Photos by DJ

Trust

We have been living in Asia for more than two years now.  One thing that took a lot of getting used to, was the trust and respect of property that both the Koreans and the Japanese have.  I remember when we moved to Korea the stories that were told about people who would live stuff in cabs or bathrooms only to have the items returned to them later.  We experienced this in Japan too.  I had left something in a bathroom at a very large hotel in Shinagawa, only to return at the end of the day to find it right where I left it. 

This afternoon we were on our way to the track and passed the soccer fields where it appeared a Japanese league was having a tournament.  There were a dozen or more teams practicing and getting ready to play.  Off to the corner the field I sported this and had to take a few pictures:

 

I was having major lens envy and thought how cool it would be to shoot the games.  It didn't occur to me later, that this equipment was just sitting there.  I never saw the camera man.  All this coolness was just sitting there, by itself, on the field amongst all kinds of people.  Yes, the amount of trust here is amazing and something I still haven't gotten used to. 

Time

I've been trying to play along with the challenges while in transition and it's not been easy.  On our first trip out in town though, I saw this clock and thought it perfect for the "time" theme.  I live in a naval town so there are ships and boats everywhere!  I guess that's one great thing about the navy, for the most part we're always on the water.  I can't see the water from my house anymore, but we have a couple of creeks close and the beach is a train stop away!

More Photoshop Fun: Actions

I've been on a roll this weekend and have gotten some chances to get out and shoot.  The weather has been gorgeous!  I've been playing more with the processing of my photos and trying out various actions and techniques.  I use Elements 5.0 and I know there are a lot of things that I can't do or know how to do, and that is where the actions are so fun.  As I sit there and watch the process though, it has helped me learn more too.  For the most part, I've been using EZ Actions by Photoblast.

These were from a Christmas shoot.  I got this one between poses and thought it was cute.  Yes, it was nearly Christmas here, but the fall colors were just gorgeous!

This next one is a photo from last year, shortly after we got our 50mm lens and I was playing with it using only the light of the lamp.  The colors weren't great, but I love how it looked in black and white:

I took our 100mm out on our walk in the hills today and I was determined to get some texture shots.  I've seen some really cool texture work lately, and I always enjoy the challenge of photo blending in my scrapbooking.

This one is a nice rock that I layered over the photo.

This one was a bit more challenging.  I used a photo of some leaves and changed the colors a bit.  One thing I LOVE about the 100mm is how sharp it is.  When I get the focus right I can zoom in so far and still have so much detail.  It makes it much easier when it comes to erasing and doing some touch up.

Finally, I got this shot this afternoon.  The little guy was bundled up in his stroller with a yellow canopy over him.  It took some trial and error to get the colors not so yellow, which is why I also did the black and white conversion.

If you zoom in a lot on this one, you can see my reflection in his eyes!  He's such a cutie. 

Fun with RAW

I have been shooting exclusively in RAW for well over a year now.  Yes, the files are bigger, much bigger, and they require more work, but what fun it is too!  I have so much more control over my photos and have been able to save some that would have been lost forever to the recycle bin because of messed up settings.  I still don't fully understand the capabilities or what exactly I should be doing, but I do like how I can adjust the files and learn a bit more about how to better take pictures.

Here are is one of my first shots with my 50mm lens that we got last year.  I was so excited to have a low light lens and what fun it would be for not shots.  This is one of our city streets.

This was taken at f/2.8, 1/100s, ISO 200 and no adjustments to the RAW file. 

This is the same shot, but I increased the exposure by 2 and increased the brightness just a bit.  WOW!  And I liked how it looked before.

Now, even after having our cameras awhile and thinking we know what we're doing, there are still those "ooops" moments.  This is one of the first pictures I took on our day out in Hong Kong.  However, we forgot to change the light balance from the night before where we were taking photos inside the hotel.

Ooops!  The white balance was set to tungstan so the first few photos were blue.  Since I shot it in RAW, I was able to go back and change the just the white balance to daylight.

What a relief!  This has been one of my favorite photos of the cable cars we rode.  This picture was taken at f/4.5, 1/200s, ISO 200 and again with my 50mm lens.  (LOVE this lens!)  This is why I shoot my photos in RAW.