Nifty Fifty: Starting a New Project

I've been a bit uninspired lately. My photos are all looking mostly the same. I take a picture of a tree, I make sure there's a nice sky in the background and presto, I have a nice picture. Unfortunately, all of them look pretty much the same. You see one tree, you've seen them all! Obviously, there are exceptions to this as there are some very neat, unique trees out there.

One of my favorite photos is a tree. Don't ask me why, but that photo, taken by Steve Paxton, was very inspiring to me. The first time I saw that, I came to the realization that I needed a wide angle lens.

I picked up a Sigma 10-20mm lens rarely ever take it off my camera, which leads me to this blog entry. My other lenses are getting dusty! So, I'm going to force myself to post a new picture every week with my 50mm f/1.8 lens, also known as the Nifty Fifty.

This is my first entry for this project. The sun was down over the horizon, so it's not very bright or colorful, but I still like it. I love sunflowers for some reason. Perhaps it's because the chipmunks steal the seeds from my feeders and "plant" them all over the place, leaving sunflowers to pop up in my yard throughout the summer.

Here are some of those thieves now!

Now, for something totally unrelated. I stopped on my way home from work last night to take some pictures. I needed some more material for my blog as I was running out of photos from my adventure to the Whitney Point Reservoir.

For some reason, I like vertically oriented landscape shots like the ones above, especially with a large foreground that leads into the photo. A kid riding a red tricycle on the sidewalk in the second photo could really make that shot.

Whitney Point Reservoir, Pt. 2

This place is absolutely beautiful. I hardly ran into anybody. I saw one person and the evidence of one more. A few vehicles passed through the area, but it was very quiet and peaceful. I will definitely go back here.

I was going through my photos from this trip this morning, getting a bit discouraged. I posted a photo in my previous blog entry with a visible seam where I blended two exposures together. It's rather sloppy and I had hoped I wouldn't do that. I worked for about an hour this morning trying different things to fix it with little success. I haven't given up entirely, but I have set it aside for another day.

Here are some other photos I managed to get through my workflow. As you can see, I was there early enough to catch the sunrise. The sun didn't show itself much at first, but when it did, it was gorgeous. I'd wake up at 5am again to go back and catch the sunrise again.

I'm not sure about this one. I like it, but I don't. What do you think? Please feel free to comment on it.

Feel free to post critiques of my photos in the comments. I won't learn anything if you don't tell me what you don't like about my work.

Whitney Point Reservoir

I'm not known by my friends and family to be an early riser. I sleep in the morning when I can. I usually roll out of bed around 8 and get to work around 10. This Saturday was different. I had big plans for this weekend. I set my alarm for 5 and was out the house by 5:30.

Last week the weather was miserable for shooting photos. It was rainy. I'm not taking my camera out in the rain to get soaked and ruined. I can't afford to buy new cameras regularly. So, I opted to drive around and scout out a new location to shoot. I saw the wildlife sanctuary in my Jimapco Atlas of Central New York right off the northern tip of the Whitney Point Reservoir. It was absolutely beautiful down there. There is so much different scenery to view and photograph. There's a nice bridge, a swamp, a lake, a windy river, fields and wildlife. Here is the first of a set of photos I took this Saturday.

I'm not 100% sure how I feel about self portraits. They're kind of convenient as the subject is usually 100% cooperative. I took this one for a specific reason, though. I wanted to point out my silly hat. It's just a camouflage John Deere hat my wife bought me. It's not special, but it serves a great purpose. Bugs. They don't seem to like getting under the brim of hats. I know this for a fact. Every time I take it off because my head is getting sweaty, the bugs bug me. This hat is very much an important part of my camera gear.

If my pants look wet, it's because they were! I was walking through grass up to my waste and early in the morning, there's still dew on it. I was soaked! I was also getting down low and dirty. Whatever it took to get a decent shot.

Keep an eye out for more to come. I shot 350 photos while I was out. As I go through and pick out ones I like, I'll post them and blog about them.

Onondaga Lake Park, Pt. 2

Even though I had a difficult time capturing images with overcast skies, I was able to get some that I liked, as you saw in my previous post. This is a continuation of that as I was able to spend some more time processing photos. The photos below are all blended exposures as it was difficult to get a single exposure that I liked with the lighting. Maybe I have a lot more to learn here.

I hope you enjoyed them. I hope to get back there when the sun is shining to see what kinds of photos I can get with better lighting. I am happy with the results I achieved though.

Overcast at Onondaga Lake Park

I've been out to shoot in overcast situations before with very little luck, so I wasn't very inclined to go out again last night. Unfortunately, I was miserable yesterday and just wanted to get out to take some photos. On top of that, I haven't updated my blog for a week. So, I figured if I was going to learn how to take decent photos on overcast days, I'd have to go out. So, I chose Onondaga Lake Park as my destination.

I learned a good piece of information that I might not have learned. Unfortunately, I didn't learn it until I was at home looking at my pictures. The piece that I learned was that there are subjects that can look good in low light and others that just plain don't. I couldn't get my standard landscape shots, but the photo below, I'm quite happy with. I like the subject and I think it fits in very nicely with the gloomy skies. It's very somber. The only thing that's missing is some tumbleweed.

I learned something else as well. Photos that don't look good in color might look good in black and white. I decided I'd have a go at creating a black and white image out of a photo I didn't like in color. It's hard to tell from the photo because of the lack of color, but the object in the foreground is the exposed root of the tree in the background.

As I was on my way out of the park, I saw this guy running around the ground. He stopped and I was able to get my telephoto lens attached, but a car drove up and scared this squirrel up the tree. I was rather disappointed because I wanted to shoot him on the picnic table. This isn't technically a good photo, but I love squirrels. So, here it is.

More From Beaver Lake

These are the final images from my trip to Beaver Lake this week. I'll probably try to get up there again and see if I can get some photos of the local wildlife. I'll probably pack some bird seed in my camera bag to offer the squirrels and birds and sit a while to see what I can get.

I'll have some more photos from my trip to Currie Road tomorrow sometime.

Being Busy

I've been rather busy taking pictures lately. I have a lot of RAW files that still need to be processed. I'll be getting around to it very shortly.

Here is a sampling of what I've been shooting lately.

I took this at Beaver Lake last night while walking around, looking for photos to take to submit for the amateur photo competition. I won't submit this one, but I like it. Unfortunately, the blades of grass in the front seem to get in the way a bit.

I figured I was already going to be home late last night from my trip to Beaver Lake, I might as well make another stop on my way. There's a whole plot of land that's owned by the SUNY schools between Tully and Truxton. I'm not sure what exactly the land is, but they have what appears to be a campground here.

Using the satellite feature of Google Maps, I found a location down some railroad tracks that looked interesting. So, I stopped there after work on Monday to take some pictures. I have been wanting to shoot some railroad for a long time now. I have more photos from this trip that need to be processed, but here's one so far.

Here is where the above picture was taken.