Butterfly

I found a butterfly!

These are slightly less artistic than my usual photos, but I got pretty close to this butterfly....So I figured I'd share.
Enjoy!

Saturation: Compare and Contrast

Pictures Go!

So, these are Black-eyed Susans. According to Wikipedia, the scientific name is Rudbeckia hirta, and some common names are: Brown-eyed Susan, Blackiehead, Brown Betty, Brown Daisy, Gloriosa Daisy, Golden Jerusalem, Poorland Daisy, Yellow Daisy, and Yellow Ox-eye Daisy.

So yeah, I took these a few weeks ago.....My favorite is the top one, because the background is more brownish than green, and I think it brings out the details in the flower better. And it's a super-macro, so of course there's more detail.

With these photos, I really couldn't decide whether I liked them saturated or unsaturated (left and right respectively). I look at the left one and think....that's really cool looking...then I look at the right one and think...wait, I like this one better. But, the left one is really colorful...and I like that one. I can't decide.

What do you think; rich and colorful, or faded and artsy?

Trees and a Church

So, last week I moved back into school. And then I didn't post anything for that week. Sorry...Here's some fancy new photos to make up for it.

So, as usual the title says just about everything.... The first picture is a tree with a nail in it. The second and third are some cool shots up some trees. And the last one is a cool church....I don't remember what church. These all have my usual extra contrast boost, which I've noticed washed out the sky in these pictures. However...I kind of like it. It makes the white sky (obviously) contrast the brown of the trees and church better.

That's it for now, more posts to come (hopefully) soon.

Also, blogger has a new posting interface....Not sure what I think of it.... It looks like Google Docs now.

Nature Walk

Success! Technical difficulties resolved. Anyways, this post is about a recent nature walk I took, and the results:

These are just a few of the pictures I took obviously (the top one is my favorite). Yes, I know, the subject matter is very similar to most of my other recent stuff....Some might call it exactly the same....Dandelions, flowers, and leaves. What can I say, they look cool.


A Lesson in Value:

Today, I'd also like to talk about some art stuff. In particular, Color versus Value. This is just something I've noticed when working with photos of flowers and other colorful nature stuff. So, in keeping with the general format of explaining things, I'll explain what color and value are.

Ok, we all know what color is. It's red, yellow, green, blue, magenta, and all those other ones I don't need to mention. Different Hues are the different colors that we see. Value is essentially the amount of light or darkness in something. That's about it.

Now, the easiest way to differentiate color and value in photography is to greyscale an image. Take a look at these below!

With the daisy, the yellow center seems to be very vivid and bright, but looking at just the value in the greyscale image we see that the center is really almost as dark as the background! Looking at the leaf, you can clearly see the green and the redish color on the left, but on the right, there's no telling them apart. I just found it very interesting how all these bright colors found in nature change so much when you greyscale an image.

Ok, that's all for now.

Technical Difficulties

Sorry for the delay in new posts....but I seem to be having technical difficulties. I can't seem to put pictures into my post....and that's not very helpful seeing as how this is a photo-blog. So, this'll be my first post without pictures. Yep....Stay tuned for more technical difficulties.

101 Followers!

Also, cherries!

 

So, I meant to celebrate my breaking 100 followers on the last post, but I forgot.... So...happy 101 followers to me! 

As for these photos, the top one is obviously very different from the bottom two, and for good reason. They were taken about a year apart....The top one is new, the bottom two are from last summer.

The top one....I had to mess with a lot to get that kind of color, but I like how it turned out. I pretty much eliminated all the blue, which makes them very warm looking (it's surprising how much blue is in a picture of red fruit....). My only problem is I wish the edges of the cherries were a little more well defined--a little more sharp. 

The bottom two are also very different...the middle photo has the whole dark/light contrast thing going on, which I think makes up for the lack of riveting subject matter. The bottom one... I really like how sharp and crisp the leaves turned out, and I changed the color temperature to more warm...which obviously makes the photo feel more warm (which I like).

That's about it for these pictures..... I really love photographing fruit, because it has some great detail if you get in close (which seems to be a recurring trend for me...). I wish I could do more fruit....so maybe I will.

Quick Stats as of right now: 18,542 views (thanks stumbleupon), 6875 stumbleupon likes, 21 posts, 39 photos, 101 followers, and all in 2.5 months.

Thanks for your support everyone!

A Panorama

Sure, why not.

Tada! Be sure to click on the picture for the full size.

Umm....This is a lake. My camera has this sorta-cool mode where it takes three pictures and then 'attempts' to stitch them together. I say 'attempts' because about half the time, it fails, and things end up not lined up. I sometimes wonder if I should just take the three pictures and stitch them together myself. Then I'd get it right 100% of the time. Though, I have to say, when these do work, they're very well stitched together--it smooths out imperfections and jumps and bumps and stuff. So yeah.....

Sorry for the lack of postage the past few days; stay tuned for more flowers and naturey stuff in the near future. Or maybe a cityscape.....I'm going to try and get a cityscape or two in here soon.

Encore

Two more flowers that I didn't post yesterday:

 I believe the top one is still a daylily of some sort...but it was really crazy looking. The bottom one is one of the same daylilies from yesterday. 

That's all!

Sticking my camera way too close to flowers

So, I have these daylilies.....And they started blooming. So I took pictures.

As always, these are slightly edited....I of course upped the color and contrast, which I felt was appropriate for such colorful flowers, and I really like the results. As usual....I think I use super-macro mode way too much. And then I tell myself....Too bad! I think the pictures look cool, and I can't argue with that....Because then I'd be arguing with myself. Anywho...

So, in the past few days, I've had a massive increase in traffic to this blog. It's mostly due to stumbleupon. So greetings fellow Stumblers!
Seriously, I went from about 800 pageviews and <100 stumbles last week, to an amazing 9108 pageviews and 3175 stumbles as of right now! I was at 8000 pageviews about an hour ago, so I'm truly amazed. Thank you stumblers!

As usual, let me know what you think of the photos (I really like the purple ones).

Some Leaves!

Here's a cool picture of some leaves....

Hmmm.....once again, this picture was taken in the same location as this sunset, as well as this creepy caterpillar.... Looking at the sunset picture, this is on the left bank, before the playground with the creepy caterpillar.

The only thing I really want to point out with this picture is the orange/blue contrast, which as pointed out in one of my earlier posts, is apparently a very effective color combination. The only thing I don't like about this one is how busy it is...there's no real focus on one particular leaf for a subject. But I like it regardless.

I guess I've gotten a lot of cool pictures from that general area....which means there will be more to come in the future.

Rock & Rock

Pictures Go!

     So, the first picture is my headphones--Sony MDR V6. I highly recommend them to anyone looking for great sound quality, and they aren't outrageously expensive. They don't look the coolest to wear around, but....still, they sound amazing.

     The second and third are my electric guitar..... I don't know what kind it is, so don't ask. How is it possible that I don't know? Simple, because the name is scratched off the headstock, and I can't seem to find any other markings on it. Seriously, I've taken it apart....and nothing. The body style is like a Fender Stratocaster (It's not one though, it's a pretty low quality guitar whatever it is). So if anyone has any ideas, let me know.

Something Creepy

So here's something creepy....

What is it about children's stuff that makes it end up creepy looking so often? I don't know, but this caterpillar freaks me out....

Just so happens, this picture was taken at the playground right next to the sunset from this post. Look, you can even see the river up there on the right.

Don't know what else to say about this one...as usual, the picture says it all. I realize this one is slightly less 'artistic' than my previous posts....but.....it's a cool picture anyways. Let me know what you think.

Dandelions Continued

Here's two more dandelions for your viewing pleasure.

Neither of these are from the same place as the flagship dandelion of my blog (see this post). I really like the top one, that was taken in the woods behind my house. As for the bottom one, I like it, but there's something unsettling about it...I think it's something about the colors on the inside.

Oh yeah! Here's another.

This one's a little bit older than the other two, but it's still a dandelion. Actually.....I'm not so sure about that. You can't really tell from this picture, but this 'dandelion' is about the size of my fist, maybe 5 inches or so in diameter. I have no idea why these are so huge; they have a yellow flower just like a dandelion, and then turn into this puff ball. They're also slightly more rugged looking, if that makes any sense.

Around where I live I've actually found several different sizes of dandelions, normal everyday yard ones, these giant ones, and then little tiny ones too (probably about 1cm in diameter).

Also, I noticed that all of my dandelions are positioned in the left of the photo...I did that because I think it looks better than being on the right, but I wonder why that looks better?

Has anyone else seen giant dandelions like this?

Dendrology

Ok, so I've been doing this leaf collection for my biology class....and I happened to have some leaves as a result. Therefore, I took some pictures of them.

 Don't ask me what kind of leaves these are......I think they're poinsettias, I could be wrong. They weren't actually part of my collection, just a casualty of my camera as I was walking by...

I really love the super-macro mode on my camera, if you haven't noticed by now.....I'm going to try to take some more photos like this of different plants, so be on the lookout for that in the future. Oh! I should do it in the fall when all the leaves start changing color. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

As always, these are slightly edited, so here are the originals in my picasa album.

Another Sunset

Here's a sunset to make up for my lack of postage the past 3 days.

Sunsets seem to be a recurring theme of mine....Along with flowers. Oh well. As usual, this photo is slightly edited, and there's a more edited version in my picasa album here, but I'm not sure which I like better. I think for this particular one, the colors are more interesting in the less extreme version, and it stays true to reality at least a little better.

The symmetry of this shot is one of my favorite parts (it's a river, not a lake). I even did a painting from there once.

Anywho, tomorrow I'll have a way more interesting post, with some brand new photos.

Pretty Pictures - The Set

So, I found the rest of the set from my post Pretty Flowers, and here it is for your viewing pleasure!

Blogger's picture uploader and the interface for putting pictures in here FAILS. Let's see if this looks as bad as it is.

EDIT: Yep, that's pretty bad.
EDIT: Ok, they're fixed. Apparently dragging one pixel too far sends them flying across the screen....
EDIT: Why do they look so bad again???????? I quit...I'll fix it later.
EDIT: They're fixed now.......

Here's the rest of the set, in my picasa album

Enjoy!