Portland Photo Tour: Skylines & Bridges at Night

So, as if I haven't gushed about my love for Portland Photo Tours enough here and here, I'm back at it for one more time.

A couple Friday nights ago, Michelle and I attended the tour focused on shooting at night, which is something I have never been able to do. I even recalled a photo of my friend and I atop the Empire State Building at night. You'd never know we were on the observation deck of the skyscraper because the flash lit us up...and that was all. Us against a black background. I bet I have taken dozens more similar shots since that one in New York City. I was using a disposable camera on that 8th grade trip, so it's not like I had much other choice in how to shoot but whatever. I was ready to learn how to take pictures at night!

Our landscape was one of my favorite parts of Portland - the bridges! Well, mostly the Hawthorne Bridge with a few of the Morrison Bridge. As usual, Jennifer made everything so easy to understand.

We started out before it became dark and focused on exposing for the skyline, not the sky. Then, we got to try out Jennifer's graduated neutral density filter to adjust the exposure of the sky. I want to get one of those. None of these photos have been altered in photoshop with the exception of adding the text.

I have never worked with such slow shutter speeds and I just loved some of the shots we were able to capture. Notice how I say we. This is because I forgot my tripod, so Michelle and I shared hers, which meant sharing the camera, too. All the photos you see here were taken by me or Michelle and are known as our Collaborated Collection. I just love love love the light reflections in the water.

After shooting the skyline, we learned how to take portraits at night so that the background isn't black and the person has a bright white light flashed upon her. No more night time photos of people against a black background.

Finally, we learned and practiced using slow shutter speeds on the bridge as traffic drove by, blurring the red tail lights. I'm ready to take pictures of taxis flying by in Times Square, or any other city really.

I was so giddy after this tour and had to show off our pictures to multiple people. Michelle and I already have plans to take more bridgescapes at night and practice. I feel like I have been informed on an entirely new world of what my camera can do.

Portland Photo Tour: Fundamentals of Photojournalism

For my birthday last September, my mom gave me the gift of a Portland Photo Safari. Not only did she give me one, but Michelle too! The safari was created and lead by Jennifer Costello, a seasoned professional photographer. I absolutely loved it. I learned a lot and Jennifer is awesome. She is really good at explaining things in a way you will remember, plus we were learning and doing at the same time. We took the general F-Stops & Shutter Speeds class. You can learn more and see some of my photos from that class here.

A few months ago, we saw her photo tour come up on Groupon again, so we jumped at the chance to get another one of her classes under our belts. In fact, I love her tours so much, I bought two because I couldn't decide between the newer tours she has to offer. She has changed the name of her classes from safaris to tours and added a load of new topics her tours revolve around.

A few Sundays ago, Michelle and I took her Fundamentals of Photojournalism tour that takes place at Portland Saturday Market. I am very interested in improving my photojournalism skills and love Portland's Saturday Market, so it was a no-brainer.

Jennifer did a quick review of the basics and talked about how people think of photojournalism being that one epic TIME magazine cover shot of the year, however, that isn't even necessarily realistic, even for professional photographers. She talked about capturing 3 elements of your environment to tell the story through photos: big picture or macro level, portrait and detail or micro shots. My favorite and ones I find most interesting, as well as easier to capture are the detail shots. Here's my attempt (without any photoshop correction) using the balloon maker street artist man.

I don't feel like I capture people very well. But I'm trying. Here's one another series of a hula hooper street performer.

Finally, here is a man at his booth, shaping clay into personalized gnomes. Wouldn't you like to be made into a garden gnome?

I feel that I need to work on the big picture shots, capturing the environment of what is going on. I need to work on making sure I have a distinct subject, as well as making sure the shot isn't too busy. Here are a couple last photos I liked from booths at Portland Saturday Market.

You can see all of Michelle's shots here, here and here. Next, I will post my sweet shots from the Night Photography - Skyline & Bridges tour. I am giddy about how much I learned on that tour!

Portland Photo Safari: F-Stops & Shutter Speeds

As mentioned Thursday, Michelle and I went on a Portland Photo Safari as part of my birthday gift from my mom. (Thanks, Mom!) It was a Groupon deal a month or so ago and I'm so thankful my mom snagged one for Michelle and me.

These 2.5+ hour "safaris" include 45 minutes to one hour of instruction, outdoors in downtown Portland by veteran photographer, Jennifer Costello. (She has done something like 400 weddings!) After learning, or being retaught many things I once learned in a photography class, but this time, in a much conciser format, which was consequently, way easier for me to remember remember, we started walking around downtown Portland trying to accomplish different photo tasks Jennifer gave to us. She was so helpful and gave feedback any time you asked.

Here are a few of my shots, unaltered (with the exception of resizing) by Photoshop.

Depth of field practice. Nothing too spectacular. Michelle's is way cooler. :)

Adjusting white balance.

ISO experimentation - from top left, to right: 400, 800, 1600, 3200 -- The higher the ISO, the more light, but the grainier images become, too.

Just in time for Halloween, my favorite photos I captured. One of the smallest parts of a strange statue on the sidewalk.

One of my favorite things Jennifer said was what a professor once told her, "When you figure out what subject you are going to shoot, find an alternative angle than the original 'shot' you saw." She encouraged us to walk around subjects and to look at everything at different angles because shooting subjects differently than the majority of the world views them makes for very interesting photography.

I really enjoyed being able to practice while being taught. Jennifer called this safari something along the lines of "auto intervention," meaning we would understand how to shoot in manual when finished with class. She was right. I do get what I'm supposed to do in M mode, but need loads more practice cause I still have to think far too long to adjust the camera. I highly recommend the safari for anyone who feels uncomfortable with all the settings on their camera, point and shoot or DSLR.

Have You Tried Instagram?

Bear with me for a minute while I geek out here. My friend Stephanie told me to try the (free!) iPhone app, Instagram. I'm not sure if it translates to Android phones or not. I'm sure there is something similar.

I just love the ease of this app. You can take a picture with it or pull one from your Camera Roll on your iPhone and then choose a filter, which is the best part! They have 15 different filters, most of which are somewhat descriptive of what the filter is, for example, "1977" really makes the photo look like it was in a box stored from 1977. My favorite filter is "Earlybird." Here are a few of my most recent filtered photos:

I love how retro this picture looks!

 

Sweet little ballerina. Again, she is 3 years old, born in 2008 - not the 70's.

Precious Happy Olivia

My feet in the field, farm girl at heart.

Now I realize I should have done before and after to show off Instagram's coolness. It's free, so give it a try because it can give little camera phone pics some ooomph.

A Picture Is Worth...

... more than everything in the house. Seriously. We are packing up and getting rid of lots of things in my grandparents' house this weekend, as well as probably saving too much. Once we got to the pictures, it was a slow moving, but extremely joyful process. I learned so much about my grandparents/great-grandparents and made connections to stories I had heard growing up by having pictures to look at.

Grandma Shirley, age 24.

Apologies again for the phone camera, not to mention awful glare from taking a picture of a picture. But, isn't my Great Grandpa Syd a stud?! I adore this picture. (He's my Grandma Shirley's dad.)

Probably all time favorite picture, again, my Great-Grandpa Syd. Fish in one hand, pole in the other, cigarette in mouth, plaid jacket, standing next to an old car. This looks straight out of a magazine. (Again, sorry for the glare!)

Soon, [fingers crossed] I will be able to post beautiful digital images of the pictures above (and more) because we have started sending groups of photos to ScanDigital. Were it not for Groupon, I would not have heard of them. You can send in anything - slide, hard copies of photos, scrapbook pages, nearly any way a picture has been preserved since the beginning of photography - and they will clean the photo, scan it using the best technology and then all images are cropped, color corrected, and minor blemish/dust removed if needed. Your final product is a CD/DVD of every image as well as an online gallery of all your photos to share with family and friends. I may sound like a salesperson, but I'm just so excited and relieved to have digital images of all these priceless memories.

If you're interested in doing this, definitely check out their website and/or sign up for Groupon because they offer $100 worth of digital preservation Groupon for only $40. (Each hard copy photograph costs $0.38 for a 300dpi digital copy. This means each $100 Groupon will get you 268 digital images. Other formats of photos cost more.)

Summer's A-Comin'

And I can't wait! Oregon has always loved to tease us human folk during months like May with a few beautiful, [gasp!] 70 degree sunshiney days sprinkled amongst the rainy, cloudy drizzle. Today, we got to experience one of these rare days. It made me so excited for the coming months and all the good stuff that comes with warm weather: camping, lemonade, pool time, NW Art & Air Festival, BBQs, sunshine, Oregon State Fair and on and on. I'll stop for now, but sure to share more later.

My sister and I were reminiscing while looking over old photos of summertime tonight. Here are some of our favorites from 2009 camping at Red Fish Lake in Idaho.

Boy, don't we all recall feeling this way when we were younger in life vests? Still hard not to giggle at this though!

This was summer time believe it or not. I really like this picture for some reason.

My sister and niece just make the most precious pictures.

I absolutely love looking at how much my niece has grown! She'll be 3 here in a couple weeks so I'll be sharing about the fiesta soon!

How Could I Forget?!

My first post seemed easy enough and yesterday I pondered what I should talk about next. I completely lost track of time yesterday, hence no post. Today, however, I remembered that I didn't even mention my interest in photography yesterday!

I have always loved photos and started scrapbooking in my early teens with my mom. A loyal owner of Canon Powershot point and shoot cameras, I simply enjoyed the convenience of fitting a camera in my pocket and capturing moments of life as it happened. Then, my good friend Michelle started borrowing a mutual friend's Canon Rebel XSi Digital SLR camera. Wow. Here is one example of a picture she took that made me realize what a difference there is between my point and shoot and a SLR.

Copyright Michelle Waters

Theeeeen, Michelle's husband gave her the same camera for her birthday. I even got to experiment with it and take some pictures of Michelle and her adorable family. Granted, Michelle was the one who made sure the settings were all good to go since I had nearly no knowledge in such things. But seriously, how precious is this?

Could this get any cuter?

Anyways, I was hooked. For my college graduation in May, my dad gave me a Canon Rebel T1i for my birthday! To put it mildly, I was ecstatic.

I am in every sense of the word, an amateur photographer. My favorite subject to shoot is my niece, Addison. She is quite a ham most of the time, being the two and a half year old that she is, so it usually makes the pictures quite entertaining.

Here she is, at her best:

This past October, Michelle and I took a photography class, tailored to Canon Digital SLR camera useres, at the local community college and it was awesome. It made me miss going to school a bit, but I also now know how sweet it is to be able to take community education classes at local community colleges for cheap to learn skills I wasn't able to study at my university. Anyways, I'm considering doing a "Foto Friday" in order to encourage myself to use my camera every week, and not just during special occasions....We'll see.