Pouty-Faced Baby

It has been almost a week since I broke the camera out, but I managed to take a bunch of photos this long weekend.  I first started with Mason, my nephew.  I positioned him in the light and got a bunch of pictures of him smiling and giggling... but then he got upset that he was laying down.  He got this big pouty-face on him, and I just love how his lips bunched all up in the photo. 

Date: 05/28/2011
Camera: Canon EOS 40D
Lens: EF-S 18-200mm f/2.5-5.6 IS
Exposure: Manual
ISO: 400
Shutter: 1/50 sec
Aperture: F/9
Focal Length: 200mm

 

I played around in Photoshop a little bit for this picture.  I took the "shadow" slider made it brighter so the shadows that were across the bottom right of the picture and his face lightened up a bit to make it look better.  Other than that, maybe some minor tweaking of white balance, but nothing else.

Foggy Bridge

On our way home for the weekend, it was a nice sunny day until we get up to the Mackinac Bridge to cross northward.  As we approach, I see it is blanketed in fog, so we had to make an emergency stop to try to photograph the bridge in the fog. 

Several lessons learned -

1) In fog, any dust will stand out in the photo - I really need to clean my filters...
2) Why these bayfly bugs hatch, they are everywhere, maybe some of my "dust" are these bugs (I know it is some dust, since I looked at the filter since I got home),
3) Bugs are annoying when photographying, I should have had long pants on :-P

I was not thrilled with how the photo turned out.  It's not bad, but it didn't "wow" me. 

 

Date: 05/22/2011
Camera: Canon EOS 40D
Lens: EF-S 18-200mm f/2.5-5.6 IS
Exposure: Aperture
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/125 sec
Aperture: F/16
Focal Length: 150mm

I did a little cropping, but the big help of Photoshop was the "spot" tool, to help me get rid of the dust/bugs that were dotting the photo originally. 

Sunset Sky

We had rain today, but as the sun was setting, the clouds broke enough to let some awesome colors through. I quickly dropped what I was doing, grabbed the camera (with the Macro Lens that was on it), and went outside in my socks on the wet patio.  In the end, I think the photo was worth it :)

Date: 05/12/2011
Camera: Canon EOS 40D
Lens: EF100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
Exposure: Shutter
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/125 sec
Aperture: F/5.6
Focal Length: 100mm

I did some minor cropping in Photoshop.  Along with that, I did play around with some of the coloring to punch up the yellows a bit.  Nothing too much, just enough help give the picture the wow I seen when I was taking the photo.

Breaking Storm

It's April in Wisconsin.  This means snow is a real possibility, and, unfortunately, we experienced it today.  Well, after spending all day cooped up doing homework, I noticed the snow stopped and you could actually see sunlight.  A quick walk outside and I was back in grabbing the camera, lenses, and tripod.

 

Date: 04/16/2011
Camera: Canon EOS 40D
Lens: EF-S 18-200mm f/2.5-5.6 IS
Exposure: Program
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/50 sec
Aperture: F/5.0
Focal Length: 18mm

When I got home, I did a bit more Photoshoping than I normally do.  It started with a crop, since this was actually taken as a vertical photo.  After straightening the horizon, I then applied gradient filters twice.  Once to darken the sky and lighten the ground, and then another one at the bottom of the ground to lighten the farm/house and the bottom skyline.