Little Planet

I just bought my first fisheye lens.....a Tokina 10-17mm f3.5-4.5...so pumped! I also just made my first little planet in CS4...it's not a panoramic shot but just a test of how to make little planets...here it is:

 

Look for more in the future....

Sunset...ugh

I went out for the 2nd night in a row now to go shoot some sunset shots...of course last night was a much better night to go shoot, but tonight sufficed. I got a few decent/okay shots..here is one of my favorites. In all reality the sun is barely set when this is shot and it is really light out still. However, I way under exposed the shot....on purpose...and I got the look that I was looking for. I really like the power lines fading into shot...overall...its okay.

Another HDR shot....ugh

I'm not really excited how this turned out..but eh, all is good.

Topaz Labs: Topaz Adjust and Topaz DeNoise Reviews

Again, Trey Ratcliff over at Stuck In Custom gave a solid review of these photo tools from topaz labs so...I obliged. I now have both topaz adjust 3 and topaz denoise 3 as plug ins for CS4. First impressions, both are very solid programs. I really enjoy how topaz adjust has some common pre sets and it shows me what my image could look like if I decided to use that preset. I also like having the ability to customize with sliders for various aspects of the picture. The same goes for topaz denoise. There are some common presets depending on what you are looking for. I used both programs to do final touches on my the rose I posted with my photomatix pro review. All in all, Topaz Labs produces great photo editing tools, period.

Just a side note, when it came to noise reduction software a few things swayed my choice. First, I'm using Photoshop CS4 64bit on Windows 7 64 bit...believe it or not, this setup isn't fully supported by all software yet! My big choices were Topaz DeNoise, Neat Image, Noise Ninja, and Noiseware. In the end I decided to go with DeNoise because it is the BEST at getting rid of noise, period. It may not be the fastest, but it does use the best algorithm for noise reduction. Some say that it may over process but I haven't seen it so far.

Photomatix Pro Review

A little while ago I picked up photomatix pro for some HDR work. I think I posted before saying that I got it, but now I have actually used it for my first HDR shot. I really enjoyed using photomatix and it was extremely easy to use! Ease of use plays a huge role in my photography...or at least the ease of using the program for the first few times. I like being able to use something to see results right away, but if I play with it some more I can get better and better. I can't wait to keep working on my HDR using photomatix.

Here is the link to the software: http://www.hdrsoft.com/

My first HDR shot:

Business cards on the way...

So i've been tossing around the idea of spending 20-30 bucks and making up some random business cards just incase someone is abstract enough to think i'm a legit photographer and asks for a card. I headed over to http://us.moo.com/en/ to make a few. I've looked around for a while now at different sites and finally picked moo. Well, lets be honest here...I ordered my 10 free cards first. Mainly to see how I want to format my cards for the future, but free didn't hurt either. The process of making the cards was really easy and hopefully all goes well because I would love to use Moo for my cards in the future. I'll throw up a review of the cards when they come, and maybe a few pictures of them as well!

Noxolo

Check it out!

Iffles.com came up with a list of the top textures submited to the group during January and one of my pictures made it. You can check out the post here:

 http://iffles.com/2010/02/08/the-best-of-monthly-theme-textures/

2nd Century Basketball Game

Here are a few shots from the Century vs Mayo basketball game. It was kind of interesting because there were a handful of photographers there shooting the game...and actually I think I knew quite a bit more about what I was doing than a few of the others! The one thing I really don't like about shooting basketball..or in a gym..is that it makes me feel the need for the 28-70 2.8 canon lens. I feel like my 50mm 1.4 is too short and there is no way to shoot both ends of the court, but the 70-200 2.8 is only ideal for the long shots at the other end of the court. I also really hate the poor gym lighting. As you can see I have to jack up my ISO to get any sort of quick shot (shutter speed above ~200)...and with this I lose quality. All in all I thought this time shooting when better than my first..I think I edited ~30 shots the first time compared to ~70 after this game....and it wasn't because I shot that many more shots! In the end, it was a good learning experience.

A walk in the park

Here are some of my shots from the walk I took with Eric and Maggie at Soldier's Field. It was pretty chilly out but I'm quite happy with the shots I got.

Texture shots from January

 

  

I really like all three of these texture shots I took in January. They are all really different but show a texture in one way or another. Look out for shapes in Feb.

Basketball round 2

I think tonight i'm heading to go shoot another Century basketball tonight...hopefully this time it'll go a little better! Also, a new theme month has started...this month...SHAPES! Look for a post of some of my favorite texture shots I took. Also, I went and took some shots of Eric and Maggie...ill try and throw up some of my favorite ones.

Noxolo

Get published....half check?

So one of my photography goals was to get published...I guess when it rains in pours. First, a blog I follow, iffles.com linked back to my selective color post in one of her recent posts.

http://iffles.com/2010/01/31/weekend-links-22/

I don't know if this really counts since I sent her my blog to take a peak at...but hey..it something!

I also just noticed that Chad Simpson Racing just put up some of the pictures of the car I took on my trip to Iowa.  Check it out:

http://chadsimpsonracing.com/Home.htm

http://www.chadsimpsonracing.com/Photos.htm

Again...not exactly getting "published" but hey it's exposure? OH..and 3 of my pictures from the gymnastics meet are now featured facebook profile pictures for three of the U of M women gymnast.

On other news...it's crazy how much pictures can blow up on flickr! Yesterday I went over the 750 unique viewers mark! That's a big deal to me!...hopefully i'll hit 1000 soon! I need to start watermarking my images so look for a tutorial coming soon for CS4.

Noxolo