playing with light - stained glass Thursday, January 31, 2008 | 2

Tonight, I walked into the dark sanctuary to pick up something I had left there. The light from the street was shining through the stained glass, and I took a couple of pictures. I am including this in the playing with light series since this picture is actually brighter than it was in real life due to the long exposure time.

f3.2 for 16 seconds

a texas sunset Tuesday, January 29, 2008 | 3

Praise Him under the open skies;
Praise Him for His acts of power,
Praise Him for His magnificent greatness;
Let every living, breathing creature praise God!
Hallelujah!

taken from Psalm 150 (the message)

three pictures of one tired cat Saturday, January 26, 2008 | 9

One thing I love about photography is the creativity and variety you can put into it. I love playing with light and taking pictures in low light situations (just looking at the first month of blog pictures probably shows that). Today, I have three pictures for you that are not that great, but I had a lot of fun taking them. All three of these are taken in a room with only a desk lamp on. The most amazing part is seeing how still the cat sat for the two pictures with long exposures.

This first picture is just a picture taken with no flash and a four second exposure. Since there is little light in the room, the four second exposure allows that room to look lit since there was quite a bit of time for light to filter onto the lens.

Honestly, that picture was pretty boring, but you can get more drama by using a flash (well duh, it's not like it takes an Einstein level professional photographer to understand that). This picture is just a standard flash with an exposure time of 1/40th of a second that creates some great dark and light areas of the picture.

Now, this last picture is where things get interesting. Some photographers like to use a technique called "slow sync" where they combine the two. For this picture, I had the camera flash right as the picture started, so that little abby here is well lit. Then, I left the shutter open for four seconds to allow the ambient lighting in the room to do it's work, and you end up with the entire picture being lit up with a yellowish glow. You lose the shadows found in the second picture, but this technique creates its own drama.

See, an educational post with cats involved. I guess they can be used for something other than warming my wife's lap.