Halloween

Happy Halloween!

"halloween family portrait" - Kirk
House hunting sure sucks time from your schedule. This week I was actually able to get a picture taken before Wednesday, including prep time on Monday and Tuesday.
48mm, f/20., 15.0 sec, ISO 200, m-mode

"Harvesting October Corn" - Tim
As can be seen by this week's posts, candy is a big part of Halloween. Since I have not posted in a few weeks I decided to merge this weeks topic with last weeks. Can you see the hidden letters? (Hint: it is an abbreviation)
61mm, f/3.4, 1/7ec, iso 400,

"Mr Incredible" - Matt
I tried pumpkins, candy, lights, costumes, spiders... nothing turned out as good as I wanted. Finally, I had to come back to this one, which I took before the challenge was issued. In other words, I cheated. Shame on me.
70mm, f/4, 1/90sec, center-weighted, s-mode

"Jack-O-Luna" - Cary
Luna wasn't cooperating with my notions of having her pose with a lighted jack-O-lantern so I had decided I'd just go with a shot of the pumpkin by itself. In the midst of taking a few pumpkin shots, she hopped up on the bench and parked herself right in my shot. There's a good kitty. If I weren't in a dissertation-writing swamp, I'd have messed more with lighting but I felt lucky to get what I did.
E-3 w/ 12-60mm @ 32mm, 3/5 sec @ f/4, ISO 400, RAW proc in ALR2

"Halloween Corn" - Mike
I found that I got the best results by shading the candy corn from the direct light of the ceiling light. The candy corn was too glossy looking otherwise.
D40, 48 mm, f/18, 20 sec., ISO 200, Tungsten White Balance, Matrix, Aperture Priority

"It's all about the candy" - ryan
D90 - 75mm equiv., f/22, 8 sec., iso 200, matrix

Next week's challenge:
Southern Shots
29 October 2008 - Weekly Photo Challenge: "Movement"
Due: 5 November 2008

Try something like this:
http://www.dpchallenge.com/how.php?HOW_ID=21

Matt

Accidental Letters

It's surprising where you can find letters in everyday scenes when you are looking for them and using a little creativity. The hard part is making a nice composition out of it as well.

"The Letter E" - Ian

Jupiter Dips in the Darkening sky. - Chip
It took a couple of evenings to get Jupiter in the right place.
D90, 32mm, F22, 10 sec , ISO 200, m-mode

"Q is for Quincy" - Quincy
In my attempt to "catch up" with the group, I combined a previous challenge with this challenge.

"A series of volts?" - Kirk
I saw the power lines over the weekend on a bike ride with my dad, but thought I could find something better later on. I guess I didn't. I shot this thinking of the "V"s holding each line. When I showed this to Melena she pointed "W"s, "Y"s, and a bunch of other letters in the trusses.
82mm, f/4.5, 2.0sec, ISO 200, center-weighted, p-mode

"Q" - matt
Blowing bubbles with Caleb helped me find a good "Q" for the challenge. He was rather uncooperative, so I had to resort to my second-string model.
155mm, f/5.6, 1/60sec, center-weighted, m-mode

"Z at Sunrise" - Ryan
Jonah woke me up extra early this weekend and I happened to see the fog outside couldn't resist taking this shot. I had taken a silhouette of this shot the day before but decided to go with this.
D90 - 72 mm equiv., f10, 1/80 sec., ISO 200, Spot, A-priority

"A is for Aperture" - Cary
I searched high and low for good accidental letters and while driving along Porter's Chapel near Wisconsin, I spied these "A's" just sitting there in a field on the little piece of WES that extends to the east side of Porter's Chapel Road. They appear to be steel corner reinforcements for something or other - maybe one of you structural types can enlighten me - but whatever they are, they make perfect A's. This is a 3-exposure HDR (+1,+0,-1 EV) with some applied vignetting and a cool rough border I found that seems to go well with the industrial subject.
E-3 w/ 12-60mm @ 21mm, 1/80 - 1/20 sec @ f/8, ISO 100, HDR-RAW processed in PS-CS3 & ALR2

"Rustic Wheel of Letters" - Mike
I came across this spare wheel against the side of a barn over the weekend and figured it would at least qualify as the letter 'O' in case I couldn't find anything better. Then I realized that the wheel actually contained a whole bunch of letters. I found 17. How many can you find?
18 mm, f/5, 1/60 sec., ISO 800, Center weighted, A-priority

Next week's challenge:
Southern Shots
22 October 2008 - Weekly Photo Challenge: "Halloween"
Due: 29 October 2008

Halloween is coming up and with it, fun opportunities for creative pictures.

Matt

Deep Depth of Field

Stop way down to the smallest apertures and suddenly you can get an entire scene in focus.

"cloud covered hills" - Kirk
My mom came running in the house on Saturday morning telling me I should come outside and take a picture. I humored her and then decided that I really liked the picture once I played with the colors some.
18 mm, f/18, 1/160 sec., ISO 200, Center, p-mode

"Deep Reflections" - Mike
Lena and I had a chance to visit the Washington DC Temple last week and the architecture always lends itself to interesting pictures.
23 mm, f/25, 1/80 sec., ISO 800, Center, Manual

"Rotary Hay Scythe Rake" - Cary (updated info!)
A farmer gave me permission to shoot pictures of his fields and equipment but I forgot to ask him the name of this peculiar device. According to Ryan, it's a hay rake. Recent clear Saturday mornings have made for some fun shooting of the Ferris farm hay fields along Fisher Ferry Road. Some of my favorites, including wider shots of this device, are here.

E-3 w/ 12-60mm @ 16mm, 1/6 sec @ f/22, ISO 100 w/ cpol filter, RAW processed in ARL2

"Swaha Sunset" - Matt
This is from our fabulous weekend adventure of finding diamonds in Arkansas. No diamonds to report, but we had a blast and got some cool pictures.
18mm, f/22, 8sec, center-weighted, m-mode

"96 strat" - ryan
This is my attempt at an unoriginal idea. I also do not have a "working" tripod, so this was the best I could do using a pillow on the dining room table to station the camera.
D90 - 42mm, 6s, f22, ISO400

"Tracks at Lee Street" - Quincy
This was my first time out with an SLR and this is what I got. Not having a tripod, I could not stop down the aperture and hand hold.
E500 - 48mm, 1/40s, f3.7, ISO100

Next week's challenge:
Southern Shots
15 October 2008 - Weekly Photo Challenge "Accidental Letters"
Due: 22 October 2008

This looked like fun.

Examples:
http://www.dpchallenge.com/challenge_results.php?CHALLENGE_ID=922

If you or someone you know wants to join, let me (Matt) know.

Painting with Light

"The Shape of Her Hand" - Cary

My green laser pointer is way more fun than would seem possible sometimes.  The engineering behind setting up this shot (which involved a fan, lego and, of course, duct tape) caused my wife to chuckle but she was still willing to lend me a hand.  

E-3 w/ 12-60mm @ 40mm, 4 sec @ f/4, ISO 400, RAW processed in ALR2

"Alphabet" - Matt
I had a lot of fun making this one. Took me some engineering to come up with a system that would let me get the effect I wanted.

18mm, f/6.7, 30sec, center-weighted, m-mode

"Spirit of the Eagle" - Mike
My brother received his Eagle Scout award last night and I got this idea for a painting with light photo. Drawing the eagle with my LED pen light proved to be much more challenging than I had anticipated. I had to composite a few shots together since I couldn't do the drawing of the eagle and colored whisps faster than 30 seconds (3 seperate 30 second shots).
55mm, f/25 (eagle) & f/5.6 (whisps), (3x)30 sec., Rear Flash, ISO 200, Matrix, Composited in GIMP

Long Exposure

"I-20" - Matt

I suppose this would have been more impressive in a bigger city than Vicksburg. Oh well.
18mm, f/13, 10sec, center-weighted, m-mode

"Painted Percussion" - Mike
I tried several different long exposure attempts, but I learned a lot of things that didn't work very well. I had thought it would be fun to paint Jon in at several locations on the playset by flashing a secondary camera, but the flash was too broad and he got ghosted in instead. I'll have to try a flashlight next time. I arranged these instruments, turned off the lights and then painted them in with a flashlight, producing lighting that would not be easily achievable without a long exposure.
40 mm, f/5.6, 15 sec., ISO-200, No Flash, Manual

"Over and Under" - Cary

I tried a few different locations for moving vehicle light streaks and then figured the river bridge would be the best. It was pure luck to get traffic both over and under it while the sky was still colorful. I also now understand what Matt meant by hyperactive mosquitoes!

E-3 w/ 12-60mm @ 12mm, 25 sec @ f/11, ISO 100, RAW processed in ALR2

" Confederate Ave. Bridge" - Kirk

I knew where I wanted to take a picture when this topic was selected. Unfortunately I waited until the last minute to go take the shot and realized that I would have liked a shot earlier in the evening.

ISO 200, 48mm, 30 sec, f/36, manual