disruption.

Day 13: Dynamic Tension

Dynamic Tension... If you don't know what to make of this, don't worry, I didn't either. My first thought was just "Wait.. What?". It is nothing that I have ever heard of as a phenomenon or photography device. But it is not hard to understand, really, and it can be a usefull tool sometimes.

Josh explains here:
"This is one of those things that, once you’ve learnt about it, you can’t stop seeing, making it quite easy.
What you need to look out for is as follows:

• Multiple diagonal lines moving away from each other in different directions.
• Paths that move in opposing direction.
• Body language that contrasts between 2 or more subjects." 

 This is what I came up with today:

I wanted to include something in the foreground of my picture to make it a little more interesting and I saw this rose growing outside so I used that and I think it woked quite nicely. The bloom is the eye-catcher and leads you to the center of the picture where the boards intersect. They pull your attention to the other three corners of the picture. The contrast of pink, brown and silver with the little touches of turquise work very well together but I also like the BW because it creates even more contrast. What do you think? Which one do you like best? Exp. 1/60; f/14; ISO 160.

This is a tree also here at my dorm. I used the cuts and growths on the tree to disturb the image a little more and have something the eye catches on. The different branches move in different directions and the twigs in the background create even more of a mess with their opposing directions. Exp. 1/80; f/14; ISO 1000.

I hope it gets clear what is meant by "Dynamic Tension". It can be a very creative tool but don't overuse it. Sometimes a tense and a disrupted photo is very interesting but if you set up all your photos like this, it will get a little exhausting, too.

Lots of love,
Eileen

expressions.

Day 12: Portrait

Hello there,

I was quite afraid of this challenge because for portraits you obviously have to work with people. And photographing people can be a very scary thing. But not if you take them of incredibly patient and forgiving models like my dear friend Sara. So thank you so much for helping me out today and bearing with me as I kept resetting the camera and rearranging poses!

Here you can find Josh's post about portrait photography. Check it out! 

Today we went to the Botanical Garden of our university and I am amazed of how many pictures turned out so gorgeous!

Exp. 1/125; f/6.3; ISO 100.

 

 Exp. 1/50; f/4.5; ISO 800.

 

Exp. 1/6-; f/16; ISO 320.

You're a keeper girl! Thanks for being my model today! :) 

creation.

Day 11: Landscape

Today I took photos of the nature around me. I love getting out after a very procrastinated day and get the chance to admire what God created. And I am always awed at how beautiful the Ruhr area can be! Those who say otherwise just have not been to the right places!

The best time of day for lanscape photos is the so-called "Golden Hour", which is right after the sun has risen or right before it sets. The light is very soft and, yes, golden during this time. But it is usually very short lived and not really an hour long.

Concerning camera settings, landscape usually works best with a narrow aperture (Blende in German) because you get a very nice depth of field (small lens opening = a sharp image through and through). F/11-f/22 are best, says Josh. Here you usually do not want a bokeh (remember Day 9?). But, again, photography rules are more guidelines, really.

When you are looking for a nice composition or see a pretty landscape you want to capture, you should always try to include some kind of foreground, midground and background. If you simply shoot a tree line with nothing interesting in the foreground, the photo will look boring. Josh's examples are incredible!

Compare the two following photos:

 

 Exp. 1/60; f/16; ISO 125.

Exp. 1/60; f/11; ISO 100.

The second image is much more interesting than the first one even though it only has some brown grass in the foreground. But because of this you actually have a foreground, the field and trees are in the midground and the university buildings in the back. I am a sucker for blurry backgrounds so I did keep the arperture on f/16. Not too narrow but also not too wide so that you can still make out the buildings.

My favorite of today is this one, though:

Exp. 1/400; f/7.1; ISO 100. The berries create a colorful contrast to the blue and green background. The university buildings (I am usually in the second from the left by the way ;)) are still visible and most importantly, recognizable.

And to make clear, what I mean by wide and narrow aperture for those who do not know, compare the image above and the following. (When you click on the picture it'll show up bigger for better comparison.)

Exp. 1/60; f/22; IS0 200. For the first one I used a fairly wide aperture (f/7.1; the wider the aperture, the smaller the number) so that the background is a little fuzzy. For the lower picture, I used the narrowest aperture (f/22). In this photo the berries in the front, the house and the RUB buildings are all sharp.

I hope you learned a bit about foreground, midground and background composition and how to use your aperture depending on what you want to put your focus on. If you shoot with a compact camera and cannot manually set your aperture, you can still use the portrait- (blurry background) or landscape (sharp everything) settings accordingly. Of course you can also make your midground the focus, as I did in my title photo, the mossy plant thingies on the bridge pillar.

So next time you are out in the open and want to take photos try to really take your time and move around to see what frame works best, when the composition is just right and wait for the sun to shine through the clouds or to set. It will be well worth it and you will notice a huge difference! But don't forget to also take IN what you are taking photos OF! It is always a bummer when you come home and realize that you don't even remember what you photographed!

If anything is unclear or if you are having trouble understanding the whole camera settings, etc. just leave a comment or message me on FB or wherever. I'll be happy to help. :)

Lot's of love and God bless,
Eileen

memorable weekends.

Hello everyone who's reading,

I went home this weekend and didn't want to take my laptop so I missed a couple days of the photo challenge. But this weekend was one of the best in a while! I worked at a wedding and a 60th birthday party with wonderful guests and co-workers. I met a lot of old friends at Affentennis (or "monkey-tennis"), the annual amatuer volleyball tournament which always ends in a great party, and I had such a blast that I went home slightly drunk with my mom at 5:30 am. And I got to go to the North Sea with my grandparents for a day. I cannot wait to join them for two weeks next Monday!

So I did take photos for the challenges eight and nine at the beach yesterday.

Day 8: Sunset
This one is quite obvious I think. Take a picture of a beautiful sunset. You should make sure that the horizon is not in the middle of the picture because that will let it look like two different images (Rule of Thirds). But also remember that photography rules are usually just guidelines and in some special cases a middle horizon might work really well.

Exp. 1/80; f/16; ISO 500. You might also want to include something in the foreground to make it more interesting as in the following two photos.

I took this the other day from my terrace. Exp. 1/50; f/5; ISO 100.

This is in Sunriver, Oregon. I went there in the Summer of 2009 with my host-family. I took it with my little Panasonic Lumix. Exp. 1/100; f/2.8; ISO 80.


Day 9: Bokeh
This is a tricky one. The bokeh is basically the background of your photo. The better the composition, the better the bokeh. I have a hard time understanding it myself, so you should refer to Josh's explanations: "Simply put, it’s the aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of a photograph. It relates to how nice the background blur looks when out-of-focus. Knowing that, you can start to see the uses for it."

Sandcastle and Strandkoerbe (leo-translator says "roofed wicker beach chair" :D anyway, it's a very traditional seating thing you will find at any beach in Germany). Exp. 1/160; f/5.6; ISO 200.

This is a dead tree at the Haus Weitmar in Bochum. It is considered art. ;) I shot it in BW and boosted the contrast later. Exp. 1/160; f/3.5; ISO 100.

Ivy leaves also at Haus Weitmar. This photo probably accomplishes the challenge best. Exp. 1/125; f/6.3; ISO 200.


Day 10: Lens Flare
Lens flare happens when you shoot directly into a light source. The light beams hit the lens and break up into the color spectrum, creating those beautiful flares in the image. You can use them as a creative tool.
Since I came home really late today, I did not take a lens flare picture today. But I found a very good example in my picture folder.

I took this somewhere near Clarholz while I was driving around taking landscape photos with my grandpa. Notice how the sun beams become separately visible and turn violet at the tips. To the right of the back-tire there are a couple more flares in orange and green. Exp. 1/60; f/16; ISO 100.


I also found one picture that actually combines all three challenges!

This was again taken at Haus Weitmar. The sunset creates a golden glow, the background is made up of beautiful spots and there is a little bit of a green lens flare around the sinking sun. Exp. 1/60; f/6.3; ISO 200.

This was a very long post so shout out to you for having read through all of it!

As always, comments and suggestions are very much appreciated!

Love,
Eileen

black before color.

Day 7: Silhouette

Hello there,

today's challenge tackles silhouettes. As Josh describes it, they often happen as accidents when we don't get the lighting right. But they can also make quite an artsy photo because they focus on the shape of the object and contrast with the background color.

Usually the best time of day for silhouette photos is in the evening but since I will be working tonight I had to take them in the afternoon.

 Chain on my grandparents's balcony. Exp. 1/2500, f/5.6, ISO 100.

Plant in their garden. Exp. 1/2000; f/5.6; ISO 100.

into the sky.

Day 6: Low Angle

Basically, today's challenge was the exact opposite of yesterday's challenge. Get on your knees or your back and shoot upwards.

This is the lavender on my terrace. I admit, it has seen better days. I suppose I have to add "green thumb" to my list of traits my future husband has to have because I really want a big garden with verggies and berries, ha :D. Exp. 1/800; f/5; ISO 100.

 

These are the leaves of a bush next to my terrace from underneath with the sun peaking through. Both of these shots were kind of lucky-shots since it is kind of hard to actually look through the viewfinder or on your display when your camera is basically lying on the ground. But considering, I think they turned out pretty good! :) Exp. 1/1600; f/4; ISO 100.

I really appreciated these two challenges because they force you to change your perspective on things. You have to actively look for good images and think outside the box sometimes!

way up high.

Day 5: High Angle

Hello everyone,

Today's task was to change your perspective and shoot from a high angle. Photos that is. Josh's examples were mostly of buildings or cities taken from a very high building down. But since I came home late again and did not have the chance to go to a high look-out to take a photo of Bochum, I had to make due with a lady's best friend.

Exp. 1/100; f/5; ISO 3200.

But I'd also like to share a picture of our trip to North Carolina in November 2011 with you. I took it out of the plane over Germany as we were ascending into the sky.

It does have a little more horizon in it than Josh's example but I think the high angle still works great. It messes with your mind a little that you are on the same level as the clouds. I took this photo with my little Panasonic Lumix compact camera. Exp. 1/160; f/8; ISO 80.

life can be rough.

Day 4: Texture

Hello there,

Today's challenge is about texture. A texture-picture is basically a full-frame photo of smaller objects or the surface of something. It usually makes for a rough image. A rough and textural surface/object is also great for a portait background because it is a lot more interesting than just a plain white fabric, for example.

Considering that I took the following photos at 8:30 pm, they turned out pretty good. The best time for texture photos would be around noon, when the sunlight is strongest and therefore makes for a better contrast.

These rocks were laying beside my little terrace outside my room. Exp. 1/125; f/4.5; ISO 2000.

This is my curry herb on my terrace. Oftentimes, texture photos look great in BW, since the contrast is strongest without color. But color can also add more to it as in the rock-picture. In this case, I couldn't decide what looks better. Any preferances? Exp. 1/125; f/5.6; ISO 1600.

I'd appreciate any comments! :)

Lots of love,
Eileen

the world is beautiful in black and white.

Day 3: Black and White

I am a huge fan of black and white photography! Vibrant colors are gorgeous in photos, yes, but when you take them out of the photo you are less distracted. The picture tells its message in raw contrast and everything seems clearer.
In my photography class last semester, we also had to take BW shots and after that, most of us kept shooting with our cameras set on it. We'd discovered the beauty and possiblities of BW photography.

Something I had never realized until today, though, is that you should always shoot in color first. With our modern, high quality digital cameras we forget to edit the photos afterwards. Some people even think it makes them fake. But you have to remember that before digital photography we always had to edit photos by developing them. Photoshop and Gimp are simply our digital way of developing photographs.

There are many editing programs out there. Photoshop and Lightroom are probably the most widely known but they are also expensive. Gimp is free and is supposed to do a good job as well. I have not yet gotten into it because I find it quite difficult and complex but with most programs it'll just take some time getting used to it. I hope I'll have the time on vacation. As of now I am using the free program Picasa. It covers the most basic editing features, is easy to understand and use and can also organize your photos in online storage. It is great for hobby- and holiday-photographers and good-quality photos. But it does not match my needs anymore so I really need to take the time and read some Gimp tutorials.

Today's challenge photos were taken at my university. I couldn't limit myself to one because a lot of them turned out great. Like I said, I love BW. The color picture has already been slightly edited.

This is the so-called Audimax, the biggest auditorium on campus with our gorgeous view of the "Lottental" in the background. Exp. 1/800; f/ 4.5; ISO 100.

The paved steps of the outdoor stairs in front of my building. Exp. 1/125; f/5; ISO 125.

This is my good friend Sara on those steps. I did crop the BW photo a little. Exp. 1/80; f/4.5; ISO 100.

I am really happy with how they turned out! This challenge has already taught me a lot about photography and I'm excited to see what else Expert Photography has in store! :)

it's all a question of composition.

Day 2: Rule of Thirds

Today's challenge is about a lesson my grandpa taught me basically before I learned anything else.

Our human brains like asymmetry much better than symmetry and odd numbers better than even numbers. For example, if you take a headshot of a face, draw a line from the forehead over the nose to the chin and mirror one side of the face so that it is symmetrical, it would look very odd, wouldn't it? It's just not normal. Similarly, when you decorate a windowsill you would intuitively assemlbe either just one vase, three vases or two of different sizes. You would never set two vases of the same size right next to each other.

This is very important to realize and keep in mind when taking photos. Have you ever wondered why your vacation snapshots look like they were taken by an amateur? That might be because you put whatever you photographed in the center of the picture. Or the horizon might cut right through the middle of the photo. Pictures taken by professionals will most likely have the subject of the photo off-centered.

So to make it short and sweet, Josh described the Rule of Thirds with the following words:
"The rule basically dictates that photos should be split into 9 equal parts, divided by 2 equally-spaced horizontal lines and 2 equally-spaced vertical lines. Important features within the frame should intersect with these lines at some point." [He also included very good examples of this effect on his website so check it out if you have not heard of this before! ;)]

Check out your camera, it may have the option to lay this grid on your viewfinder or display. It helps composing the picture in thirds.

But rules are meant to be broken occasionally, so do not take this rule too seariously. It is more a guideline to keep your photos interesting and to create depth.

I spent the day in my PJs, so I only went into my grandparents' backyard and took photos there. There were not a whole lot of nice subjects for this challenge and since taking pictures with glasses on is a little difficult, most of them did not turn out too well. But I still hope the rule of thirds becomes clear with my favorite shot of today.

I love taking close-ups of flowers and so I had to capture this gorgeous hydrangea today. Exp. 1/160; f/5.6; ISO 100. The little blossoms are facing toward the center of the picture, not outward. The two focused dots are pretty much at the exact cross-points of the imaginary grid-lines. The blurred green background creates depth.

A couple of my older pictures are also good examples of the Rule of Thirds.

I took this photo of my grandpa at the North Sea in Bensersiel. Notice how his right eye is on the imaginary intersection of the lines, his shoulders are also facing into the picture and the cross created by the window frame creates another off-center point. Exp. 1/320; F/4.5; ISO 160.

This dandelion was growing by the roadside on my way to class. The blossom is in the lower left corner of the picture, whereas the grass-tips are in the upper right corner. The stalks are more or less aligned with the imaginary grid-lines and are also leaning into the photo. Exp. 1/1250; f/5.6; ISO 800. I had to use a very short exposure time because it was so windy out and the grass and flowers were moving really fast. That resulted in a high ISO to get enough light.

Self-discovery.

Day 1: Self-Portrait

As easy as it might seem, today's exercise was already one of the big challenges for me. I am not a huge fan of pictures of myself, which is why I like standing behind the camera. Like probably most people, I am overly critical of myself and see every little flaw at least ten times worse than it actually is. So I was a little afraid of taking today's picture and even brought my German copy of the Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers in case I'd rather hide behind it.
I was very surprised when the pictures turned out much better thant I would have ever imagined and I have to admit, I am quite happy with how they turned out! I cannot believe I actually just said this, ha!

I took this photo at my parents's house in the shade in the backyard. I used the wall of the house as backdrop. f/5.0, ISO 100, exp. 1/80. Since I don't have a tripod yet, I just set the camera on a bench and used the ten-second-timer. I used the high contrast monochrome setting and I did not edit a thing.