Tips from Firsthand Experience

Hello! I'm going to throw some helpful tips and hints based off of my past experiences.

What I would to suggest anyone when they first get their camera is, to learn the camera. Learn your camera from the manual, maybe some videos, or experiment with it. It's best to familiarize with it first instead of missing great shots later on.

 Here, I'll tell you a short story. It was July fourth, American Independence Day, which means fireworks! We went to New York City and New Jersey that day, and I didn't get the opportunity to take pictures. We came back home for the fireworks in our township, and bam! Perfect opportunity for pictures! I didn't bother to research how to take good firework pictures. I just assumed that I should take it on night mode. But when I got there, night mode was terrrible. Half way through the fireworks, I switched to manual. And I set it up manual, but it still wasn't the best. A little later, I tried sports mode, and, bam! I took some spectacular shots. Lesson learned, learn the camera first. 

Treat your camera like a year-old baby! I use to take care of my camera like it was a newborn baby, but there's no need to be so careful. Cameras are designed to experience some rough and tear. Buuut that doesn't mean you shouldn't take care of it at all. Do not damage it, let it swing around, let it immerse in water, or even drop it. Treat it like it's a one-year old. Wipe the lens, filters, and even sensors once in a while. (Sensors are a  little tricky to clean so search up how to online before you clean it.) Store the camera safely and don't let it lay around. Do not let the lens get scratched up or get bashed around in a bag. I recommend you specify a bag for your camera and other materials.

Anytime you head out the door with a camera, make sure you have what you need. Do you have a bag? Is the camera even in the bag? Is the battery charged? Is the battery even in the camera? Do you have a memory card in the camera? Does that memory card have any available space? Do you need a backup memory card? Is the lens clean? Do you have all your lenses ( if you own more than one lense)? Do you need to bring the charger? Do you need a tripod? Do you need a cloth (to clean up the camera)? Do you need to bring a manual? Take what you need before heading out the door. And remember to charge your camera the night before. True story: in the morning on July 4th, I realized that my camera was dead. We had to leave soon for NYC, so I quickly charged the battery for 20 minutes. The camera was half charged throughout the day and thank goodness it lasted me through the fireworks. I learned my lesson there. 

I know I've said this in a lot of my posts, but it's very important; Take more pictures than you need. Taking more pictures than what you need is definitely better than not taking enough. It's ok if you take too many pictures. There's something called the delete button right? Just go back and delete the ones you don't like. I find myself "cleansing" my camera very often. And it's important to be like Stalin (who was responsible for about 50 million deaths directly) and kill any unimportant pictures. 

When I go through my camera to delete pictures, I go through it at least 2 times. The first round consists of deleting the obvious. The pictures the were taken by accident, or the blurry ones, etc. Then I go through them again to compare. For example, if I have ten pictures of the same subject, I'll find the best one and delete the rest. I may go through them a third time to be strict about which pictures to keep and delete. 

After taking all those firework pictures, I had to sit and go through all of them. And the funny thing was, I knew it was going to be a pain to delete some of it, yet I still kept taking more. That's because you should take more than what you need in case some don't turn out the way you want. You're left with options to choose from, which could be a good or bad thing. 

This picture down here was after round two. I still have so many left! I have to go through them once again. :(

There's also something else I learned recently when taking pictures. I find myself never looking at pictures as soon as I take them. I just keep clicking and move on. I'll take a picture of a flower and keep walking, assuming that the picture was good. Later when I look back at the flower picture, whoops, it's blurry. It happened at the July 4th fireworks too. If I hadn't look at my pictures while I was in night mode, then all my pictures would've been blurry. So make sure you reward yourself with instant feedback.

Tips from this post:

Learn the camera

Treat your camera like a one-year old baby

Have what you need

Take more pictures than you need

Be strict about which pictures to keep and delete

Instant feedback

Puzzling Pieces

On a scavenger hunt to find tips for a different blog post, I came across something called "joiners photography". When I first looked at joiners photography, it looked so fascinating. I immediately thought I should try something like that, but how? After some thought, I realized it's very easy to produce. It is just a mumbo-jumbo of smaller pictures making up a scene. Not exactly like a collage but like a puzzle. There are small pictures, like puzzle pieces, that make a picture like an entire puzzle. So you know how in puzzles, the lighting matches throughout the picture? In joiners photography, that's not necessary. lighting can be different from picture to picture. One picture can be darker than its neighbor, in my opinion, it looks cooler that way. I googled some more examples and alot of the images look so cool. I recommend you look some up now to get an idea. 

This picture is an example of joiners photography, taken outside of the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia. The Rodin Museum has all these different statues inside, but I didn't go in there. I just looked at the museum from the outside. The statue outside, sitting in the middle there, is called, The Thinker. It was sculpted by the Frenchman named Rodin. The sculpture standing there is not the original, just some random replica, so it's not valuable. I believe the original sculpture is in a museum dedicated to Rodin in Paris.

 

How do you do joiners photography might you ask? I'll tell you how how I did the Rodin Museum one down there. So I stood on the road opposite the museum and took pictures of each section. What I mean by that is that I took a picture of each individual area moving from up to down, left to right. So I took seperate pictures of the road, the sculpture, the lamppost, the bench, the buildings in the back, the trees, etc. I made sure I covered the entire area without moving from my spot. Once I got home, I connected my camera's memory card to the laptop and opened up powerpoint. I located the pictures of this scene and just copied it into powerpoint. I'll tell you now that powerpoint is not the best way to join pictures together, but it works for me. I'm sure there are softwares out there that make this process a whole lot easier, but PowerPoint seems simple enough. 

Sitting at the top step at the art museum on the edge is so cool. You just sit there at the top and stare out into Philadelphia, observing every little detail on the Ben Franklin Parkway. The people walking on the sidewalk, the constant traffic of cars passing by the lights. It's quite a sight. You can also see every building in the distance from your perspective.

 Along with that, I took this in joiners photography form because the scene was too wide to take just one picture of the entire view. 

 Another thing is that it's important to make sure you take lots of pictures when you do this project. As you can see in this picture, there is one hole and a lot of gaps on the edges. That's because I don't have a picture of that part. So it's important to take a picture of the entire scene because once you move out of your spot, it's almost impossible to get the same scene in the same angle.  

Tips: 

Take a picture of every little detail. Don't miss a spot, otherwise you'll get a hole. 

Joiners photography is great for taking pictures of a wide-spread area, like a panorama. You can even make an artsy creation of a person. 

Have fun with it!

The 5-minute Rainbow

Finally!!! I found the rainbow!!! It was in prefect timing too. We were driving home and I see this huge, dark rain cloud, only on top of our development. It was pretty cool. As we were driving into the community, I was waiting for the moment when the cloud would just spit out. We got home, parked the car, and I went inside to put my bags away when I hear the rain pour! Our house was on the edge of the rain cloud, so I wanted to see if I could see the edge of the rain. (weird wants). But I couldn't find the edge because it was POURING too hard! It poured with large quantity and bad quality (because it was destructively heavy). So after the rain started gushing, I grabbed an umbrella and went outside for fun. It was rainy and sunny... which meant... sun + rain =rainbow! I decided to find a rainbow, and there it was! I made a split second decision to get my camera, and I came back out with the umbrella to take a picture. Pretty cool huh?

This was under the rainbow under the umbrella. Those black dots are the design on the rainbow and you can also faintly see the rainbow back there too. I took this picture with an art bold effect, meaning that it made all the colors more vibrant. Which is why you can see the sky a lot brighter than it is in the previous picture. 

It's funny to see how fast these rain storms come and go. Well, they aren't even storms then because they're so short. This one lasted literally 5-10 minutes. It spanned from the time I got home, run out with an umbrella, run back out with a camera, to the time I finished taking my pictures. By the time I was done, the clouds were almost gone! It was like it never rained, (except there was obviously rain on the ground).

It's Raining, It's Pouring

"It's rainin', it's pourin', the old man is snorin'" and I can't remember the rest of the nursery rhyme. Oh well, children are going to forget about nursery rhymes soon enough. Nevertheless, it was a Friday and super sunny Friday. Probably the hottest it has reached all year at a mere 92°F . The sky was insufficiently cloudy and soon enough, it looked heavy. The clouds then broke loose and it was pouring for a good half hour, but only a half hour. It poured and poured, and it was still pretty sunny too. The sun peeked out a couple times and sun + rain = rainbow. I searched left and right and went running around the house, but couldn't find one. Maybe it was really faint or I just wasn't looking in the right places..?

I went ahead and took some rain pictures without researching or knowing how to focus on the rain. It was tough because the camera had to be in the right setting to see the drops. I still have to find out how to do that because it's obvious I didn't get it right in this picture. For my camera to focus on some rain, I had to be in the rain. So I took an umbrella with me, quickly hopped outside and took a couple pictures. . The only way you can tell it's raining is by looking at the rain pound on the deck. Which meant, I had to crouch down with the umbrella to get the deck in focus. 

The sad part was that I couldn't find a rainbow! If you check this picture out, you can tell it's pretty sunny and rainy. And I looked hard to find a rainbow, but nothing but clouds and sun. Anyway, these are the droplets hanging off a table. I'm not really sure why this picture was intriguing, but I can talk about it's depth of field. The DOF here is pretty good because the table is in focus while the background is blurred. It makes the droplets standout. Another important element is the light here. The sunlight is shining specifically on two droplets, which is the reason you can see them clearly. 

This was the umbrella I was under to take pictures in the rain. You know, I wonder how the professionals do it... do they have an umbrella, or a waterproof camera? Oh yea and you can see the water droplets on the umbrella too. See? It was rainy and sunny, so there should have been a rainbow.. but nothing was visible!

These are called lilies, or scientifically, lilium. These flowers bloom pretty late in the season and don't stay long either. I took this picture right after it finished raining, and all the water droplets were just sitting there. I would have liked to zoom up furthermore, but I'd need a better lens for that. Here's some easy science for you: the water sticking together to form droplets is an example cohesion (like molecules sticking together). The water forming spherical shapes is an example of surface tension. And lastly, the droplets hanging on to the flower is an example of adhesion (dissimilar molecules sticking together). 

This is the same lily flower. I personally really like these flowers because my name means lily flower. So these are one of my favorite flowers, and they totally look cool after some rain. The color of this flower looks really cool too. There are so many versions of the lily: red, orange, white, pink, yellow, and then all these mixed colored ones. In this picture, the stamens (the brown parts at the top) are the main subjects in focus. Those are the first things that the eyes go to because its centered and focused. 

There was a quote that I came across recently and it basically says to observe the world more so that you don't need to take pictures. In more words, you should be able to remember and enjoy the beautiful moments and not need anything to remind you of it.  "At some point in life, the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough." -Toni Morrison. Well despite that, take lots of pictures so you can remember those forgotten moments.

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.