Jeff’s Photographic Adventure

Sooooooo…. Looky what I can do:

There is a niche within photography called Photo-Journalism. It’s pretty straight forward, the idea is to be able to tell a catch the essence of a story with one or two pictures just as you might see in a newspaper article. This weekend I participated in two different events and I figured it would be a fun opportunity for me to see if I could compose some shots that would accurately tell the story of what was happening. I think one of the keys is to take a lot of different pictures and sift through them to find the ones that have the most character and emotion.

4.24.2009 – National Volunteer Week (@ Northeast Houston YMCA)

We had a blast serving at the YMCA, and I’m glad I took the camera. I think we got some fun shots that will be good memory joggers for the future. It was seriously a fun day.

4.25.2009 – BEEFriending BBQ (@Tanglewood Park in Houston, TX)

Anyway, hopefully these images tell a bit of the story… I thought it was fun taking the camera around, but it’s certainly hard to convince people to ignore you when you’re standing up so close sometimes. I really could use that telephoto lens… But I also want the wide-angle lens (just below a fisheye would be sweet), so I guess it could potentially get pricey to have such a fun hobby.

The weather has been really bad (or great, considering I like thunderstorms a lot) in Houston the last few days, so getting out to do some photography has been a challenge. This morning it was really foggy and not the best for lighting, but I snagged a couple photos that I like. I messed with them a little in Photoshop, the “Obligation” photo much more than the “Spider Lock”.

Let me know what you think. After walking around for a while today, I am wondering if I am much more interested in people as subjects for my photographs… Something about capturing emotion through faces seems a lot more interesting to me. Either way, I need to keep experimenting! They say your first 10,000 photos are your worst, and I have a ways to get before I hit that threshold…

Here is an example of my first post-production work.  I adjusted the colors a bit and worked on making sure that Derek (the main subject) was more crisp than the surrounding scenery (can I call other people that?).    Not the best work, but it’s a sample.

I haven’t been out shooting in a while.  It’s been a busy week at work and I haven’t felt the best – I think I may be dealing with allergies for the first time…  Ick!  I’ll be setting some goals on picture counts I want to take, so hopefully I can boost my creativity and work on framing principles over the next work or so.

I had some friends over the other day and decided to play a bit with shutter speeds. I bought a tripod over the weekend, so this is the first time this type of shot was even possible without some major camera shake. Once I played with the tripod a bit I really wanted to take a shot like this – and for some reason I even had the main subject in mind. Thanks for playing along Derek!

Anyway, I think I may do a little post-production on this shot because I like it so much and may eventually play with it a bit more. I really should have taken some of these shots in RAW so that I’d be able to modify and tinker in Photoshop w/o consequences…

The shutter was open for about 15 seconds, and I had to do some serious adjusting for the light. I like that it’s a bit brighter (it fits the context of the shot in some ways), but that is one of the areas I hope to adjust once I get a handle on using Photoshop.

I’m a bit slow at getting new stuff up – but I’m trying to do a lot of reading and such to understand what I’m doing better. I also want a telephoto lens and more creativity…

Again, please share comments.