By the Sand in November

Hello! Ever take those jumping-up pictures at the beach? Or anywhere? If you take a peek at the bottom, you can see that my cousin and I took a few. We took some at the beach as well as the sand dunes (called Jockey's Ridge) that we visited. I thought our beach pictures were cooler, so I posted them here. 

Here we have my cousin and I jumping up. My Uncle took this picture, for I am obviously in the picture.  There are a few things I want to point out. There are a couple distractions, such as the people in the distance and the dune at the very right. I could have simply cropped all of that out, but then the silhouettes would be in the center of the picture. Following the rule of thirds, it would look better if the subjects weren't placed directly in the middle. So... I left the picture the way it is, although I can edit out the people. There's a heap of detail in this picture. I'm talking about how filling the clouds are, contrasted to the calm sea and smooth sand. It all looks so dramatic and gives a charm, but it does take away from the subject,

Here is my cousin, posing for me. She wanted me to take a picture of her, so she decided on jumping up. I was so surprised because she did some awesome pose that looks great in a silhouette. Despite the fact that it did take a few tries because she needed to perfect the pose and I needed to make sure the settings on the camera was good. Oh, and when you take pictures of quick action (such as jumping in the air), make sure its on sports mode (so that it can snap pictures quickly). 

These cattail plants are in a silhouette too. Just a little. You can still see some color and detail on the plants. It portrays the plants at the beach pretty well. I could have effortlessly taken a picture of the plants without the beach, but then it makes you wonder... where did you take this picture?

This picture was taken right behind our house. The path continues up to the left, leading up to the beach. If you noticed, this picture was comparably brighter than all the previous ones. I did edit and add more exposure. Plus, the sun is not focused as in the other pictures. 

Here's more of the wooden pathway/boardwalk. Now with this picture, I edited it a little, adding more temperature. This brought a lot of warmth to the picture overall. I also had to be careful not to put my own shadow in the picture, since the sun was to my back. 

And that concludes my time at North Carolina in November. I have to say,our relatives and I had a great time together. Four days that were lively and entertaining. Many memories were made, and so many can be remembered thanks to the multiple cameras that took pictures. Remember, keep clicking!

By an Island in November

Continuing the trip to North Carolina...

Here we have a boardwalk to the beach. This was actually not the boardwalk from our beach house. This was at this island named, Ocracoke Island. It's this really nice, long island, about an hour away by ferry. The temperature looks really nice doesn't it? I think it was just about the worst the whole week. It was extremely windy and just too cold. So the wind was actually pushing us to the ocean, but it was really bad on the way back. Another interesting point is the vanishing point in this picture. You can draw your audience into looking at what you want. Here, the first this the audience looks at is the vanishing point. (Where the boardwalk seems to have no end and then disappear. This picture is not the best example of a vanishing point though.)

My cousin who came from California is modeling for me in this picture. Haha, he's not actually modeling for me... He just decided to run past me and I decided to take a picture of that. It's pretty cool because you can now see the waters and the sand. 

Here, I actually made him model for me. I just told him to look at the ocean, and he did. I personally thought this would be a nice picture to edit completely. Usually, I just adjust the basics to make it look better. With this picture, I made the entire picture black-and-and-white expect for my cousin and the steps. The sand, water, and sky are grayed out. 

This is the beach at Ocracoke as well. The waters were so surprisingly blue and calm, yet it was so cold. 

 I took this picture just a little farther to the right. I found a decent sized shell with the waves in the background.

Ocracoke is famous for it lighthouse. Whats so famous about the lighthouse? Welll... it's the oldest one in North Carolina. That's all. Notice how blue the sky is... yet it was so sunny and cold. 

Here, I have an abstract array of colors. This was a reflection on a window, showing the reflection as well as whats happening outside (which is why there's green). You can actually a persons head at the top and a building in the left upper corner. Where do you think this was taken?

These row of houses sat a couple blocks away from ours. Every time we passed by it, it reminded me of the Painted Ladies in California. Except, these row of houses are so much smaller. It's probably a one or two roomed house with a garage in the back. If you can tell, this is edited just a little bit. I tried to edit these photos like the Painted Ladies pictures when I went to California this past summer. 

This was taken from inside our beach house on the last day we were there. That morning, the temperature was the best its been. It was warm, sunny, barely windy, and just great weather. Just check out the view from the deck... pretty awesome, huh? Wondering how the sun is peeking from above the doors? Well logic says... there's another window above the door, and you can see the whole room light up through the one window. It just looks like scene setter pictures right?

By the Beach in November

Hello! The wrath of winter is approaching super fast, isn't it? In order to avoid it for sometime, our cousins and my family made a trip down to North Carolina this past Thanksgiving. I'll tell you now, we had an awesome time, and surprisingly, the weather cooperated with us the whole time!

So we booked a beach house on the islands of the Outer Banks (off the coast of North Carolina). We stayed in a town called Hatteras for about four days . Hatteras is a beautiful town, and there are so many huge vacation houses. Although, when we went, the place was pretty out of season. We rented a huge house that had the beach in the back. This is the beach in November, peoples. Take it in. :)

Check this picture out! A tree rooted into the sand right on the beach! My cousin and I were taking a walk on the beach and we passed by this. We were like, "Hey look, its a tree! How fascinating!" ;) Well it's dead of course because trees as such cannot take in that much salt water. I guess it's just surprising to see a tree in the middle of nowhere on the beach. Now I admit, I cheated on this picture. You can tell I put a cool filter on it, but the picture looks pretty nice with it, right?

This was taken at a place called Jockey's Ridge. This is about an hour away from Hatteras but still on the chain of islands. This place is basically a miniature desert. It 's just a small place filled with huge sand dunes. Literally. Funny enough, on both sides of the dunes is water. (Huge sand dunes, which can be associated with deserts, aren't supposed to have water anywhere near them.) So in this picture, you can see these tiny mountains sticking out, and that comes from a storm from the previous day. This is just a different perspective for something so small. 

This is a picture on the dunes. You can see that it's a busy picture. The clouds are just stunning and looks full in this picture. Then you have the many footprints on the sand as well. The people silhouettes are in the middle. Actually, the spot where I took this picture is the perfect spot for silhouettes, except  it would've been a busy picture (the clouds and footprints). 

This was right next to the dunes, off to the side. The sand dunes were actually very very steep. Jockey's Ridge is actually know for awesome winds. We saw people gliding off the steeps dunes and people kite-flying as well. It's also perfect for sand-sledding, (sledding on sand instead of snow) which works better than sledding on snow, in my opinion.

This was one of my favorites. It's the porch and beach seen through those nets on a window. The angle in which I took it looks really cool. 

This was also the same porch scene. Although... I edited this one. This picture was just ugly before I edited it. I got this idea from one of my Uncles, and his picture looked amazing. It looked like it was taken off a postcard, plus it was taken on a phone. So I go ahead and try to take a similar picture, and this is what I get. I think what was wrong with mine is that the time of day isn't right. (Which affects the lighting) There's not much edited in this. I placed it under a filter and added a frame. 

I took the same view in a closer angle and I edited it intensely. No filters, only the basics. I added plenty of vibrancy, contrast, and reduced the highlights. There's also a small black vinaigrette frame on the edges. It's not that bad... but it's intense.  

This was the floor on the walkway to the beach. You can see the sand inbetween  the boards. This was nothing cool, just figured it would be a nice background/wallpaper. 

In the Fake Forest

Ever take pictures you are proud of? There are always going to be those handful of pictures in which the photographer is satisfied and proud of. I'd say i'm pretty proud of these pictures I took here. Why? I think it's because these pictures have better quality, and it feels good to take pictures that seem rich in quality. It's just something different, than what I usually take pictures of.  

This picture just seems so open and spacious.  The sunlight brightens up the entire picture, giving it this white light that really clears up the picture, and makes the area look bigger than what it realistically is. If you notice, the colors aren't grounded. What I mean by that is that the light whitens up all the objects as well. Without all this light, you would have richer colors present.

This would make a great motion picture. If you just set up the shutter speed on your camera and took some pictures, you would've captured the water flow. The water in the picture would seem so smooth and you wouldn't be capturing the moment, but moments. Shutter speed allows you to take in movement for more than a second. For example, you know those highway pictures taken at night? Or those star trail pictures at night? They were all taken of movement and captured minutes, perhaps hours of motion. Yet, you see it all in one place, not in a video but in a picture. This picture here could have made a great example of that.

Lets talk about a peaceful setting. Wouldn't this be a great example? Sitting on the bench back there, overlooking the water. Checking out the reflection of the trees perfectly reflecting on the water. Listening to the water lightly trickle down the small edge. This was taken near Springfield, Massachusetts over the summer and up ahead of this was a paddleboating and kayaking area, where the water was much murkier. Plus, the water on this creek wasn't deep at all. It was just a flat platform with water flowing across. We went walking across the creek a couple times too and the water only came up to our ankles. Now talking about the details... this picture is slightly edited. Only a border was added. You can see a slight black tint added to the edges of the pictures. Thats all. The waterfall looking so soft is all natural. Pretty neat huh?

The Great Pictures

Hey! I'll say right now.. I'm really happy with these pictures. I don't think they could've come out any better than they are now. So go check them out!

These are some late bloomers. I captured this picture in early October, around lunch time. There's a lot of light around lunch time, which is what is making this picture glow. The amount of detail makes the flowers just really pop out too. 

This picture just looks so delicate. You can sort of see the sun behind the flower, giving it a slight silhouette. The edges of the flower is letting light pass through, because none of the outer petals are overlapping (in a 2D view). The flower just looks so fragile, as if it was glasswork. Even the background is perfect. It's just a perfect dull blue...

These next few pictures are interesting. All of them are showing motion, in a different way. I took them while the car was moving, which is why the pictures are in someway blurred. This picture has everything blurred. It shows that the shutter speed was kept low, which is what gives that blurred effect. Although, this blur isn't a proper blur because you can see the detail quite well, so it's the light just skimmed over the picture. 

This one is very similar to the picture right above. Except here, the entire picture isn't blurred. You can see the middle section quite clearly, as if I took it in still motion. The tops and bottoms are blurred, different from the middle. The middle of the picture doesn't seem to have that effect, which is what makes the picture looks pretty neat. 

This is also another interesting picture because the entire picture is blurry in a different way. You could honestly take this as a painting because nothing is clear, and it's just a mix of colors. You know those landscape paintings, when you look from faraway, it looks brilliant in detail. Then when you go up close to see the picture, you notice there is no detail and the colors are just splotched together. That's what the detail in this picture looks like. Y

Here... I have a light silhouette. The torch in the picture actually doesn't have an intentional purpose. It's just there to make the picture more interesting as it also adds a subject to the picture... Just taking a picture of the landscape isn't as interesting than adding a subject in front of it. The color scheme here also looks really cool. What I mean by this is that the color theme are all ones that can collaborate with each other. The different components don't look bad when added together and the colors aren't just random either. 

The Insect Troop

All of these pictures are ones I obviously took over the past year. I don't like to take pictures of things that move, but I've started to leave that comfort zone. All of these are pictures that I took...of bugs! They're not in any particular order though. Now, think about something that I explained in the last post... The photographers position. Think about how close I were to these bugs! Lucky me, they didn't move as I got closer. But... I'm always saying... keep snapping... meaning, keep clicking because you may miss the shot and you can always go back and delete the extra pictures. So probably for each bug, I took perhaps 15-20, and that was until they moved away. 

This is a beetle, a False Potato Beetle in specific. It's named this because it's commonly mistaken for the Colorado Potato Beetle. They feed on husk ground cherry tomatoes and weeds, which makes sense for why I saw them because we are growing tomatoes. What you see in this picture is actually a fake. What I mean by this is... the white floor the bug is on is actually a wall. The brown floorboard on the side is actually the floor.

This isa Katydid (a leaf bug). I was so close to stepping on it, it was scary. It's a wicked looking bug because it resembles a leaf so much. It even has the veins running through like leaves, which is why I didn't recognize this as a bug at first. Now recognize the detail of the entire picture in general. You can see the details of the bug as well as the background. Did you know there are pink leaf bugs too?!? (It's a natural genetic mutation.)

This is a praying mantis. Now a funny story behind this picture. Right behind these rocks are some jalapeno plants we grow. So I was walking on top of the row of rocks, checking out all the vegetables, just like a kid would. Of course I was looking where I was going just to make sure I wouldn't fall, but I was barely paying attention to what was there. So I was walking, walking, walking, then stopped to check out a plant. I was crouched down, observing the jalapenos. And that was when I looked to my right and saw this creature. I did jump a bit, but mainly I was creeped out because I wasn't wearing shoes. What if I stepped on it?  I promise you, it was scary because it just looks like grass. These camouflage bugs are pretty creepy.  

This was just some honey bee strolling through our yard. I was actually really surprised about how close I was to take the picture, and how it didn't move once I was so close. 

This is some grasshopper...not sure what type exactly. I really like this picture because of the detail visible. You can also see the depth of feild (DOF), which places the grasshopper in a perspective. The way you can tell depth of field is by noticing that the camera is focused only on one subject. So here  the floor closest and farthest to the camera is blurred. Only the area around the grasshopper is well in focus, which is basically depth of field. 

Positioning Your Subject

Hey! Ever have that terribly bored feeling?You might be waiting for something and don't have anything to do? In this case, I was waiting for a ride, and I had absolutely nothing to do. I had my Ipod in hand though, so I looked around, saw some flowers, plucked them, and placed them in the grass. Literally, I tore the flowers from the stem (Hehe I'm so evil. Killing a plant just for a picture. Well there were more around...) and placed them in the grass as if they were growing from the grass. Honestly, if you look at these few pictures. they do look as if they are growing from the ground. Keep that in mind as you view them...

Think about this too...how was the photographer positioned??? It's always interesting to think about how the photographer was positioned when taking a picture. Its interesting because you always see the picture, and think about how good the picture looks but you never think about the photographer. . Think about some marine life pictures or even a desert picture. Imagine what to photographer had to go through  and how they were positioned to get the perfect picture! Good photographers will go into the weirdest positions, and those are the best because they are getting the right angles. Well in this picture, I am on the grass with the camera peeking through. For example, take a peek at the pictures I have in this post... If I had taken the picture sitting down, or even standing up, it wouldn't have been nearly as good as laying down and getting the full perspective of the object. Remember this.... position yourself and the object to perspective.

Here is an original. The sun was shining bright because I took it around 4 p.m. So it was high time for white light. 

Here is the photoshopped version...obviously. You can tell by the shadow border and the improved light and color quality. You can see that the purple flower is a little more purple (vibrancy and contrast) and light highlights were taken off. 

Here is a different picture, same object and setting. I like this more though for reasons as follows...The purple flower is so much clearer and you can see plenty of details. It is photoshopped, so the black vinaigrette border makes the grass and flowers pop out.  There is also a small filter added onto the picture. It's called an autumn picture and it adds some temperature and hint of brown. Plus, there is this streak of bronze cutting across the picture. I am not entirely sure what it is, but if I had to guess, it would be a blade of grass in fast motion.

These is clearly a different flower, but the same background. I plucked this flower as well and placed it in the grass. The purple flower looks a little more natural though. I guess pink doesn't go that well with green. ;)

Now this is the photoshopped. It's not really that different though. A major difference you can notice right away is, the border. There isn't much of a difference in the lighting or color either. 

Funny story about this picture. Photographers have to do whatever they can to get a good picture right? At least in most cases.... Can you see the water droplets on this flower? Now in all reality, it didn't rain magically for two mintues and then stop. I didn't take this at a seperate time either. (I was waiting outside for a ride, I took all the pictures in that period of time. Not staggered.) Then how is there water on just that one flower, and not even on the grass? Well I did the unthinkable ;) I just poured some water over the flower. At least it gives the rain effect or the early morning dew look. Look at how much power photographers have!

Leaves in Fall

Have the bored problem and you are outside? That's exactly what happened with me and lucky enough, it was fall time. All the trees around happened to change colors too. So enjoy these few fall pictures. :)

Now this picture happens to be one of those pictures that aren't in focus. It's artistically pretty cool because you are so use to seeing clear pictures. When you see a blurred or unfocused one, you automatically delete it. Some of them can be nice, especially if a part of it was in focus. Note that all of the leaves in this post are from a Red Maple Tree. 

Since this is in focus, you can see all the small details in the leaves. There are three different leaves of  all different shades of green, red, and orange. The special thing is the background. Its completely white, not sign of the sky. Now that's how blinding the sun was!

This one is pretty cool because a little more than half of the leaf is not in focus. Now what happened here was that the leaf got too close for the lens to focus. So, it could only focus the right part of the picture, which is what gives the picture nice depth perception. 

I'm quite content with these next pictures. The detail and precision in them really triggered me. I tried to get the sun to shine through the leaf so that the leaf would glow. It kind of worked for this picture. You can see there is a source of light coming from behind the leaf as well. (Since I was holding the leaf with my hand,  I was able to control its position.)

This would make a great wallpaper. The lead takes up pretty much the whole page. It's detail is so clear. Also notice how the leaf isn't centered. When the subject isn't centered in the middle of the picture, it is called " the two thirds rule". So what exactly is this? Imagine a line splitting a photograph into thirds, horizontally and vertically. When you take pictures, you just need to place your subject in any third that's not the middle. Photogrpahers use this mainly to give an appealing look. You don't have to use this, if you are going for a different look, which is completely fine. 

Now this is just the full view of the same leaf. Notice the amount of detail in this too. The sky seems so blue and vibrant compared all of the other pictures. 

A Marathon of Lanterns

Since we live in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and about every year in the city is an event called the Rock 'n' Roll half marathon. For about the past 7-8 years, my parents have ran in it, and almost every year, I've gone to watch the run. This year, they put up lanterns in the trees which was all around the finish line. 

These were the lanterns than hung, and to be honest, they were way prettier in real life. (It looks really dull in this picture.) Plus, there were so many of them. Two big sections of trees and it had plenty of lanterns. Whoever put them up really had the time and effort. Anyway, about the picture... it needs some improvements, and you would do that by editing. It could use some temperature, to warm up the picture. Even some contrast and vibrance to brighten the lantern colors. As of now,  it just looks really dull and the subjects aren't popping out. 

Now this is almost the opposite right? The  editing definitely makes a difference. The vibrant colors on the lanterns pop out from the deep greens.  No temperature was added although lots of contrast and vibrancy was tacked on. Which one do you like better? The original or this picture?

This can be quite a confusing picture at first. What is that on the left? Well it's a tree bark. In the background are all the lanterns hanging on the trees. The lighting for this picture was awesome. The background is well lit and it made the lanterns stick out through a generally white background. The tree also became awesome because only a part of it is focused. 

This is some bark from a tree. I think it's a paper birch tree, not a 100% sure though... I figured this could make great wallpaper because of the detail and colors.