Passion for Photos

Several of my photography teachers pointed out the importance of the background of an image. One even said that he starts out considering the background before he looks at the subject of an image. A background image is defined as an image without a clear subject. This week photograph backgrounds. You can look at texture, color, blurr images etc.

I photographed this background at the beach. It is blurred water. Enjoy this exercise and start collecting a background file folder. Background images can become very handy from time to time.As always, enjoy this exercise!

In order to get this image I used the light as my background. I basically got a “shadow” image of the slinky which portraits the form.

Enjoy and happy Friday!

I used a string to lift the slinky up and photographed it while it was slowly turning in the air. I stopped my lens down to f22 giving me an exposure time of 30 seconds at ISO 100. During the exposure time I discharged a small flash three times freezing the slinky at three different positions.

Enjoy and be creative with your camera!

To create this image I had to overexpose. Compare the light with the images from Tuesday’s and Monday’s pictures. It has again a different quality.

Enjoy and have fun photographing!

In this images I used a harsh light source coming from the lower right corner. The light source creates a nice shadow. Try to play with the light source. Just by changing the light you will get several great images that all have a different feeling to them. By the way: I believe a master in the field of photography is someone who can create (and maybe control) different kind of feelings associated with the same subject!

Enjoy and happy photographing! 

Since it is still January and winter in the northern part of the world I came up with another indoor exercise. I borrowed my son’s slinky and used all kinds of light sources and reflectors to photograph it. This is a very creative exercise and you can create great images with this one object.

In this image I used regular window light and a gold reflector to create the “early morning sun” reflection.

As always, enjoy this exercise and be creative!

I photographed this mandolin in San Francisco. Using a f5.0 aperture I got in-focus everything on the right hand side to about the left hand of the musician.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

On my exercise walk I came by a group of river rocks. In order to photograph them I had to put the camera close to the ground. I picked f2.8 to put the first rock on the right side in focus. The second rock is already out of focus.

Enjoy and happy exercising with your camera!

I saw this group of beer glasses and I used a wide open lens to get a shallow depth of field. Besides this row of empty glasses were a few full beer glasses. They were reflected as they yellow spots in the empty glasses. I thought those reflections made the image more interesting.

Enjoy and happy photographing!

I used a 50mm prime lens at f1.8 to create this image. I wanted the fence to be in focus and the trees out of focus as much as possible.

This is a prime example that you can take great images with relatively inexpensive lenses. The Canon 50mm f1.8 lens used to cost only around $50.00 a few years ago. Now you can be lucky if you get it for about $100.00. This lens is very sharp and you can create great images with it. The great French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson used a 50mm lens in almost all of his photographs!

Enjoy and happy photographing!