To all ye who want to paint with light ...

I should have started this blog many moons ago as I started experiencing the joys of rediscovering the art of photography. But as the saying goes - it's better late, than never!
So, here I am, in the hopes of recording what I learn as I progress from ignorance to enlightenment; about what my eyes can see that my camera can capture; and, what my mind imagines and my camera paints with its capabilities.

Please feel free to add any comments and share your wisdom (tips or tricks) that you have picked up along the way.

And do check out my How-To and Birding pages as well.


Sunday, October 17, 2010

Day 172 - Soft focus & bounced flash

My experiment today would have been to use my YN460 flash to light the background to make it look white.  Instead, it turned out that the flash wasn't behaving itself at all, and consistently turned out some really gray backgrounds.  I switched over to custom white balance and then decided to use the flash to bounce some light into the centre of the flower as it was showing up really dark.  That didn't go too badly and I did get the centre to lighten up a little.
I was hand holding the camera since I couldn't find my tripod head and the soft focus was purely accidental.  I had a bit of camera shake when trying to shoot the gerberas.  I found the soft focus actually looked pretty nice on the LCD screen of my camera and instantly decided to try and play with that.  So, I intentionally took a few shots with a soft focus and then touched them up in Lightroom.

250 mm, 1/8s, f/9.0, ISO 400, Aperture priority

250 mm, 1/4s, f/9.0, ISO 400, Aperture priority

250 mm, 1/5s, f/9.0, ISO 400, Aperture priority

1 comment:

  1. The soft focus suits the the pale pink of the flowers.

    Sorry about the photos on my blog. I thought I corrected after I checked the post.

    www.thequietone.net

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