Bikes Redux

Aperture: f/4
Shutter Speed: 1/25
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 55mm

Well as long as I'm recycling content, I thought I'd post this second picture of the 'bicycles' near my house (for the first picture, click here), as I feel it's a great example of how focal length can really change the feeling of a picture. A lot of other things are different too: the first one I took in the morning, this one I took in the early evening, and the composition isn't exactly the same. But the perspective is almost identical, and yet they have really different feelings to them. This one isn't even taken with a particularly wide lens (55mm on a 1.6 crop factor body = about 88mm, which is short telephoto range), but it feels more dynamic, there's more sense of motion. For comparison's sake the earlier picture was taken with the same lens at 220mm (about 350mm).

I'm not sure which one I prefer, but I like the contrast between the two.

Sakura Redux

A different picture, but also another take on the processing side of things. I'm finding these photos hard to perfect. I don't want them flat looking, but neither do I want to lose any detail on the petals. Plus, I'm beginning to come up against the limitations of processing photos on my laptop screen.

Sakura

I'm not sure if these are really cherry blossoms, they may be plum blossoms. Anyone with any blossom knowledge is free to help me clarify this matter. All I know is that they're pretty gorgeous.

I tried a new edit on this photo below. What do you think?

Lamplight

Aperture: f/4
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 55mm

Saw this one the street at dusk. I intentionally underexposed the image in Lightroom a bit to give it some mood. However, I'm not in love with what's happening to the color of the light there, that's not really what the image looked like in Lightroom before I exported it, so I'm at a bit of a loss.

But even with that quibble, I do enjoy the image overall.

Alamo Square

A classic San Francisco shot, I couldn't help taking this as the light was just so good.

I'm undecided about that light splotch in the middle, I could have fixed it in Lightroom, but I decided it gave the photo a bit of quirkiness.

Also, a great time-lapse video of Vancouver: the clouds are amazing!

And I'm jonesing for some of these brownies, right now.

And if you have a couple of hours to burn, check out Syl Arena's roundup of videos about great photographers. I've only managed to watch the Richard Avedon videos so far, but I'm looking forward to fitting in the rest.

Life and Death

Saw this cigarette butt on the ground amidst some moss, and I appreciated the contrast.