Making unique pictures

Christmas Lights Copyright 2010 John PuettThe theme for this months contest for the Charlotte Photo Meetup group was motion. I had just about decided to not enter this month when I saw this post on adding randomness to your photographs. I was reminded that I have a tendency to take pictures that are more abstract at times. Photos (like this and this) that involve moving the camera. 

That would be perfect, I thought. But what to shoot?

Then I remembered that my small town still has it's Christmas lights up. So, last night I went out and found some cool lights. For some I spun my camera in the air (side axis) making sure to catch it before it landed. (And I was wearing a damn fine strap, but more on that later.) For some, such as the one on this page, it was more of a gentle toss up into the air. The subject this time was the multi-colored lights that were strung one one of the trees next to the old court house. The end result reminded me of Mardi Gras beads. But if you look on my photo stream on Flickr, you can see some that were taken that look almost like fireworks being set off.

Truly unique I think.

And something to ponder when you are looking for inspiration.

Whitewater Falls

I drove up to Whitewater Falls, expecting to take some awesome pictures of one of the most impressive waterfalls in North America. What I came away with is a lesson in photography.

Taking a few lessions from previous outtings, I wanted to go light. I took just my body, the 24-70 lens (I wanted to focus on more wide angle/landscapes), A spare battery and a spare memory card. If you take too much, sometimes you are bogged down and miss amazing images. I also wanted to take some HDR photos, as the light was low.

What I didn't take was a tripod.

I ended up with a bunch of shaky pictures. Only a few were steady enough to turn out well (but I think they turned out very well). And I didn't end up with good enough photos to compile a HDR. And part of my problem was the apperature. I wanted a deep depth of field, so I set the f stop to 20, but that required me to set the shutter speed way too low. Had I a bit more experience, I would have realized that I could have used a larger apperature at the distance I was at. It wouldn't have made a difference in the depth of field, and the picture would have been even sharper.

I also should have left home earlier in the day, as I had to turn back before it got too dark, and that was before I got closer to the falls.  I will go back and I will take better picutres.

So what this means is that instead of a photo outting Saturday, I had a workshop on what not to do when taking photos.

And I am ok with that.