A Better Understanding of Photography 2

Welcome to part 2! In this post, I'll let you know a few basic composition tips. :)

Picture this: you're in the car with your family on a road trip. You're in the back seat, taking naps, looking outside, and reading. You wake up from a nap to see airplanes taking off and landing outside. And then you look a little farther out and see the worlds best city-skyline passing by. New York City is in your view and it's the perfect opportunity to take a few pictures from the car. You think to yourself, "oh man, I have to take a picture of this!" So you dig out your camera from under your seat and take the lens cap off. The car is quickly passing by the city, so you have to hurry with the set up. Once you turn the camera on, you face the city and take a few snaps. Click click. You check out the pictures and, oops, it's too blurry. You try again and hold your camera stilly this time. Click click. You check the pictures once again and, oops, the picture is still blurry. The New York City is almost behind you now and you're missing the chance. Oops. No luck and you're bummed out. You missed out on taking great shots of New York City because you didn't know your way around the camera. 

Lesson learned from that example: LEARN YOUR CAMERA. Only then can we proceed with taking good pictures.

I know my way well enough to know which camera setting to go to for a picture. The pictures I took here are taken from the George Washington Bridge, which passes right by New York City. I used my ninja fast skills to grab my camera out, set the camera to sports mode, and clicked as many as I could. Why as many as I could? Because it's best to capture as much as possible, and delete the ones you do not want later. In this picture, I actually got upper Manhattan in view with a plane lifting through. 

 

This was a zoomed out view of Manhattan. Upper Manhattan on the right, lower on the left. For me, it's a little hard to take zoomed out pictures, like the beach or a city in this case. This is because you have to pay attention to the composition. Simply put, composition is the arrangement of visual elements. So with this picture, your subject is so small (in length), and only takes up a small portion of the entire frame. So its important that it the subject takes up as much space. For example, you don't want the city all the way at the bottom of the picture because that would leave you with a huge blank sky. So with these types of pictures, it's best to proportion the horizon to create a good composition. 

Another tip for composition would be to follow the rule of thirds. This rule splits the frame into nine squared sections, like a tic-tac-toe board. This is just a guide to help you place your subject. The goal is to not place the subject directly in the middle, but to place it on the gridlines or the intersections. Buuut, this rule can be broken. By all means, rules are made to be broken by someone, and photographers break this one allll the time. If you don't follow this guide, that doesn't mean that your pictures are not good. In fact, it might be awesome, and not follow the rule of thirds. I read this online, "However a wise person once told me that if you intend to break a rule you should always learn it first to make sure your breaking of it is all the more effective!" So, learn it and then break it! 

The funny thing about this picture is that I took it by accident. The camera was hanging by the strap on my neck and I wasn't holding it in any position. I was looking somewhere else and my right hand was just playing with the shutter release/button (the button that takes pictures) and I accidentally clicked this picture. I don't even recall taking the picture. So later, I check my pictures and I see this decent box of flowers on someone's house (or it was a store, I don't even know where I took it). But it was so perfectly centered and vibrant, I kept it. These flowers are centered very well, therefore breaking the rule of thirds, which is perfectly fine. 

Why rule of thirds? It's believed that people like their pictures better if it's not perfectly centered, and the picture becomes more balanced. I read somehwere that stufies have been done to show that peoples eyes naturally go the interesection points on a picture, whether the picture follows the rule or not. So, using the rule works with the natural way of viewing pictures. This rule works great on people Photographers generally don't like to place people in the middle, but place them on the sides of the frame. 

This rose flower from the rose bush is pretty well proportioned. This would be an example of the rule of thirds. The rose is not in the middle. Instead, it's on the grid lines. You can find these grid lines on many cameras, so it can guide you as you are taking pictures. 

Hope you learned a little about composition, and don't forget to learn your camera!

Mother's Day 2015

Mother's day this year was pretty busy, given that it's always on a Sunday. Well this year, I woke up earlier than my Mom, and I went for a class and didn't see her again until around 1:30. Then, we chilled at home and I did my own things and she treated herself to her own things. It was at night time that we gave her her gift. This living locket necklace that I specially personalized for her. It was pretty expensive but the lockets are really fancy. It's from a website named Origami Owls, and they sell mainly lockets and braclets which you can personalize with your own charms (inside) and dangly-charm things. There's actually a MOM charm inside the locket, I guess you cant see it in these pictures. 

So the day that it was shipped, I put the locket together and I took it outside for a photoshoot. It was kinda hard to hold the necklace and take a picture with the other hand. And I almost got caught by my mom as well. I was by the front door, and she suddenly opens the door to check on me. I panicked and hid the locket in my pocket. Luckily, she didn't see it and thought I was taking picture of the trees or something, haha. Anyway, I wanted a background that'll contrast the colors of the locket really well. I admit this tree's deep color (what color would you call the tree??) didn't match the locket. I did use the 2/3's rule and placed the locket on the right third. 

This was the second picture, which a different background. This flowery background matches the locket better than the other, in my opinion. The girly colored theme is set; the pink, red, and white colors. Even the silver and the stones on the locket matches too. For this picture, I didn't use the 2/3's rule because I hung this on a branch and took the picture. It kept swining around, so I had to quickly take a picture. If I had the chance to take this again, I would have pushed it onto the left third. Oh hey, you can see the MOM charm a little here. It says MOM, not WOW. ;)

First Look at the Night Sky

This was actually my first attempt at taking night pictures. After reading the manual, I got an idea on what the camera setting should be at. A tripod is recommended for taking night shots, so I went to look for our tripod. Then found out that our screw thing, the piece that attaches the camera to the tripod, is missing. So I used my resources and tumbled out the door at 10:45. The sky that night was pretty bright. The moon was a waxing gibbous, which is 11 days old and 4 days away from a full moon. It was rather cloudy that night. I call it the Halloween skies because the moon kept appearing and disappearing like it would on Halloween.  

The first picture was the first one ever and it was a tester of the camera setting. I was instantly shocked because you can actually see how bright the sky is! What I was really going for was to see the entire moon, but I was standing on the sidewalk with no shoes. I didn't want to go on the grass barefoot, so I went as far out on the sidewalk. That's why you just see the light of the moon peeking out. 

This was from my backyard. I got a better view back there and I was really happy because you can see like every detail of the sky. If you look closely, the picture is really grainy and looks old. I think if I get the settings on the camera right, it won't look so bad. 

I recommend you do not use flash at 11pm at night. Bad idea. Well being new to the idea, I tested out the option of flash. I took a bundle of pictures without realizing just how bright the flash was. It lit up like the entire front of the house. It might have disturbed the neighbors, but I dont think it went that far. I apologize though, neighbors. If you noticed in the picture, there's a a weird red flare on the edges, and I edited that in along with the filter, just to make it look cool. 

This is the same picture as the one above, but I edited this on the iPad using some app called sketches by tayasui. I edited the original picture, the one without any red flares or filter. 

Pretty fun for a night experience. Actually, I saw a cat in the beginning, which completely look me by surprise. I tried to take a picture of it but it was too dark and there wasn't enough light. By the end, there were some sorts of creaking noises too, but I know it was the wind making random noises. Even though it got really spooky near the end, it was worth it. Next time I go night hunting, i'll try to go when the stars are out and take some star pictures.