On the Side of the Piano

The side of this piano was so shiny that it reflected almost perfectly. And then this delightful morsel toddled by and made the perfect picture!

Anatomy of an Image, Week 3

I thought this image of the moon might be an interesting choice for week three.

Mouse over to see the original. You may notice that I . . . ahem. . . . made the moon a bit larger. Well, there's only so far that a 55mm lens reaches, you know?

Let's take a look at the specs first, before we do anything else.
Focal Length: 55mm (shot with my trusty, almost never off-camera 17-55 f/2.8 Canon lens)
Shutter Speed: 1/1600 of a second
Aperture: f/3.5
ISO: 200
Time of day: Civil Twilight

A Little Bit of Explanation
Ok, so some of you might be scratching your heads right now. The moon comes out at night, right? And night photography in general calls for slow shutter speeds, and high ISOs. I totally agree, but if you're shooting the moon, you have to remember that the moon is a sunlit object, and to get any detail on the face of the moon you need to shoot it as such. In order to get the moon properly exposed I had to underexpose for the ambient light by probably about 4 stops. The sky was actually a light blue in color, and not this deep navy.

I knew I wanted the power lines to sort of frame the face of the moon, and that I didn't want much else getting in the way of the shot.

And With the Help of My Computer . . . 
I used Photoshop to copy only the moon onto another layer and then Edit: transform, scale, to make it a little larger. I held down the shift key as I changed the size of the moon so that the aspect ratio remained the same. I also increased the contrast on the moon itself and made the sky a bit deeper of a blue.

And that's pretty much it. Let me know what you think!

Sunday Unusual

This image is not my usual style. It's dark, it's not completely sharp (as I may be a bit anal about having my images be), and it's not my usual subject matter.

Mouse over the image to see the color (and uncropped) original. 

But as I was walking home the other night in the thick fog, this kind of image was all I could think of. An indistinct figure at the end of a tunnel of trees and houses, walking into the light. But there were few other people out in the inclement weather and I doubted the image would present itself exactly as I imagined it. Then this man stepped out onto the street in front of me, and so I quickly got out my camera. I only had the time to take a few blurry frames - this was the sharpest one - and then he was gone again, into the mist. I've tried to process the image so that the lack of sharpness isn't such a detractor, but what this really is is a sketch, something I'll (hopefully) be able to reshoot later and better.

Until then, let me know what you think.

PS Thanks to Scott Law for teaching me how to do the mouse over technique on the blog. I've said it before, but Scott, you're awesome!

Lunch on the Grass

All right, maybe that's a bit pretentious as this doesn't hold a candle to the real thing. (Side note: Poor Manet. When I googled the name of the painting all the search suggestions made by Google included the name Monet. For the want of a letter . . . ) This version also includes a lot less nudity, though. Safe for work!

The farmer's market near my work on Wednesdays has been having awesome tomatoes at ridiculous prices, so naturally I've been taking advantage. I've been using them to make sauces, eating them fried with polenta . . . delicious! Nothing better than a really good tomato, and there is such a difference between those grown outside and those that start life in a hothouse. (And don't even get me started on sun-dried tomatoes . . . it's true love.)

So anyway, plunked these down in the grass and suddenly it was a photo opportunity!

Meet Danbo

He would like to offer you some grapes.

Fractured Reflections, and Interruptions in the Early AM

I was woken up this morning by Evan making a loud whoooshing sound. At 5:30 am, which, if you know me at all, is not my usual wakeup time. I'm much more a 7:30 kind of girl, 9:00 if I can finagle it.

So I gently said, "Evan?" Translation: what in heaven's name can have possessed you to make SUCH a noise at SUCH an hour? He said, "Shhh. I think something's eating the cat food."

Now internet, I may not have mentioned that our house is currently under major construction and there are huge holes to the outside in places. I don't mention it because I'd rather not, if you catch my drift. I like for my blog to be a construction-free zone. Anyway, turns out a band of merry raccoons (we surmise, as we never actually saw the perps), after having entered our house through one of the lovely construction-created holes, were gently unrolling our bag of cat food and bringing out handfuls to munch on quite carefully. It's the only explanation that accounts for the fact that there were no holes in the bag at all - just it had been unrolled to open it. And no mess around the bag either. Raccoons are notoriously clean eaters, I think.

So, anyway, raccoons, here's a message for you: we hid the cat food. It's gone, sorry. So no reason to pay another visit. But, uh, thanks for having such nice table manners?