Lightning

Posted by Jacob |4 comments

On the 20th of November, the Hunter Region experienced a very intense storm, with areas receiving wind gusts in excess of 100km/h, and 20mm of rain in under 10 minutes.

In addition, it was also very lightning active, which provided me with the perfect opportunity to attempt my first real lightning photography.

Despite being in a very suburban area, I was quite pleased with the results:

 

 

It was an absolute ripper of an electrical storm, and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity of experiencing God's creation.

Cheers :)

Star Trails

Posted by Jacob |1 comments

Hi everyone,

Two days ago (Saturday), our family planned to go out to Lake St Clair for a  nice afternoon/night. Unfortunately, after the one and a half hour drive there, we sadly discovered that there was barely room to to do a cartwheel it was so packed. Dejected, we drove back and decided to pop in to the Hunter Valley Gardens to have dinner. it was a great opportunity to take some photos, and I took an abundance.

A technique I was really hanging to try out was 'star trails'. Star trails are when you psoition your camera straight up, and leave the shutter open for ridiculously long amounts of time. As you all know, stars appear to move across the night sky (in actualy fact, it's us that are moving). This means that your photograph will have streaks for stars. Bit  hard to explain, so I might just show you the couple of images, and then you can see what you think.

This is the best result of the night, also coinciding with the longest exposure. I think that the nicer star trails require a longer exposure, which in turn needs no (or not many) lights (which is a bit hard in a suburban neighbourhood). So next time we are out of suburbia, I will be jumping at the chance to take some more star trails. Oh and sorry about the image quality, I just had no luck getting the images to look even remotely nice... :(

Have a good week.

Sculpture by the Sea

Posted by Jacob |3 comments

Hi guys,


Our family went down to Bondi today to do the Scuplture by the Sea walk (more info here: http://www.sculpturebythesea.com/ ).


I made the most of the opportunity to take photos, with my image folder size coming in at a grand total of 1.4GB. I am pleased with how most of them turned out, considering the harsh lighting conditions (the sun was reflecting quite harshly off the metal of the sculptures). The positive side to this is that I was able to keep my shutter speed very high (fast), which made it much easier to get crisp shots.


See my favorites below (I know, there are so many... Favourites are sooo hard to pick):

I love freezing objects that are usually to hard to follow with the human eye. Using a fast shutter speed, I was able to do this with a wave at Bondi Beach.

 

Post-processing in photoshop really made this photograph pop. I love the geometric structure looking of the serene nature of sand and ocean.

A shot that really captured the colourful nature of this sculpture.

 

I think the shallow depth of field really enhanced this photo. I love the colourful look in the sculptures eyes.

Using a fast shutter speed, I freezed the motion of these flags waving in the wind.

A macro shot of a flower.

 

I took this photo of a post that was part of a sculpture. In photoshop I then desaturated the unfocused parts to create a cool effect.

 

 A fairly straight shot of a sculpture.

 

Sorry for the amount of photos, but there was so much to take photos of, I couldnt help myself!

Have a great day :)

More photos...

Posted by Jacob |6 comments

Hi everyone, welcome to post #2 of photos, photos and more pictures.





I'm interested - what does the water shape above look like to you (think clouds)?



(I had about 80 odd more of these water shots, but I thought I might just tease you with one or two)



And since I've have probably boggled your mind in a state awe over my pictures, I might hold back for a day or two on my awesomely apocalyptic massive manipulation for a few days to let your senses rest.

Have a great week, and enjoy!

Pictures, Pictures, and ahhh... Photos

Posted by Jacob |3 comments

Hi everyone,
An update of some photos I have taken the last week or two (actually, so many I have to span across two posts)






In the second post there will also be a spooky apocalyptic photo manipulation I did using my own photo.

Enjoy.

A Photo Photoshopped in Photoshop

Posted by Jacob |5 comments

Hi everyone,
We went to the sand dunes slightly north of Tea Gardens the other week, and with the great views, I took about 300 photos, unfortunately about 2 thirds of them are UNDER EXPOSED! (Thats definitely a learning curve, I well never do that again!). However when my sister and I were having some roughfalls down the staggeringly humongous sand dunes, Mum took some great photos of us. It was one of these photos that I decided to do some basic photoshopping with.



Feel the hologramism (I love writers liberty)... Do not fight it.... Embrace the change (Oops, now I'm going all sci-fi with Doctor Who)

Have a great day.

HDR Images

Posted by Jacob |3 comments

Hi all,

I have recently been reading about High Dynamic Range images (HDR). In a basic definition, they are 2 images taht are taken of the same landscape. One that makes the sky look 'nice', and the other that makes the actual landscape look 'nice'. The other night there was a pretty sunset, so grabbed the camera and a ladder and set up outside the front of our house (had a few strange glances from passer-by's :D ) and tried to take a couple of pictures suitable for a HDR composition.

Tonight I had a look at the images and chose the best two to 'stitch' together in Photoshop. After 20 seconds of computation of the two images, Photoshop made up it's mind and churned out a beautiful looking HDR image! I am quite pleased with the results, and now I know what to do better next time.

See the image below:

Have a great day! Jacob :)

Photography

Posted by Jacob |5 comments

Hi everyone,
One of the things that has really sparked my interest in the last couple of years is photography. I really love the artistic freedom you can have without having to be good at drawing! Below are a couple of shots that I have taken recently:



Next post I will show some pictures of our 3-day home school excursion to Canberra.