Here's some romance for you.

I decided (since it's nearly valentine's day) to take a nice photo for my girlfriend.

I'll show the photo first, then I'll tell you how I did it. :)

All you need for this is a torch/flashlight or a bike light or really any light source, and a tripod.

First off, I took a long shutterspeed photo ("30, and when I was done I just turned my camera off and back on) with an ISO of 100 and an aperture of around 7.1. This was the 'I love U', which trust me, is quite difficult to write with a bike light swinging in the air. After that I took another long shutterspeed photo and turned the angle of the camera down a bit so the next part 'eliza' would show up in the upper part of the photo.

When (after 10 attempts) I had the two photos I edited both the photos in Photoshop (CS5.5), and basically copied and pasted the eliza from one photo to the the photo saying 'I love U'. Now I had the text "Eliza I love U".

I wrote the text just as I would normally, I flipped both photos horizontally to mirror them.


I still thought it missed something... hearts!

So I went back out again and did some quick hearts which I also copied in the photo. Put a second heart in there, rotated it and I was done.
Really, it's not that difficult. The difficult part is to get the writing done properly.


I'd like to see what you guys come up with! If you like, you could post a photo or a link to your photo in the comment section below.

Birdwatching

Hey everyone, I'm back with another photo I made today. A while ago, I decided to take some photos of birds just around the house, and what came as a surprise, I really enjoyed it.
Today I came back from my girlfriends' and I saw a beautiful bird nibbling on the peanut bags we have hanging around the house, so I decided to quickly take my camera, change lenses for my Tamron 70-300mm AF f/5.6 and try and shoot some photos of it.

Sadly, the bird was gone when I came back downstairs, but after I nearly gave up, it came back.
Usually I'm the type of photographer that wants everything sharp and perfect, but the first photo I took of the bird was really quite nice, since the bird was all smudged and the rest of the photo perfectly sharp.

Maybe a little editing would make this photo mysterious, even. I might try that.

Also, last sunday I forgot to upload another photo of some chinese symbols.

Drents Museum

Today I went to the 'Drents Museum' in The Netherlands.
At the moment they have this gallery about the Golden Age in China that looked really interesting, so I decided to go with the family and my girlfriend, of course.

I took some really nice photos, but it was really quite difficult. You weren't allowed to use a flash nor a tripod, and since the areas weren't that well lit, it was really quite difficult to get sharp photos.

Of the 153 photos, these are the 6 that really looked good:
(One, made by my girlfriend)

 This one's made by my girlfriend.

Long Distance-photography

Since it was quite nice weather today, I figured I went out to shoot some photos.
I took out my 50mm lens and my 70-300mm telelens. I also took my tripod with me so that I could shoot some long distance photos without the blur of not being able to steady the camera.

Today, I found out that taking photos of birds really is quite a nice thing to do and can be quite challenging. I had my tripod with me and I tried to shoot some photos with the camera on it, but you really have to be quick to focus and zoom.
You also have to be quite patient since the bird will never sit still in the position you want it to be.. But when it does, shoot!

Here's a photo of a bird I just made with the telelens:

The quality isn't that good on this size but oh well.


I've also been using the 50mm lens to basically get some macro photos and this is what I got from that:

Be sure to check out my blog again today, I will be posting something about the stars and how to photograph them. Also how to see them moving around the earth. It's really quite extraordinary!

HDR photography part 2

Like I promised, here's what I did to get the following photo:

I took three separate photos, one overexposed (EV +2), underexposed (EV -2) and a standard exposure (EV 0). I processed these photos in the free program (for Mac, since I'm a Mac user) called: HDRtist.

Be sure to use a remote control to shoot the actual photos 'cause otherwise they will be blurry. HDRtist however, has an option called 'align photos' to, like it says, align them properly. (this will take a while)

HDR photography

At the moment I am looking into a photography technique called 'HDR photography'. HDR stands for: High Dynamic Range and is used to create these amazing photos where the exposure is perfect.

For instance, when you take a photo from under a bridge, really, you want to have a good exposure on the bridge itself and of the landscape/clouds. However, when you take a normal shot of this you can either get the clouds overexposed and the bridge perfectly lit, or the other way around.
This is where HDR comes in:


If you want a perfect exposure on every object on the photo you will have to take 3 separate photos. One with underexposure so the clouds will come out nice, one with overexposure to get the bridge well lit, and one with standard exposure so that you can get all the detail out of the scene.
Eventually what you'll do is put all these three photos together in a program like 'Photomatix' and then you'll get the perfect image.

I'm really quite stupid for posting this right this second because I don't have any of these photos right now but I will go out and shoot some this afternoon. So check out my blog in a few hours and I will show you the process of shooting HDR photos.

So, see this as an introduction. :)

Studying

I'm sorry guys, but I'm really busy with studying and school stuff at the moment so I can't really post anything ( really interesting ).
I can however show you guys another photo I made in the forest last weekend.

You can see multiple logs stacked up and well, I put the focus on the first log and got an angle so that you can see the other logs in the background, faded.
Hope you like it. :)

Forest

Today I've been walking around the forest with my family and my girlfriend. Goal: to go to a place where all the trees are blown over by the wind and are all mossy.
Eventually to of course, shoot some photos of it and this was one of the photos I got:

The colors in this photo really do stand out. For this shot I was using my Canon EOS 1100D camera with the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens. The aperture really creates a kind of mysterious depth of field.

I used an exposure of 1/60 and and ISO of 200. The aperture was set to f/2.8 to get the sharpest images for this lens (I feel).

Photography Competitions

Today I entered 2 photography competitions with 3 of my photos. Once every few weeks I check this Dutch site that has lots of the latest photography competitions online in a list.

• For one of them the subject was depth of field and I sent in the following two photos:

For this competition, I could win an Olympus Pen MINI camera. One of those compact cameras you can replace/change lenses like a regular DSLR. 

• The second competition was about composition and for that, I sent the following photo:

With this one I could win a photography book about different techniques. This could come in real handy for me, and I could learn a lot from these books.

Tell me what you think about the photos and if you think I have any chance of winning, haha. 

Walking through the city

First off, my apologies for not blogging anything else yesterday but sadly I did not have enough time to go out and shoot some photos.
I can, however, say a bit about shooting photos in a city.

The city, any city really, is a great place to get great shots. Usually there are statues, nice buildings or just people or animals sitting or walking around in there. You'll have to be a bit creative about this because you really need to have your camera ready for every situation. 

A while ago I went out shooting in a city in The Netherlands and at first I really thought I wouldn't get any nice photos but in the end I got some pretty nice ones.
The thing about this is that you'll end up walking around places you never would have gone otherwise.

Usually I'd go shopping or go to a shop in particular, but when you're out with your camera you go to places you've never been before. It's really nice, because then suddenly you see that that city you've known for so many years really is quite different when you actually have a look around (through the eye of the camera, haha).

So really this is advice to anyone, when you've run out of ideas or just can't be bothered to actually look for sub/objects to shoot, go out and just walk around (a city) with your camera. You'll be amazed of what you'll actually find.

For example is here a photo I made of some kind of cube standing in the middle of a park. I saw the reflection of the trees in its shiny, mirror-like sides so I decided to take a few photos of it with this as result:

Stormy weather

It's really quite windy today so I'm going to stay indoors and study a bit.  I probably will go out later today to get some shots of some trees in the wind 'cause it looks quite extraordinary with the sun and (dark) clouds.
So yeah, be sure to check out my blog later today to find some (hopefully) good photos waiting to be watched, haha.
To give you guys at least one photo for now, here's another one I made yesterday of an angel statue:

Have a lovely day everyone! :)

Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens

Hey everyone, today I'm going to post something I never really have done before and don't think I'll do often, which is writing sort of a short review of a specific lens. I don't really see myself as a good review writer but for this particular lens, I'm willing to try.
So please, don't be too harsh on me, haha ;).

Today I will be writing a review about the:

Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens (Photos are at the bottom of this post)


First off, let's start about why I bought this lens:


The reason I bought this lens was really quite simple, a friend from college is quite a professional when it comes to photography, and he recommended this lens. He has lots of expensive gear so I was surprised to hear him recommending a (in The Netherlands) €100,00 euros worth a lens.
Since I'm not really thát rich to buy lenses worth €300,00/400,00 euros. I was really quite glad it was this cheap, so I went out on the internet to look for reviews of this lens.

• Why to buy this particular lens:

This lens is great when you're just starting to play around with photography and need a good versatile lens. Because of the fixed focal length of 50mm you can't get images finer and sharper. The second good part about this lens is that the aperture of f/1.8 will allow you to shoot photos in basically every situation, without a flash. Most of these photos will come out so sharp, you'll really be amazed (compared to the standard 18-55mm kitlens) of the sharpness it produces.
You can basically shoot all of these photos in a handheld position. Will you want to shoot in really dark situations you will need a tripod. 

• Any other thoughts:

The thing you will see people posting about this lens is that when you go out shooting with the aperture set to f/2.8 it will produce the best quality of pictures, especially in RAW. 
This lens is also made of plastic so that is a thing to consider when you buy this lens. But really, to be honest, I have this lens for about a month now and I really dont mind, or I dont even notice it being plastic-y anymore.

You will have to watch out with the auto-focus and manual focus, multiple times I've tried to manual focus whilst the lens still set to auto-focus, and not even noticing it. Compared to a standard kitlens you really can barely feel the difference of focussing in auto-focus and manual-focus. So watch out with that!
The auto-focus isn't as good as the standard kitlens but that's my opinion about it.

• Verdict:

The Canon 50mm f/1.8 really is a must-have for any photographer, amateur or pro. The aperture, the size, the weight and the quality of pictures is just way too tempting if you're talking about it's price of €100,00 euros. You will have to watch out with the autofocus but overall it's a very nice lens, especially when you compare it's sharpness to photos made with the 18-55mm kitlens.


Some photos made with the lens:


Here are a few photos I made today with this great lens:

If you have any comments or questions, be sure to write them in the comment section below.
I hope this review was useful! :)

Happy new year!

Happy new year everyone!
It's the new year and hopefully everyone's had a lovely New Years Eve, i sure did.
For the people that saw the post below, about the fireworks, I tried to shoot some more photos
before I went out but sadly, this was without any succes.

I can however post the following photo:

I did try but the photo isn't in focus. I only had four shots at this since I only bought four of those things and this is the "best" one out of the four.

I am very curious about if, and what photos you guys made at New Years Eve?
You can leave a comment below and (i think) you can also upload your photos to it. If not, you could always send them to: mail@ambydos.com.

Have a lovely 2012!