Do you remember the post I did, titled "My last meal", where I took photos of some of the meals I ate the week before starting my diet....urhh... lifestyle change? LOL! I am happy to report that since that post, I have lost 23 lbs and three dress sizes! I look and feel ten years younger and am really happy with my progress so far. Of course I am nowhere near my goal weight, but I am finally on the right track and if I stick with it I should be at my goal weight by Christmas.
At the beginning of this post, I mentioned being busy and tired. Well, being tired comes from some of the heavy workouts I have been doing. I go to the gym daily now, yes even on weekends! I run anywhere from 3 to 8 miles and have also been working out with weights every other day. I keep pushing myself to go faster, longer and lift heavier. Some days it hurts just to walk back to my car. On those days, when I have gone too far, I find that the rest of the day is spent recovering. Needless to say I have been recovering a lot lately! But this is only because I have been on a plateau for about two weeks now and I am trying to get out of it. Anyway I thought I would share a picture I took after my workout yesterday. This is the front of me and you can see I am soaking wet.
OK, now on to some real photography! There are a couple of things I have been studying recently. These include night photography, panning and zoom burst techniques. I had to go out in the field and put these into practice as part of my homework assignment. I thought I would share some of those shots with you today.
I will start with night photography. As we know the shutter controls how much light comes into the camera. The longer the shutter remains open, the more light is allowed into the camera and viceversa. At night, especially when it's really dark, there is not much available light, so we tend to need a longer shutter speed to produce a better picture. Because the shutter remains open longer, there is going to be an increased risk of camera shake and a resulting blurred photograph. So for nighttime photography, a tripod is necessary. The ISO selected on your camera determines how sensitive your camera is to incoming light. The higher the ISO the more sensitive the camera is to light so for nighttime photography, you will want to set your ISO to at least 400. The higher the ISO the more "grainy" the shot, so I try to go no higher than ISO 800, unless it is absolutely necessary. Keeping all this in mind, I took the picture below at about 11:00pm. I wanted to go downtown and get some really pretty shots but hubby would not entertain that, so I settled for this deserted church parking lot. My ISO was set to 400. The camera was on a tripod. I set the camera to "TV" mode, aka "Shutter Priority" and set my shutter to 30 seconds. Below is the resulting shot.
I did the same thing for the shot below, but this time I created a "ghost" effect by walking in front of the camera lens and standing there a few seconds during the camera's 30 second exposure. Can you see what appears to be the ghost of a woman in the driveway?
Here is another example. I had my husband do the same thing in this shot. This is so neat! It makes me question all those ghost pictures I see on TV now! LOL!
Now we move to "panning". This is a really neat technique and it is effective at showing motion and movement. For this technique you need a relatively slow shutter speed. For the two pictures below, I set my camera to shutter priority mode and my shutter speed to 1/15. I did not use a tripod.
Finally, we come to the "zoom burst" technique. This is another neat technique. It can be used to demonstrate a number of things such as movement to, or away, from an object or point of interest. It can also depict disorientation, insanity, dizziness, an altered mental state etc. It is recommended that you use a tripod, but if you have a steady hand a tripod may not be necessary. Again for this technique, you will need a relatively slow shutter speed. You will also need a zoom lens. For the two pictures below, I set the camera to "shutter priority" mode and selected a shutter speed of 1/15. I used the kit lens that came with the camera. It was an 18-55mm zoom lens. I did not use a tripod. These images were created by pressing the shutter release button and turning your zoom lens at the SAME time. The direction you turn the lens does not matter. The most important thing to remember is that both these actions have to occur at the same time. It takes some practice as initially you will want to do one or the other. I found that in the beginning I was pressing the shutter release button and then turning the lens. I had to really practice doing them at the same time. This is also why you need a slower shutter speed. If you shutter speed is too fast, your picture will be taken long before you get a chance to turn the lens. The show shutter speed allows you to zoom through, as the camera is exposing the picture.
Well that is all I have for today! Thanks for visiting and until next time, keep on shootin'!
