Thursday, December 25, 2014

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!

Monday, December 22, 2014

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?

Friday, December 12, 2014

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. 


Sunday, December 7, 2014

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?