16 February 2010

Night Shots

So ... what's a girl to do when she thinks her husband has been eaten by cannibals or gone down in a fiery helicopter crash in the jungle? If you are me - snap some photos and see what you can do with them! Still trying to avoid that 'Jessie can't swallow' issue too.

So - I headed outside with my trusty Digital Rebel XTi mounted on the tripod and planted it squarely in the middle of the road ....


.... because MY NEIGHBORS DON'T THINK I'M WEIRD ENOUGH ...

and took a test shot of the front door:

Boring, so I turned the camera around: (original Raw shot):

Edited Raw Shot:

Still boring. Took one from my front porch of a tree:

Boring, boring, boring: (edited):

Oh! Not so boring - I'm liking what I can do with black and white in RAW: (this looks 'almost' like an infrared photo ... which my camera can't do ... darn ...):

So - I decided to play with my chicks-and-hens ... they are always good for a good photo op - and they survived those hard freezes - so they are my buddies.

Here is a shot I took that duplicates (I edited it to do so) the exact amount of light out there on the porch when I shot the photos WITHOUT A FLASH ...

First one - I was still into editing them to look like I took it during the day (original shot):

Edited photo:

But then I went for the black and white (original photo):

Cool black and white:

Original Raw photo:

Cool black and white:

So I was just toodling along writing this post when what happens? My phone rings - with a familiar jumbled phone number! My hubbie is somewhere with cell phone coverage! We talk a bit - not a cannibal in site and he gets to go back to Australia a day early - but isn't going to change ... yet again his date to come to the States - so still after his birthday ...

I must have asked him something that indicated that I had not heard from him since his 'we are grounded because of fog' call and he said 'Didn't you get my e-mail?'

MY HUSBAND WAS SPAMMED!!!

Microsoft Outlook is in BIG TROUBLE. There clear as day is an e-mail - titled: "Hello - From the Dark Side of the Moon' - so apparently he had time to get on my blog too! And here I was frantically taking photos trying to stay occupied ...

So - y'all will never guess what I am going to do here in just a bit (yes, JUST A BIT ...)

I'm going to bed!!!

5 comments:

A.J. said...

Lori, I always think of those old black and white Army films showing the Nuclear Blast when I see a high contrast black and white picture.

One question, if the picture of your Hen and Chicks was taken in low light how do you manage to get a shopped photo that has light reflecting off of each pedal?

Inquiring minds need to know!

Glad to hear that things are still ticking on the Dark Side of the Moon.
Talk to you later.

Lori Hurst said...

AJ - If you look at my photo that reproduced the amount of light outside - you can see a titch of light on the chicks and hens. I literally could not see what I was shooting at when I looked through the eyepiece (an SLR camera will not show you a preview of what you are shooting on the back screen like a point and shoot - you must look through the 'lens' - thus, the definition of an SLR ...) so I was literally shooting blind.

I have no idea how there was that much light that I could pull out of the file. I was on those 20 - 30 second exposures so it had a while to 'soak up' what it could.

The light that it was getting was coming from a window about 2 feet away from the pot where I had lights on in my office - so a small bit of light was oozing out the window and onto the plant - just not very much.


And ... like I said - shooting in camera RAW is magical!!! Only explanation I can come up with!

Lori Hurst said...

Oh, and AJ - I hadn't really looked at my photos when I wrote that comment - if you look at the very first photo - the one of my front door - you can see the amount of light coming out of the windows and you can see the planter outlined in black on the right hand side - so THAT is how much light was hitting the plants ...

A.J. said...

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!
Lori Thanks for the primer in Photography. I used to own a Pentax K1000 back in the day, but I was never able to produce or capture the quality shots that you do.

Lori A said...

I love seeing all of your pictures! I think one of these days I need to stay playing around with Photoshop. We have it, but I only do very basic stuff with it. Maybe I need to start learning more.