seen the sun here in weeks. There were a few breaks in the clouds, so I tried to take advantage of that. The second roll we were to shoot was using the light meter on our cameras. With the snow cover, I overexposed most of my shots hoping to compensate for the light colored snow.

It was a decently nice day out: 40 degrees, no wind. I first went to the little cemetery at the end of my block. Shot a roll of b/w film there. It's really hard shooting and having no idea what the results are. Did I get the shot I saw in my mind's eye? Should I take a few more just in case? Were the camera settings right? Did I remember to overexpose that last shot for the snow? Shooting film is a lot more deliberate. It feels a lot more permanent, and it feels like there's a lot more at stake. If you run across a once-in-a-lifetime shot, there's more pressure to have the camera settings perfect. It seems like there's a bit more leeway in post-processing when it comes to digital photography.

The other thing I caught myself doing was shooting for color, which of course is senseless when shooting black and white. My eye isn't used to seeking out good contrast situations over interesting color compositions.

There was one shot at the cemetery that I was completely compelled to make, to the point that I was actually laying down in the snow trying to make the picture. (Me? Hater of all things winter? Despiser of cold? Laying in snow? Yeah. Like I said, I was compelled). I don't know if I got it, but if I did, that shot is going to mean a lot to me.

With the left half of my body soaking wet from laying in the snow, I got back into the car and loaded film roll #2. I headed toward Laraway to try and get some shots of this bright red barn that has an American flag painted on the side. Along the way, I took a couple detours, as I kept finding hawks perched on telephone poles and power lines. 3 different hawks eluded me while I made all sorts of crazy maneuvers, pulling off the road, and into various parking lots trying to get to a place where I could either park and get out or shoot from the car window.

I finally gave up on those hawks and headed on down to Laraway, when, lo and behold, there was ANOTHER hawk on a pole. I pulled off the road just in front of the pole and was able to get a couple shots of the hawk flying away. I had to shoot through my windshield, which is generally not a good thing, but we'll see.

I made it down to where that barn was, but couldn't find anyplace to pull off the road, unless I wanted to either park in somebody's private driveway, or park down the road at a nature trail for maybe a half mile walk. I decided to do neither. There isn't much traffic on that road, so I stopped in the middle of the road and got a couple shots out my window, but they will likely suck as they were not interesting compositions at all.

Then, I stopped at Subway for a sandwich, where the couple in front of me was so distracted with groping each other and sucking on each others' faces that they couldn't even come up for air long enough to tell the guy behind the counter what they wanted on the sandwiches they just ordered. Seriously? You have to make out in the middle of having sandwiches made at Subway? They weren't kids; they were probably in their mid 30's. I'm all for two people being blissfully in love, but that's just ignorant. Make out BEFORE or AFTER you order your sandwiches, for the sake of all that is good and holy. I thought maybe I was just bitter, but after the sucky faced trolls left, the people working behind the counter started talking about how gross and rude their behavior was - and these were teenagers who likely still get a thrill out of the mere THOUGHT of sex. So I don't think it was just me :)

After the sucky face/sandwich incident, I went to Pilcher Park to walk their trails and shoot the rest of roll of film #2. I was hoping to see a deer, and sure enough, I found a whole family of them! 5 deer! I didn't want to get too close and disturb them, but with the 300mm lens I was able to get some decently frame-filling shots. They were aware of me and were leery at first, but after a few minutes of me standing still, they went back to grazing and picking dead leaves off the trees.

Of course, since I'm shooting in full manual mode for this class, I keep worrying that I didn't have the settings right. I was very conscious of the light meter, but I was paying no attention whatsoever to the actual shutter speed that my light meter was recommending. Hopefully it was fast enough to hand-hold those shots.

I watched the deer for a bit then went down to the other end of the trail and got some shots of ice melting off of one of the buildings near the Flowing Well.

While I generally dislike winter, one thing I did realize today was that there is a benefit to walking the trails in the winter: animal tracks. It's pretty cool to see animal tracks in the snow and try to figure out what they were made by and how fresh they are. I must admit, I took a couple pictures of animal tracks. They probably won't turn out very well in b/w due to low contrast, but we'll see. I'm new to this whole b/w thing.

After Pilcher Park, I headed home.

In class last week, we went into the darkroom for the first time to practice loading film onto the reels for developing. I was very comfortable with it. Darkness doesn't bother me in the slightest, and I usually opt to be in the dark when I've got a choice in the matter. I think I will greatly enjoy the darkroom experience.

I'm slightly nervous about remembering all of the steps of film developing - particularly, the length of time to agitate the developing tank for each step. It seems like you really need to do each step in quick succession, but until I know the steps by heart, I'll probably be referring to notes (which takes time). I need to go buy a bottle top opener and a pair of scissors this weekend for my darkroom supplies. I think I've pretty much got everything else I need.

I was looking online at developing tanks and the chemistry. The instructor suggested early in the semester that we might want to develop our film at home and then make our prints in the college darkroom. It looks like the tanks are around $20 and the chemistry isn't very expensive - probably $50 in all to develop film at home. I'm considering it.

I'm also keeping my eyes open for a reasonable enlarger and printing equipment. I'd love to set up a home darkroom. A friend of mine used to have a home darkroom that he would set up in his bathroom. I've got a bathroom :) I don't want to jump the gun on that, though. I'll wait and see how much I really like darkroom work. I can always use the equipment at the college, too.

Day Trip

I took a little day trip out to a couple nature preserves to try out my polarizer filter. I went to the Lockport Prairie Nature Preserve and to Lake Katherine in Palos Heights. I had higher hopes for the day. Some of the prairie shots turned out so-so, but I didn't have very good luck at Lake Katherine.

First, the polarizer filter seemed to cause more trouble than good (though, to be fair, I wasn't shooting many sky shots at Lake Katherine). The exposure just came out all wrong on most of my LK shots. The colors were drab and there seemed to be a haze on any photo that didn't have sun lighting. Anything in the shade turned out awful and washed out. I was surprised, considering that these filters are supposed to saturate colors and provide better contrast. It seemed like it did the opposite in most cases.

/edit: I have a feeling part of my color problems lie in the fact that I switched my in-camera color space to Adobe RGB 1998. My last two shoots have felt very drab. I'm switching my in-camera setting back to sRGB and we'll see what happens...

Some of the prairie shots with sky in them turned out decent, but I'm not fully convinced that it was due to the polarizer.

I'm pretty bummed, as I was careful to read lots of reviews when I bought this filter a few months ago. I knew I couldn't afford a "pro" filter, but this one was not cheap, either. It's a $75 B+W 58mm circular glass polarizer.

I could probably use more practice rotating the filter for proper effects, but all in all it was a disappointing outing.

Here's one "keeper" shot that I took. I have no idea what it is (probably a weed!), but I like the bokeh effect.



Here's the entire set of photos - at least the ones worthy of uploading:
Lockport Prairie & Lake Katherine Day Trip

First Shot at a Panorama

I had a thought yesterday at the lake - why not try taking a series of shots and test out the photo merge feature in Photoshop CS3? I wasn't in a good location to take a panorama, but figured what the heck - at least it would give me something to try with.

I remembered from reading somewhere that the best way to do it is to get one snap and check the settings, and if everything looks OK, switch to manual mode, using those settings, so that auto modes don't mess up one of your shots (like, auto focus changing, or auto white balance changing, etc). So I did that and fired off 5 overlapping shots.

And let me tell you... I thought CS3 was worth the price of admission for the Quick Select tool, but now after using the Photomerge feature under File - Automate - holy cow. CS3 is a must have!! It's practically one-click. Srsly.

The bad news is, I have discovered a mosquito bite on the palm of my hand from my adventures. Booo.

If the image below is too small for your taste, click for a larger one.

Trip to Lake Katherine

I went to Lake Katherine in Palos Heights, IL yesterday for the first field shooting part of my photography class. It's a beautiful place. I'd like to get back there shortly when more leaves are changing color - maybe try a panoramic shot with Photoshop CS3's photo stitching abilities.

I got to experiment with shooting in shutter priority mode. I didn't have a tripod with me, but I did find an angle I could shoot a waterfall at that had a fence post that I could rest my camera on. There is definitely a difference in the silkiness of water movement, even between 1/4 second shutter speed and 1/25. (Not that I didn't believe all the photography books I've been reading - but it's a whole nother thing to see its effects with your own eyes). So I enjoyed toying around with that. I was looking for good animal shots and landscapes.

My "prized" animal shots are of an encounter I had with a squirrel. None are absolutely perfect, but they each gave me some things to think about next time I'm out shooting. I got one shot where the squirrel is trying to camouflage himself along the tree - but I got the tree in focus instead of the squirrel's eye. I knew it at the time but didn't want to move to change to manual focus point mode or manual focus, because I'm not quite familiar enough with that mode to change it without pulling the camera down from my eye - and I didn't want to miss the shot, so I took what I could.

I took about 250 shots and out of those, I've marked 34 "picks" from which I will try and choose my portfolio shots for class. I suppose how many I choose will depend how many picks I get out of next week's "urban" shoot. We need to choose 9 prints at 4x6 and one at 8x10 to turn in as our portfolio.

Here are the picks (click the picture below to view them on flickr):