Saturday, May 12, 2007

This Photography Geek-Out Makes The Last Look Like A Hiccup

I met a guy a few weeks back, a semi-pro I suppose you could call him, who invited me to go and shoot at a track meet at Rice yesterday.

Visit my photo site to see the results.

Summary:
- All track meets should happen after 7pm in May. Weather was beautiful, nice breeze, few clouds.
- Cannon EOS-1D Mark II, nice camera.
- Above statement is understatement of the century.
- Photography Newbie + EOS-1D = gobs of bad photos
- As photography newbie hits the upswing of the learning curve, things get a lot better.
- Photogapher is super nice guy, die-hard photo nerd to the max, and is still learning- very encouraging for me to see
- He has lots of really expensive toys (lights, lenses, camera bodies) and he has offered to share and basically mentor
- I may get a chance to actually use above mentioned toys in studio setting
- Keeping day job, hopefully picking up lens money helping this guy out (this isn't his day job, either)

I'm still pinching myself. I know that 99% of a great picture is just BEING there, and I have previously just been where I normally go (home, park, work, school, freeway, etc.) so I was completely out of my element, and using a camera that I felt a PhD in Astrophysics might have some trouble getting used to. Yet I still managed to get some good captures. Sure, they are grainy. Sure, there's motion blur on loads of them (but, hey- I was shooting after dark!). Sure, they aren't the most inspirational in their composition, but with some cropping and tinkering with the brightness/contrast/color saturation I think I got some good ones!

*Squeeeeeeeee~*

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Total Photography Geek-Out

Birthday Roses 6
I got a new leeee-nnnnns, I got a new leeee-nnnnns!

I ran out yesterday morning and got a sparkly, brand spankin' new Cannon 50mm F1.8. For those of you who do not immediately get lens envy, just stop reading here.

Ok, good. You're still with me. It is so cool- I see bazillions of 50mm shots on my favorite photo site, Flickr, and in many forums I have read that the first lens to run out and buy is the "Thrifty Fifty" (named for it's super-cheap price, relatively speaking). So, I had $100 burning a hole in my pocket (birthday dough) and I ran right out to Houston Camera Exchange and plunked it down in exchange for this new lens. (After, of course, swooning lovelorn over the stupid Fisheye lens I have a major crush on. Stupid, expensive 'yotch. I want it. Badly.)

So far the biggest thing I have discovered is that in fairly well-lit conditions I can take a nice portrait and totally blur out the background - with the aperture at 1.8, the DOF gets the face (and if I'm not careful, just the nose or chin- oop!) and everything behind is nice, fuzzy, and totally insignificant in the image.

So, if you (and this is basically aimed at YOU, JY, because you are the only person who doesn't live in my house that reads this blog, apparently) browse the ol' Flickr page, you'll see some new entries, and over the next week or so there'll be plenty more with the new toy.