This post is going to be a doozy right from the git go. If you read the post last night then you saw I was asked to photograph Nicholas Sparks’ Celebrating Family Red Carpet premiere of his movieThe Lucky One, … Continue reading
Hey everyone, I know I didn’t get a post out, but I have a really good reason. I was asked last minute to be the New Bern Civic Theatre’s photographer for the Nicholas Sparks Celebrating Families red carpet event for the special viewing of “The Lucky One.” I have to say, it was one of the coolest things I ever got to do. Imagine a red carpet event you see on TV, downscale it by 300%, but keep all the energy. Tomorrow I will be posting a good chunk of my images, but for tonight I will leave you something.
Any One Tree Hill fans, this is for you.
1/400sec 50mm f/4 ISO 1600
35mm film shot with 50mm lens
This one of my film photos I didn’t get to use. This shot was pretty cool when I was there taking it. The end result was a little rough because of the exposure. I had the camera set to auto shutter speed, but I guess it wanted to overexpose a little bit. I did like this door because I wasn’t sure how someone would use this. Obviously, it is an older building with vines attached to most of the face, but I would think a building like this would have some sort of metal or concrete steps going to the entryway. This was just a cool area in Little Washington.
With Target dropping their film section this week, I have been a little hesitant of taking shots with the camera. I am going to have to do some recon and find where I can get any new film developed. Tomorrow I should get back into the swing of things. I guess I just hit a rut after coming back from such a vibrant city. Fear not, this project is far from over (and even there I have a kabillion photos I never touched yet, and I believe those are all fair game).
Until tomorrow.
1/200sec 250mm f/5.6 ISO 200
This is one I captured two days ago when I was on my walk through the mosquito infested region known as Eastern NC (Still itching from that day). I saw this bird, which looks like a crossbreed of a seagull and a crow (I’m guessing it is just one of the many seabirds around here). As I approached this bird, I already had my zoom lens attached. There was no one else around so I moved really slow. I crept forward and snapped a couple pictures. I moved a little closer and snapped a few more. I got pretty close before this mutant of a bird decided to fly away.
I was looking through these images today and saw this one and immediately loved it, and it inspired the title of today’s post. I don’t know what it with birds and me taking photos, but whenever I do I always catch them staring at me. This one was telling me, “Yeah. I see you creeping up on me. You have that zoom lens, you can shoot from there. No need to get closer.” Of course, I can’t speak bird, so I didn’t know this at the time and got too close. I tried to capture him mid flight, and got one that was pretty good, but the result was a tad too blurry.
Once my wounds heal (these bites are vicious down here…just look up mosquitoes down here and you will find images from all of those dinosaur books you read) I will venture out again around this area. I will definitely put on some long pants and sleeves this time around.
Until tomorrow.
So I guess I need to start this post off with a little explanation before I get into the photos. From the title you might be able to understand what I was doing…having fun…with my phone, and those sunglasses. I was thinking about this on my way back from lunch today; my sunglasses are polarized. I don’t have a polarizing lens on my camera phone. Lastly, what the heck would happen if both were to meet in an unholy union. The answer my friends…was actually not very surprising. So take a look at my adventure today during the end of my lunch hour trying to make something magically out of thin air (no really, it was magic).
Right out of the gate, this photo was taken with just the phone.
This was my control for this experiment. If I can’t get good results from using my sunglasses, then I never have to look silly again holding my glasses up to my phone. So let’s take a look at some of the later experiments.
Alright this image is with my "filter" on. It is a bit darker, but the clouds are definitely more visible.
The result might look good from one aspect, but it is a bit darker. This is where I brought the filtered image over to Snapseed to play around.
This was my first attempt to start editing this picture with Snapseed. Quite of bit of extra noise added to the image (not my intention) and overall a lack of quality. Failure.
I restarted from the original filter image and tried to go for a black and white look. Not a huge fan of making the sky black and white, but I think it looks a bit better than the previous image.
This was my final experiment. I went back to color and tried to enhance the cloud and the color the sky. It definitely looks better than the first attempt, and it gets away from the black and white image. I would call this a success.
So from a simple thought of trying to do something completely new and innovated (ha), I managed to have some fun with my phone and sunglasses. I am sure a lot of grain in these images is coming from trying to alter these JPGs and also from the sunglasses lens. Let me know what you think.
Until tomorrow.
