My Grandfather

Yesterday we went on a Christmas visit to my grandparents' house. And as we were sitting down at the table and eating some food I took this picture of my grandfather.

It looks like his eyes are shut but infact they're not. He's looking at all the delicious food my grandmom made. Click on the picture to enlarge it.


About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
- Aperture: f/5
- Focal length: 41mm
- ISO: 100
- Flash: Flash Fired (Canon Speedlite 580EX II)
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 25.12.2007

No special settings this time. I shot it in P (Program) mode with ISO at 100 and I bounced the flash of the ceiling. There was quite a bit of postprocessing done in Photoshop.

Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year

Little late, I know. Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year to you all!

I've been having a lack of free time lately and this is the reason why I haven't been posting much. These holidays are keeping me busy enough. But I'll be posting a lot after I get back home from Prague where I'm gonna spend this New Year's Eve. So keep your eyes open for any new posts.

Wish you all the best in 2008!

Gino & the Band

I went to shoot a band called Gino & the Band (the site is in Slovene language) this saturday. Here are some of the pictures:









It is always hard to shoot concerts and live shows because of the limited amount of light. So in order to be able to shoot at fairly decent shutter speeds I used the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens which enabled me to shoot at around 1/60 of a second at f/2.8. I used the manual mode and ISO at 1600.

One of the problems I had to deal with is the fact that I had to use the aperture of f/2.8 or less which in practice means shallow depth of field. In another words... only a small part of image is in focus. And that can sometimes be quite disturbing and annoying. The pictures you see above are not post-processed in any way.

Got any advice or suggestions for concert/music photography?

Grega's photoshoot

My friend Grega needed some portrait photos, so we made a mini photoshoot a few days ago. First we tried to do a couple of pictures at his house but those didn't came out as nice as I would like them to. So we went outside and shoot by the Škofja Loka castle here in my hometown. It turned out to be a nice location in the end. Here are just a few of many pictures we took.




Grega is a badminton player so we did some pictures with his prop - the racquet. We didn't have any stylists or make-up artists for this shoot. Although I could always use one. So if someone might be interested in doing make-ups on my shoots just let me know ;)

About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.013 sec (1/80)
- Aperture: f/4.5
- Focal length: 50mm
- ISO: 100
- Flash: Flash Fired (Canon Speedlite 580EX II)
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 12.12.2007

*I used the same settings on all of the pictures as I was shooting in manual mode and with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens.

It was hard to shoot these pictures because of the cold that we have here right now. My hands were nearly frozen most of the time and my eyes were watery because of the cold, so looking through the viewfinder and assessing if the subject was in focus or not was a hard thing to do. It was a cloudy day with a few tiny drops of rain that almost ended our photoshoot before it even started. But the raindrops turned out to be moderate so we were able to pull it off.

A little bit of post-processing was done in Photoshop.

Young At Heart

When I was little my grandmother had a friend who would be around a lot. We would go to their house for a visit frequently. And her husband Pavle was there most of the times. He was always a man I was affraid of because of his looks. But that was 15 years ago. And once I grew up and my grandmother stopped babysitting me I lost contacts with those people. I mean I've been seeing them around but that only happens a couple of times per year.

But yesterday was a Saint Nicholas day who is a festive gift-giver. He's sort of like an European version of Santa Claus but not as commercialised. And what happens on the night of December 5th? Saint Nicholas goes from door to door and brings gifts for children. And I decided to go with him this year and take a few pictures. So we went from one house to another and finally we got to this house where my grandmother used to take me for a visit. And as I went inside I saw this man I used to be affraid of and took a picture.

He's a nice old man and was a bit affraid of all those devil figures that are walking around with Saint Nicholas. And I was only there for a few minutes. But him and his wife were actually very happy to see me. Too bad there was almost no time for a chat. We had to keep moving so that Saint Nicholas could visit as many children as possible in one night.

About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
- Aperture: f/5.6
- Focal length: 55mm
- ISO: 400
- Flash: Flash Fired (Canon Speedlite 550EX)
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 05.12.2007

In order to take this picture I pointed the Flash unit towards the ceiling and bounced it. My camera was in Aperture priority mode so I chose an apperture of f/5.6 and pressed the button. But it all happened so quickly. There is no planning involved in this picture. The reason I shot it with ISO 400 is because it was fairly dark in that room and I needed to compensate that so my moving subject wouldn't be blurry. A lot of post-processing was done on this picture.

Grand Canyon HDR

I was going through my photos I took this summer. And I suddenly remembered that I took some pictures of Grand Canyon that I wanted to post-process later but kinda forgot about them. So I did that yesterday. And I got this interesting HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo.

HDR is achieved by taking at least two pictures of the same subject at different exposures and then combining them in Photoshop or Photomatix for example. For this picture I took three photos. DSLR cameras have an option called "Exposure Bracketing". What this does is automatically shoots three pictures where one is normaly exposed, one overexposed and the last one underexposed. This way, when you combine them, you get a greater contrast range than otherwise. But for this technique you need to use a tripod.

There is also a way to get HDR images from a single JPEG or RAW image and that is called an artifficial HDR. More on how to do HDR photography in this well explained tutorial.

And that's it for now. I can't paste any EXIF data for this pictures as this is a merge of three pictures. The only thing I can tell you is that I did a Batch Processing of three pictures I took at the Grand Canyon rim in Photomatix Pro and then retouched the result in Photoshop.

Molehills

I was lacking willpower and creativity for the last few days. I think I got a brain overload and my brain needed a few days to recover. But finally I managed to pull myself back together again and today I took this shot for the Digital Photography School weekly assignment.

This week's subject was "Repetition" and I had a hard time finding something repetitive that I liked. In the end I looked through the window in dispare and saw these molehills on my neighbours meadow. So I quickly grabbed my camera and went outside to take the picture.

About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/640)
- Aperture: f/2.8
- Focal length: 50mm
- ISO: 100
- Flash: Not Fired
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 04.12.2007

It was a cloudy day so I was working with a beautiful naturaly diffused light. I imagined my shot being black&white even before I took it. So I made sure that the sun was infront of me and got some nice shadows. Then I composed my shot and took a few pictures. Came back home, put the pictures from my camera on my computer and chose the one I liked the most. Then I post-processed it in Photoshop as usually. I boosted the contrast (more than I usually do) and sharpness, cropped it, made a strong vignette and turned it to black&white.

The Doctor

I've been having some health issues lately. So I went to see my doctor about a week ago and she gave me some pills. And she told me if they don't help I should come and see her again. And those pills didn't help at all. So they did some tests on me. And last time I was there we were chatting and she told me to bring my camera with me the next time I come to see her about the test results. So I took a few shots in her office today. This is one of them.

She's such a nice lady. She even brought her own comb with her and did her hair real fast. And I took a few shots where she was writting and then I told her to look at me and what you see above is a result of that.

About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
- Aperture: f/5
- Focal length: 41mm
- ISO: 400
- Flash: Flash Fired (I used Canon Speedlite 550EX)
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 30.11.2007

But the real reason why I've put this picture on my photoblog is to show you the difference between the original and post-processed picture. Again I did quite a lot of post-processing on this one. It took me about an hour and a half to complete it. But I think that the final result is way better than the original one. I won't tell you about my manipulation process just yet. I just wanted you to see what can be done in post-processing software such as Photoshop to enhance pictures. So here is a picture that shows the original on the left and the post-processed one on the right.

Do you prefer the original one or the post-processed one? I know that some of you might find the "Dragan" effect a little bit to harsh on the image. But what this effect does is bring out the texture of the skin and its color.

Žiga

I had a lecture about my work in USA today. And Žiga went with me to take some pictures of me while lecturing. But before I started lecturing I took this shot.

Žiga actually wasn't posing for this shot. He just kinda turned his head towards me and looked at the camera. And at that moment I pressed the button.

About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
- Aperture: f/5.6
- Focal length: 55mm
- ISO: 200
- Flash: Flash Fired (I used Canon Speedlite 550EX)
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 27.11.2007

So I did quite a lot of post-processing on this one. I tried to achieve the so called Dragan effect. It's named after world class photographer Andrzej Dragan who uses this kind of effect on his photos. It took me a while to figure out how to do it. Maybe I'll even post a before and after shot or write a tutorial about how I do it. Who knows... But one thing's for sure. Thousands of people are trying to find out how to do it. And let me tell you... it's not that hard and complicated, but you need to master the technique. It takes quite a bit of time and patience. And the effect looks different with each picture and I already see some areas where I could further improve my technique. Stay tuned for more.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

Today I got a hand on the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens. I'll have it for a couple of days for testing purposes and then I'll return it to its rightful owner. So I decided to go for a short walk and take some pictures of the beautiful scenery nearby. And here are two examples:


EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.013 sec (1/80)
- Aperture: f/11
- Focal length: 50mm
- ISO: 100
- Flash: Not fired
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 26.11.2007


EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.003 sec (1/400)
- Aperture: f/11
- Focal length: 50mm
- ISO: 100
- Flash: Not fired
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 26.11.2007

I did some post-processing on these two pictures. Usual things like contrast adjustments and stuff. But overall this lens is not bad at all. One thing's for sure. The captured colors and sharpness are better than with my two lenses. Man, I gotta get myself a new lens.

It's a low cost lens and therefore the quality of the lens can't be compared to the high-end Canon lenses. The body is plastic and it's actually one of the lightest Canon lenses out there. But you get a decent lens for this kind of money, considering it has an aperture of f/1.8 and it enables you to take pictures in poor light conditions. Also sharpness is exceptionaly good for it's price (especially at f/2.8 and beyond). Maybe I'll even get one myself.

Scary Exhibition

This piece was done for Digital Photography School weekly assignment. The title was "Movies" so I decided to borrow the mask from my close friend Žiga. I reckon you know what movies this mask is from. Well, just in case you don't, it's from the movies Scream and Scary Movie. I don't know if it was used in any other movie but if it was let me know. I know it was used in many commercials though.

I named this piece "Scary Exhibition". It was taken in a hallway in my house and I had to remove one picture in order to put the mask on the wall. It was so much fun taking this photo. I wasn't sure what I wanted to achieve with this picture though. So it actually contains no messages or story like my other shots do. It's just an association with the movies.

About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 1.3 sec (13/10)
- Aperture: f/5.6
- Focal length: 18mm
- ISO: 100
- Flash: Not fired
- Tripod
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 23.11.2007

For this picture I certainly needed a tripod. It wasn't a bright scene and I didn't wanna use artificial light as I prefer natural light in my shots. Don't get me wrong. I use artificial lighting quite a lot but if I can choose between natural and artificial and get a good result with both, I'd go with natural light. So I set up the scene and camera. Then I took a few shots from different angle to see if I like the composition of the scene. When I was happy with it and decided which angle I wanna shoot at I took the shot you see above. I shot it at ISO 100 because I didn't want any noise to show up in the picture. But now it seems that maybe it wouldn't look that bad if the shot was grainy. But it's harder to remove the noise than add an artificial one.

Again I post-processed it in Photoshop. In this case the vignette on the left was natural. So I had to compensate that by adding a vignette on the right side of the picture as well. I also did a small contrast boost, desaturated it by 50% and cropped it at the bottom and the top. I must say that I'm actually very pleased with the way it turned out. What do you think?

Playing Guitar

I took this picture about two weeks ago. I was playing guitar and thought of taking a picture.

About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.033 sec (1/30)
- Aperture: f/4.5
- Focal length: 34mm
- ISO: 400
- Flash: Not fired
- Tripod
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 08.11.2007

For this shot I put my camera on the strings on the guitar body with lens facing the neck. It took me a few tries as it was impossible to see the composition through the viewfinder because even I am not that flexible. I mean, I was able to look through the viewfinder but if you look through it at an angle there's a big chance that camera will not be aligned properly. It was basicaly a trial and error kind of shooting. But I managed to take a good shot. I also pointed guitar towards the floor because of the background. I didn't do a lot of post-processing on this picture. Slight crop and black & white conversion with contrast adjustments.

Heart & Poetry

This piece is a light study done for my personal purposes. I've been exploring natural light lately. So this here is a natural diffused light shining through my window. The object was to get a heart shaped shadow. And the book I used is a collection of poetry by famous Slovenian poet France Prešeren. The poem on this picture is about one man's broken heart and I think that lot's of people can relate to that. Unfortunately it cannot be translated in English as it would loose its meaning.

About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.5 sec (1/2)
- Aperture: f/8
- Focal length: 42mm
- ISO: 100
- Flash: Not fired
- Tripod
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 22.11.2007

I put the ring and the book right next to my room window. When I felt confident with the scene setup and composition I would set up white balance on my camera to aprox. 7000K. And I deliberately used aperture of f/8 because I wanted a larger part of the image to be sharp and that enabled me to have more freedom in post-processing. So once the shot was taken in RAW I post-processed it in Photoshop. I optimised the contrast, colors, shadows and sharpness of the image. Then I applied lens blur and a vignette. Almost no cropping was done except for few pixels on the right side of the picture.

Fragility of love

I took this picture for Digital Photography School's Weekly Assignment. It's a small competition where people post their pictures related to that week's topic in the forum and at the end of the week they announce the best three pictures. This week's topic was fragility. I wanted to emphasise the fragility of love and relationship.

It's also a chance for me to further enhance my photography skills by participating in those assignments.


About the shot:

EXIF:
- Camera: Canon EOS 400D
- Exposure: 0.4 sec (2/5)
- Aperture: f/8
- Focal length: 18mm
- ISO: 100
- Flash: Not fired
- Tripod
- Post-processing software: Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Date taken: 20.11.2007

I used natural light in this photo. It was a cloudy day and diffused light was perfect for the shot. I also used my DIY reflector screen to emphasise the shadows which resulted in more emotional look. I put the candy heart on a red piece of fabric which gave me a greater contrast between the subject and background. Then I post-processed the picture in Photoshop. I usually take pictures in RAW format because it allows me to process the image without any loss of quality. I enhanced the contrast, colors and general composition of the image by cropping it. In the end I added the vignette to make it look even more emotional.

A new blog is born

Finaly got some spare time to make a photoblog. Here, I'll be publishing the pictures I take along with some interesting info. I'll write about the lighting setup, composition, camera EXIF data and much more.

First picture comming very soon.