one year

Can't believe it's been a year since I first started shooting in DSLR and writing this blog.  I guess time moves much faster when you're passionate about certain things in life!

When I first started learning tennis, my instructor told me that people generally learn most at the beginning and then after you get better, improvements come in much smaller increments and that's when the real challenge begins.  I of course never became a real good tennis player, but I went through the learning curve and understand what he meant.

As I move on to the 2nd year of my photography study, I remember what it was like when I first started playing tennis.  Looking back this past year, I can see my skills improved noticeably.  I still take lots of crappy photos, but at least I kind of know what I am doing now.  But as I continue to learn more and be happy with what I've achieved, I should also remember that the real challenge is always ahead and the learning never ends.

Last week I was at the Cincinnati Art Museum for my new AAC Photojournalism course assignment.  This was my second visit and it's been 6 months since my first.  I am breaking the rule by showing 6 photos in this post because I want to celebrate my newbie achievement.  With this post, I can now pat myself in the back, be happy with what I've done so far, and look forward to many more years of learning!


October 20, 2012

 March 31, 2012

b&w to the rescue

Sometimes converting a photo to B&W is not entirely an intuitive and creative choice, but a reality.

My Nikon D70 is 8-years old and the ISO technology back then is nothing like the DSLRs today.  So when I photograph in low-night situations, I have no choice but to crank up the ISO setting and that just means the photos will end up with lots of unwanted noise.

The B&Ws here are the outcome of these situations.  I've spent a lot of post-processing time on these because the originals are just awful.  I was not happy with the color in the originals but I am quite happy with I was able to salvage by turning them into B&Ws.

forms and structures

This year my photography learning plan is ambitious:  learn to create better B&W, learn to use tripod for night photography, and learn to use external Flash tastefully.

What I've done so far:

• After purchasing a solid tripod and learning the settings of my camera timer, I've managed to start shooting more landscapes at night.
• For B&W, I've put more attention on how light/shadow and texture impacts the image, and have been looking at more B&W photography books to get inspirations and ideas.
• As for using external Flash, I bought myself a nice Nikon SB-700 speedlight as a birthday present, read a few blogs and watched a few youtube videos, but that's about it...

May not look like I've accomplished much, but my latest trip to Chicago did result in a few decent B&Ws and one of them was shot at night (Wrigley building).  So I'll say that my learning plan is still on track?

more on "a day in the life"

The more I work on this project, the more I appreciate the intricacy of B&W photos.  I will present about 10 of these tomorrow in class and make sure I get lots of feedback from our instructor Lisa on how I can do this better!

a day in the life

Next week, I will be sharing "a day in life" photos with my AAC classmates.  This is a pretty open-ended subject and it certainly allows us to present a series of cohesive photos with narratives.

I've determined to use this project to practice my B&Ws so I can get more feedback from my instructor Lisa.  So here it is, a day in my life - just an ordinary day.

We're all inspired to be extraordinary.  But sometimes, you wake up in the morning wishing you can just be ordinary.  There are no expectations to accomplish anything, no anticipations to achieve anything, we can just live through the day as is.

This may sound uninspiring but really, being ordinary has its beauty.  A day like this means you don't have unnecessary dramas and chaos.  I think we all deserve to have a day like this every once in a while.  This is certainly the cheapest form of therapy.  After an ordinary day, we can have more energy to charge forth and face many unknowns in life.

new york in b&w

I have just experienced the first snow storm of the season this past Saturday!  Living in the east coast pretty much means you'll get hit with snowfall many times a year, so I am bracing myself for the worse that's yet to come...

Before the snow storm hit, I was already in New York for my photography class.  The week prior, our instructor Brad has asked us to try portrait shots and these are what I came up with. I didn't have much time to do the homework during the week and so had to arrive in New York early enough to take some street portraits before the start of the class.

And of course, I wasn't expecting rain (and certainly not snow later on)!  I got so used to the sunny and colorful New York in the past few months and was disappointed with the weather condition.  Luckily I got some unexpected shots and they end up being some of the best photos I've ever done.

It's difficult to take street portraits.  I didn't want people to think I was rude or intrusive and so I really missed a lot of good candid shots.  I know if I want to do more street photography in the future, I need to be more confident and less self conscious about the whole process.  Brad showed me a video on Bruce Gilden and it really cracked me up!  I felt so much better after learning about what he did to people on the streets.

On a separate note, I've turned these photos into black and white, simply because I've just learned B&W conversion in Lightroom and was very eager to hone my skills.  This really ignites my interests in B&W and I hope to do more of this from now on.