White Balance and Exposure Compensation

Last night's photography class topics covered exposure compensation and white balance. I found the part about exposure compensation especially interesting. As part of the in class shooting situations we had a scene that was predominantly white and one that was predominantly black and we had to do either an EV- or EV+ shift to make the exposure "look" correct as opposed to what the meter was showing as a correct exposure. The camera's metering system tries to average all the tones in a scene but this doesn't always work especially for really bright or really dark subjects. So for white subjects you would actually do exposure EV+ compensation by 1 or more stops and for blacks you would do EV- compensation by one or more stops. The next thing we did was try out several built in preset WB options on our cameras under different lighting situations. Afterwards we applied a custom WB setting using calibration from a grey card. The difference in some cases was amazing. The natural look of colors as they should be was obtained with the custom WB as opposed to either a yellowish or blueish cast to the image with any of the presets. So our assignments this week will be to find scenes that are dominantly light or dark in tone and correctly expose them plus try out a backlit scene and correctly expose it too. For practice with white balance we have to photograph subjects indoors with tungsten or flourescent light and subjects outside with natural light and try to white balance them accordingly. Here are a few pictures taken in the class exercise.

Shots from around Granville Island

I went down to Granville Island and took a few shots late in the afternoon with not much available light. For the most part I was shooting in full manual mode but I also played a bit with some camera settings to achieve the purplish sky and color saturation in a few of the photos. Took some long exposure shots too. Still learning and making mistakes along the way but now I can look at the pictures and determine why certain ones didn't turn out when I review them and look at the settings that were used. It's usually that I was hand holding a shot with the shutter speed too slow or my aperture was opened up too much and I end up losing a lot of details that I would have wanted. Here are a few shots from that outing.

Photography Course Class #2

Tonight was the second class of the photography course I am taking. Each of the students brought in a small assortment of their own personal photographs and the instructor offered his thoughts on them as did some of the students. It was really interesting to see the creativity in some of the shots and fun way to learn about composition and what works and what doesn't. We concluded tonight's class with some shooting in black and white to understand exposure and how to shoot in full manual mode, AV mode and TV mode. Above are a few shots from the class of some lighted props and one of my instructor.

First Night at Photography Course

Well tonight was the first class of my 10 week course that I am taking with Vancouver Photo Workshops covering the Basics of Digital Photography. It was interesting to see people from all different backgrounds show such an interest in learning about photography. Our instructor Syx Langemann is a very cool guy and you can tell that he is very passionate about photography as an art form. I am sure that in the weeks to come it will be even more interesting with field trips and studio shots with models. Our homework every week is to bring in six photos that we have taken that we would like to share with everyone. I'll post some of the photos I either bring to class or take during class in the weeks to come. This will certainly encourage me to get out more and just shoot as much as I can.

Night Shots on a cold Vancouver Evening

Lately the weather in Vancouver can be summed up in two words, wet and cold. Tonight was no exception but I wanted to get out and snap a few photos. I shot all of these handheld because I didn't have a tripod with me so I cranked up the ISO to 1600 and shot as wide open as I could for most shots. Here are a few shots and I would have stayed out a bit longer but my fingers were frozen.

This shot below is of the Lion outside of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

































This shot is of the Countdown Clock for the 2010 Winter Olympics Games to be held in Whistler, BC.

There is a group of graffiti art that is on the North off ramp of the Granville Street Bridge that goes onto Seymour Street that has been there for some time now. I am surprised that the city has not done anything about it but personally I think it is a tasteful display of an urban artform and perhaps since there are no depictions of violence and obscene language in them they are ignoring it. I did use flash on the individual shots of each piece of artwork to bring out the colors.

Taking Photography Courses

I've been interested in photography for a long time and at various times in my life wanted to take it up as a serious hobby. Cost of equipment and developing prints in the past always held me back from pursuing it. I'd taken courses a very long time ago and even though most of what I learned then was really basic there was one thing that I did take away from it and that was learning to develop an "eye" for photography. I really like capturing the moment and especially photographing people and events. A couple of months ago I finally purchased a digital SLR along with a flash and some lenses. I plan to take photography seriously this time and have once again enrolled myself in courses more so this time to take myself beyond just the technical know how of f/stops and shutter speeds but into the more creative aspects of photography. My goal is to become more than just an amateur photographer but one day making a profession out of it. I think it would be a career that I could truly say I would be passionate about instead of the current profession that I am in now. Well my course starts next week so I'll write more about it then.

Music Genome Project

I often want to just have some of my favorite music playing in the background on my computer while I'm working or surfing. I came across this site www.pandora.com that allows you to create a radio station of your own that plays the genre of music you like. By entering in an artist it will look for music that is similar and stream it. I think its great because even though I have a lot of songs on my Ipod and also on my laptop I hate having to arrange them into playlists. Even on random in iTunes I seem to run out of songs that work well together but with Pandora I don't even have to own the songs or have them downloaded. I love it!

Signing out books at the Public Library

In today's day and age of the internet and having information so readily available to you at the drop of a few keystrokes and a click of the mouse, the necessity to visit a real library seems almost archaic. But what if you truly wanted to read a book? Sure you can download electronic versions of books but I for one have never been able to read vast amounts of text off a monitor. There is something about the tactile feel of a book and the turning of pages that still appeals to some of us. Well today I finally went to the library and signed out a few books for the first time probably in over fifteen years. I dare to say that it was almost nostalgic! They still had the Dewey decimal system for filing books but now you look up books online instead of searching through a card catalogue and do self check out of your books through a barcode scanner. Sometimes you just can't beat things from the past.

Zeitgeist - The Movie

I personally think that everyone needs to see this movie. You can find it on the internet and watch it or download to watch it with others but the important thing is to learn the truth. It may confuse you, anger you and even shake the foundations of your beliefs to learn what this film has to say but at least it will make you think.

Starting off the New Year

It's the beginning of 2008 and I thought that I'd start the year off by creating my new blog. Even if nobody ever reads a thing that I write about on here at least it will be a way for me to place my thoughts somewhere so that I can look back at them over time. As the title of my blog is a play on my name it will also hopefully be a truthful account of what it is just being me.