Day 32 – Assignment

I made a month! Woohoo! This weekend, yesterday and today I’ve been working on my first assignment for our lighting class. It seems simple enough: shoot a white cube, sphere and cylinder against a white background using a single light source. Simple, yes. Easy? No! Here’s the catch: Nothing can bleed into anything else. All planes must be distinct, including the backdrop and the table top. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, photographically speaking. And at some point I had to stop, because I still have to get over to the print lab on campus and print one black and white photo. And the lab hours haven’t been posted yet, and did I mention I live an hour out of Reno, and that I have a full-time job that I will have to leave early to print before class starts at 4pm? So, yeah, I am freaking out. But then again, I always do when it comes to class. Ask my ART 141 instructor. Heck, ask my husband.

Anyway, at some point I had to commit, so it’s down to these two. I hope I don’t get my ass handed to me.

On review, I doubt the it will be the second photo. Not enough distinction between the top of the cylinder and the shadow along it’s length. Back to my files…

Day 31 – Color and Light

I’m sorry I’m so late posting this. I had class tonight and I’ve spent the evening working on my first assignment. And no, I’m still not satisfied, but my battery just about ran out of juice, so I had to stop. As is typical on a work and school day, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to shoot, so I returned to the same park where I shot the bridge on Day 18. While I did take a few pictures of the bridge, what really caught my eye was how the late afternoon sun was playing on the sparse vegetation. I even found a little color in our drab northern Nevada winter.

Now, off to bed.

Day 30 – Auto Controls

After a less than successful day with my camera, I jumped in my car to head home. I pulled my camera out of the bag and started shooting the various dials and controls in my car. I shot this at 1600 ISO, normally far too high for my taste, but in this case the grainy-ness seems to fit the subject.

Day 29 – Playing with HDR

I’ve been hearing a lot about HDR and wondering if I might start incorporating it into some of my photography. From what I can see, HDR is an effective tool when you are dealing with wildly different exposed areas in a photograph. In northern Nevada it is quite easy to blow out the sky when trying to shoot a landscape. Anyway, I experimented a bit today. First I did a quick bit of research on the intertubes, just to figure out the mechanics of it in Photoshop, and then I went out into the front yard and took photos. Using a tripod, I set my f-stop to 22, ISO to 100 and took multiple shots adjusting shutter speed each time to properly expose for the sky, the mountains, foreground, etc. I also did the same thing looking out through our front door. Here are the results.

A view of the mountains from our front yard. © Carissa Snedeker

Normally to get this kind of definition in the colorless landscape I would have to blow out the sky, so I kind of like how the sky looks here.

Looking toward the mountains through the leafless windbreak. © Carissa Snedeker

I really like the sky in this one.

Finally, I shot this in our living room looking out on our front yard through our storm door (I live in the desert…we only have lawn in the backyard). Shots like this are really where HDR appears to provide the greatest assist. In order to get any blue from the sky and still properly expose the interior of the house, HDR is a nice tool. I am not that happy with this particular photo, but I wanted to share it anyway.

Looking out the front door. © Carissa Snedeker

I have much to learn if I want to use this tool more effectively.

Day 28 – Let me out!

Nina, inside the storm door and dreaming of chasing jack rabbits.

There’s a gorgeous crescent moon in the sky. I’ve got to go try to capture it.

Day 27 – Tangled Tree and a Kitteh

I wanted to share this with you. I took this photo in the same field where I shot the wagon wheel. Behind the wagon wheel (lower left of this photo) there is a tree with a wheel that, as the tree has grown, has been absorbed into the tree itself. One of these days I’m going to sneak through the barbed wire to get a really good look at it.

Normally Maya is a bit aloof but every now and then she wants to hang out and tonight was one of those nights. She paused on the end table and I was able to snap quite a few of her lit only by the table lamp. She looks so sweet and soft.

Day 26 – Froggie is in love

Doesn’t he look like he is head over heels? But she appears to want nothing of it.

I collect frogs and some of them have migrated to my office, so I decided to play with a couple of them today. I made a tiny light studio in my office to. I leaned a sheet of white paper in the window sill so that it provided backdrop and floor and had some fun. Daylight through my west-facing office window (camera right) provided the majority of the light (office lights were on as well). It was cloudy so there were no harsh shadows.

Day 25 – Shapes

Aside from commuting, work, and lunch with my daughter, rather than taking pictures, I spent a lot of my “free” time today on a quest . Our assignment last night was to construct or buy a sphere, a cube, and a cylinder. After looking at my meager supplies at home, and determining that I only have so many hours in the day, I realized I was going to have to go out and find these objects. I went to the craft store. I went to the hardware store. I looked in Babies-R-Us. Finally, I got the brilliant idea to stop at our local Parent-Teacher store. I’ve stopped there when I’ve needed odd things that are usually reserved for the classroom. And Eureka! I found what I was looking for. These will be used in learning how to light a subject. I need to paint them white (and in fact, the first coat is drying as I type). As a result, this is my 365 photo for the day. Tomorrow is another day!