Layermask

http://photoshoptips.net/2006/07/25/layer-masks/
Layer masks are a Photoshop user's best friend. They allow you to control not only the entire picture but specific areas. You can control color, light, contrast and the likes on a single object and a totally different effect in different areas. This helps create stunning skies without ruining the foreground or brightening something you want to be the focal point of a photo. I have also found them useful when I want to increase blur which allows me to shoot with a larger depth of field to ensure my subject is in focus.

Final Portfolio Continued

f/8, 1/500 sec., ISO 800, 68mm

f/5.6, 1/800 sec., ISO 800, 180mm

f/4.2, 1/320 sec., ISO 3200, 72mm

f/9, 1/400 sec., ISO 200, 160mm

f/7.1, 1/125 sec., ISO 100, 55mm

f/5.6, 1/100 sec., ISO 100, 200mm

f/4.8, 1/1250 sec., ISO 100, 18mm

f/6.3, 1/200 sec., ISO 200, 18mm

Final Portfolio

f/16, 1/320 sec., ISO 400, 55mm

f/5.3, 1.320 sec., ISO 3200, 40mm

f/11, 1/400 sec., ISO 400, 200mm

f/7.1, 1/320 sec., ISO 200, 200mm

f/13, 1/320 sec, ISO 400, 200mm

f/6.3, 1/160 sec., ISO 100, 92mm

f/3.5, 1/40 sec., ISO 100, 18mm

f/13, 1/800 sec., ISO 100, 55mm

f/9, 1/30 sec., ISO 100, 26mm

f/5.3, 1/50 sec., ISO 200, 40mm

f/5.3, 1/100 sec., ISO 100, 175mm

f/11, 1/200 sec., ISO 100, 44mm

f/11, 1/200 sec., ISO 100, 48 mm

Various

f/8, 1/1000 sec., ISO 100, 18 mm

f/4.7, 1/3 sec., ISO 100, 18 mm

f/6.3, 1/60 sec., ISO 200, 18mm

f/10 1/60 sec., ISO 200, 18mm

Nikon D3100
f/11
1/200s
ISO-100

Portrait

http://photographichints.com/portraitphotographyhome.php

Well, this is the part of the course I was dreading. I personally believe that people ruin photos. I like things to be natural in my photos and find portraits to be one of the least interesting types of photography. That being said I am still willing to give it a try (plus I am required to for class). This article was pretty helpful. HOWEVER, since the first portrait I did was a self portrait it kind of sucked because it was almost impossible to set up a shot. I don't have a removable flash, I don't have any fancy reflectors and to be honest I don't really have anything that puts off the sort of light that I wanted. I wasn't happy with how my self-portrait came out. I could definitely use some help on these portraits.
This did help with some ideas however. I looked over guitar pictures and tried to see their poses. But again as I said, I was unable to get the light I wanted by myself.

Nikon D3100
Shutter Priority - 1/40s
ISO 100
Aperture - Lo

Simple Reflection Photography

http://www.slrphotographyguide.com/tips/water-reflections.shtml
Although very short, this article contains brilliant examples of reflection photography. I tried this a few times after getting my camera and couldn't get the pictures to come out exactly how I wanted. I thought that for reflections 2 pictures would have to be taken, and then overlapped on photoshop. I was wrong. It seems that I need to make my focus on the reflection while having a large enough aperture to have the entire scene in focus. The pictures I took were into the sun and on cloudy days. I took one of my dad in a puddle next to the ocean that was way too bright and one of a Great White Egret that was out of focus. With summer around the corner I'm excited to try more.

This first image I took of Cade longboarding. The location was the rims overlooking Billings. Although the day turned out to be not that good and the sunset was eventually covered by thick clouds we actually got 2 good runs in and a decent picture. I like this once because the rock gives you a sense that Cade is crouching and the blur makes him look fast. The sky in the background was actually very good on this. To the right is a picture of my dad at the top of the Beartooth pass outside Red Lodge. Its over 10,000 feet so you are literally up in the clouds. That is what makes this picture great. Plus I added a cool zoom blur. Just behind where my dad is walking (he didn't know I was taking this either) is a big ledge that drops off down to the canyon. This day was good because of the way the clouds were a little whispy and great for pictures. I got a few good ones here. I had never edited this photo before however, so all of that was new to me. Although I had used these techniques before.

This picture of Freddy Sanchez in Spring Training I think is the second best one of him. I chose to edit this one because I wanted to practice a few things in Photoshop on this one.









This picture of John was a favorite of mine. I did cheat a little however because, if you look carefully, his left foot had been cropped out so I added some sky and cropped him a new foot. Its a little goofy looking if you know what your looking fore.                    

This is at Shollenberger Park near my house in CA. This is of a man walking his dog. I didn't know this but we actually knew him! He is a friend of my mom's through the scouts and has actually known my family for a while. I did crop out a man standing on the right of the path taking pictures and a few poles and posts. pretty darn good job at it though.

My last photo here was taken on the overlook of the Golden Gate Bridge. This couple is standing at the end of a long dark tunnel that takes your through the mountain to a viewing point out toward the Pacific. The view is really something. To be honest, I think this is sort of a dull picture. I want to go back and try this again. I found myself not really knowing what I wanted to do with this. Effect-wise and light-wise.

My Opinion on These Articles...

http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0809/ab0809-1.html
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0909/ab0909-1.html
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles1009/ab1009-1.html
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles1109/ab1109-1.html

I'll just get right down to business. In these articles, the author uses imagery that I cannot comprehend. I have never been an art major, or taken art classes where we talked about color. I know very little about it. And when these articles were assigned I was excited to read them. However, I have been a little disappointed.  In the '3 variables of color' section, the author starts out broad and says that he is going to explain this color model. Here I'm pretty happy with where its going. Then about a sentence into the next paragraph I find myself blindsided by advanced concepts of color. The author gets into very fine details and likely loses most of his "recreational photographers" readers. Perhaps for a person who is a little more aware of the concepts and terminology this article is much more interesting. Yet for me, who is at the most basic level of experience with photography, it came up strikingly short of my hopes of education. I had hoped I would learn something to make me a better photographer but found myself reading endlessly through what seemed to be a different language. Maybe I will come back to these articles in the future when my photography is a little more advanced. For know I think sticking to what I think looks good is fine.

Car Photography

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/beautiful-examples-of-car-photography/

Since I am planning on taking pictures of cars for my adventure shots, I thought I would look up some photos of cars. Now, these are much different than what I am expecting to take but nevertheless stunning. I am planning on taking much more "rugged" photos. Of a big truck climbing dirt hills and boulders or cruising through muddy water. These seem to be of fast cars. I really like the panning shots and think that would be really fun to try. Some of these photos I think were done really well and others I think used too much editing. I consider these the "fine arts" inspiration for what I want.

http://4wheeldrive.about.com/od/landcruiserrides/ig/Land-Cruiser-Offroad-Photos/bcates.htm

These are going to be my landscape inspiration. The rough, outdoor look is what I am going for with the finely composed and photoshoped added in to make them special. AJ would love that I used a bunch of Toyotas as examples. The 11th picture in this sequence is probably my favorite.

Scenic Photography Articles

http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles1209/ab1209-1.html
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0110/ab0110-1.html
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0310/ab0310-1.html
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0410/ab0410-1.html
These photos are great to read! Plus the amount of examples help me as I am a visual learner. I have always had to follow examples and make them mine. These articles gave me a great deal of ideas. I think the ones that were the most interesting to me were the section on reflections, the section of silhouettes, and the one on snow photography. Snow is a pretty obvious choice for me giving my past and being a skier. I have also done a little work with silhouettes and would say its one of my most favorite types of photography.
One thing that I learned is that there can be silhouettes with different types of light. Such as different colors in the color palette. Maybe I will try to compose a shot like that for my final. My problem is that I can't "see" the image before I take it. I like to shoot at what I think is pretty while I am there. If I think it looks good, and I know what a good image looks like, then I will be happy. I guess I need to work on planning before hand so that I can take even better pictures.
As for the snow pictures, I haven't had my camera much during winter. And it was only here in Billings so not much on the snow aspect. I can't wait to be in California sometime soon with my new camera! Unlike with the silhouettes, I do have some ideas on this type of photo. I have always wanted to take a time exposure of a street lamp while the snow is really dumping. My dream is that you would be able to see the flakes as streaks. I am not sure if it would even look good but I still want to try.

Golf Photography

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YDrhKquBdM&feature=related
Recently I went to Arizona for spring break. While I was there I played a few rounds of golf. Never had my SLR for a round of golf yet so I was perusing the Web for golf photography. This may not explain a lot of technical mumbo jumbo... but that is what reading is for. I have always wanted to do something like this. Possible for a golf course or a ski resort. It would be fun to walk around a golf course for the soul purpose to take pictures. Most of the time I am worried about strokes and what not, but the course is supposed to take you away from the "real world" and I feel like pairing that with scenic photography (which takes me from the "real world") is a wonderful idea. Plus the video was well done.

Settings:
Aperture-f/8
Shutter Speed-1/1000s
ISO 100

Photo Manipulations

 http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/39-amazing-photomanipulations
So I was using Stumble! to browse the internet the other night while looking for topics on this blog. This website came up and immediately drew my attention. Some of the photos are extremely well done. I wish I knew how to do some of them. I consider myself a pretty good user of photoshop but I realize I still have much to learn.
I like #2, #5, #11, #18, #33 and #37.
I like some of them because of the idea behind them and I like others because the quality of the work. I would have to say the one that stumps me the most is #33. Its the one of the man holding a paper with the hand protruding out off the paper. I may want to try doing some of these because I wouldn't need to travel to exotic places like I would if I were shooting landscape.

NASA Comet Pics

http://www.kypost.com/dpp/news/national/nasa-craft-snaps-pics-of-comet-in-valentine-fling

This was just an interesting article that I read about a deep space camera. This particular space craft was launched back in the 1990's and has visited the Temple 1 comet twice. I just think it is amazing that these photos were taken 210 million miles from earth and that we have the knowledge to get something within 100 miles of a rock hurdling at 24,000 mph. I have always been extremely interested in space so it was cool that this happened recently. Not only that but it happened on Valentines Day. I can't wait to see what the new generation of deep space cameras will bring. Hubble I believe will be around for at least another decade, but with the steep advancement in camera technology we may be in for some pretty spectacular photography from NASA.

Class Project

1) Blue Gate Ski: f/8, 1/500s, ISO 800
2) Agility: f/4, 1/320s, ISO 3200
3) Jumper: f/4, 1/320s, ISO 3200
4) Reach: f/4, 1/320s, ISO 3200

Well, that took a long time to attach. Such a large image... Anyways I just had no idea what to write for this post. What I ended up doing was taking pictures! After all this is a photo blog. I wanted to experience my camera with some macro shots. Everything I have done before on this camera used a telephoto (except for Xmas pictures and stuff). I only took these pictures for about 30 minutes but had a lot of fun. I was experimenting with different zoom, aperture. shutter speeds. At first, I tried to use the flash and the picture was too glossy. Obviously being too dark I turned up my ISO. That didn't work too well because it was a little too grainy and I didn't like the added depth of field.
Finally got my settings right and had a blast with different perspectives. This particular shot was my favorite out of the 50 or so I took. I can get a little trigger happy sometimes. Its ISO 400, 1/2.5 s, and 4.2 aperture.
Plus I like to play guitar so. I had a pretty good lesson today, maybe starting to work on my own stuff. And I definitely need to catch up with Tom on the drums. But that is just an aside.

New Tech...

I recently read an article on camera technology.
http://www.ephotozine.com/article/scientists-create-new-camera-technology-12991

To briefly sum up this article (in case you don't have time to read it) its about a new way cameras would take pictures. The article is a little "detail specific" at the beginning of so I will direct you to the most important section. Skip down  to the Press Release... It basically tells you exactly what you need to know. Now you can take high quality images while taking high quality video at the same time!!! I know my dad would love this.

This article interested me for two reasons.
1) There is the side of me that is intrigued in business and economics. So the way in which the mass production of this could make HQ images to consumers cheaper... is pretty sweet.
2) I AM THE CONSUMER!!! Of course I don't make enough money to buy all of the top end camera equipment, but this would make HQ images much more in my reach.

Overall pretty interesting article to read. And because the article was published so long ago, maybe the technology is closer to us than we think ;)

RAW is wonderful!

Here is an interesting video on using RAW format vs. JPEG format on National Geographic's Website.
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/specials/photography-specials/photo-tips/settings-photo-tips.html
This was a pretty short video but great because it is straight to the point. I recently decided to switch to pictures in RAW format. If anybody wants to keep their photos crisp and clean I suggest doing so as well. I have immediately noticed a difference in quality. There are many good points that Mark Thiessen brings up.
RAW files are as he calls "digital negatives" which is the reason for the increase in quality. Rather than compressing the file, it is saved at the size it is taken. He refers to your ability to adjust exposure, saturation, contrast, white balance as a second thought. This is one of my favorites because I don't have to worry about the white balance on the fly.
There are some drawbacks however. And I'm afraid they are some he didn't mention in this clip. The first I noticed was not the lack of space on an SD card but the inability for my computer to the files. You have to (at least for windows) update your software. Similarly for PSE7 you need to download the plug-in Camera RAW. Once you figure this out, the images are great in Photoshop, however viewing them is a problem on even my desktop. A computer must have at least 4GB of RAM to be able to view these seemliness otherwise your memory will be to little.
Other than that... Great short clip. I do highly recommend shooting in RAW.

Interesting Articles

http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles1110/ab1110-1.html
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles1210/ab1210-1.html
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0910/ab0910-1.html
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles1010/ab1010-1.html

These articles were particularly interesting to me. Not because I didn't know what these composition styles were or because I learned anything new. However, I found these articles interesting because they reinforced some concepts that I have already been doing. Whether I had been performing them consciously or subconsciously these articles helped clear a few things up.
I may have already known about the rule of thirds, or the hyper-focal point in an image, I may have even known about thin sky and thin horizons, but never knew they were what is called "compositions". These articles helped me realize that there are reasons that pictures look good. I always took what I thought looked the best and hadn't know that there were rules behind them.
I also found the article on snapshots interesting. Although I had an idea of what they were, it was good for the writer to spell out exactly what a snapshot is. Nobody likes to compose every image and it can be fun to take snapshots from time to time. I just like to throw my camera on auto and snap away.

Hi, my name is Matt Richardson. I chose this image to pick an image for this blog for a few reasons, but first I'll give you some details about it. I took this picture on my Nikon d3100, I was using a 55mm~200mm telephoto lens (160mm zoom). This was taken at the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, just up the hill from Golden Gate Bridge. This particular pic was taken with a lot of glare, so I used a high shutter speed and a medium f-stop (f9 and 1/200s shutter speed).
Now that that is out of the way, I chose this image because I like the perspective looking down the line. I took another few looking head on, from above and from below and I think this was the best. This camera was new to me and this is where I started to figure out the focusing. The other reason I chose this image was the experience I had taking it. I was with my dad on a beautiful day. This little guy was just so photogenic. I was only a few arm lengths away from him and he was looking at the camera, basically posing for me. Anyways, a lot of fun if you ever want to try it...
-Matt R.
RMC