Illuminations of Life

My purpose for photo blogging

2010-05-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

I first discovered blogging in college when the Xanga blogging platform was all the rage. Blogs were pretty boring back then - people babbled about their day and posted pictures with lots of friends. I had (and still have) one, which I abandoned after college since Xanga was no longer the "in" thing in my social circle.

Fast forward a few years - I was doing wedding research and I realized that blogging was even bigger now, just with different platforms such as Blogspot and Wordpress. I stumbled across photography blogs when I was looking for a photographer for our wedding - these blogs usually served to showcase a photographer's work and entice new clients.

I've never been artistic so it makes no sense that I would be into photography. In fact, I couldn't always tell the difference between a $1,000 and a $5,000 wedding photographer, even though that's a pretty big price differential in the wedding world. Yet, here I am, using a fancy SLR camera, taking pictures and even dabbling in Photoshop every now and then. This defies all logic. Did I mention that I'm not artistic at all? Clearly, my blog is not for the purpose of showcasing my work and skills. Heck, I don't even like taking pictures of people - I have enough trouble with taking pictures of still subjects. I started a blog because it was a good way for me to document and track the pictures I've taken, what effects I've used, and what tweaks I've made. Blogs seemed very narcissistic back when I had one in college so I'm trying to stay away from that by not plastering my picture everywhere and making it all about me.

So why am I doing this (other than the fact that my professor is making me do something creative for her class)? I have a really good memory - so good that it's scary. So good that Jeff fears for his life every time we fight because he knows I'll always be able to pull up an example of how he pissed me off the same way five years ago (in my defense, I've learned to minimize this behavior - really!). So good that my friends tell me all their juicy secrets because they want to preserve their important memories, but then they worry that I may blackmail them with this information some day (I've never done this!).

Still, it's not a photographic memory. I can remember the emotions and connections and random juicy bits but I can't remember all the visual details. I can't remember all the colors, the textures, the imagery. Despite my desire for visual memories, I also hate bad pictures and I have a tendency to delete ones I don't like. I don't need spectacular pictures but I want somewhat good pictures. Pictures that are clear and vivid, pictures that will show me of the things I've seen and the places I've gone. Pictures that remind me of the people I love - who they are, how they laugh, and why I love them. It is this inspiration and motivation that has kept me going in this photoblogging experience. At times, it has been more challenging than it has been fun because it is demoralizing to spend an afternoon taking pictures, only to realize that there are only a handful of pictures that are good enough to share on my blog (if any!).

This picture was taken by the talented Bill Xie during a family photo shoot we did the day before my brother's wedding and it's one of my favorite pictures ever. This is a pretty good representation of our sibling relationship, which is really a testament to Bill's talent. I will probably never take pictures as amazing as this but pictures like this inspire me to capture the memories that illuminate my life.

Actual pictures of people

2010-05-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

I took these pictures of my teammates for a profile pack we're putting together. Luckily, they are a good looking, photogenic bunch so the pictures came out really well! The lighting is a bit too light for some of the portraits below but that's easily adjusted in Photoshop. I love the expressions and the clarity of the photos though - they definitely look better than the shots I take from a point and shoot camera.

Not the most professional picture but too adorable to leave out

Here's one of my favorite group shots - obviously I didn't take this picture so I can't claim credit, other than providing the camera. :P

A few pictures around campus

2010-05-25T06:20:00.000-07:00

I decided to wander around campus with a camera after my last class today. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, especially since I don't know the campus well enough to narrate you through this post. :P

Auto white balance: shade

Auto white balance: daylight

(Color balance has been adjusted in Photoshop to increase the levels of red)

Auto white balance: shade
Auto white balance: shade
Auto white balance: daylight
(Adjusted with the warmer action from Pioneer Woman's set of Photoshop actions)
an HDR image

Here's a quick shot I captured on the way home while waiting at a red light - I had absolutely no time to frame or focus the shot so obviously, this image is pretty terrible.

Auto white balance: daylight, shutter speed: 1/10 second

With a bit of a crop and the seventies action applied from Pioneer Woman's action set, here's how the picture turned out:

It's still not a great shot but at least it looks a lot more interesting. Traffic was worse than usual, thanks to a suspicious package. Gotta love LA.

A night out with my point and shoot camera

2010-05-24T07:36:00.000-07:00

I'm a huge fan of souffles and I heard great things about the souffles at Off Vine in Hollywood so we finally made the trek out there this weekend to see what the fuss was all about. I didn't feel like carrying my SLR around so these pictures are from my point and shoot Nikon camera. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of these pictures - I guess it's a good thing the camera didn't drown after all. :P

I had the flash off so I left the camera on the table to keep it still

These picture were taken on the auto settings (with flash, which is why the pictures came out so dark) and then brightened up with the warmer action from Pioneer Woman's set of Photoshop actions.

In case you were wondering, the souffles were delicious and gooey. :)

A stroll along the Santa Monica Pier

2010-05-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

We thought we would enjoy the weather by spending the day by the Santa Monica beach today. Unfortunately, it was too windy to be pleasant but we stuck around for awhile to take some pictures. I assumed that a touristy site like the pier would be a great place for pictures but I found it hard to find good angles and frame interesting pictures.

Auto white balance: daylight

Auto white balance: daylight
Auto white balance: daylight
Auto white balance: daylight
Enhanced with "Dim the lights" from Pioneer Woman's set of Photoshop actions

An HDR image of the beach

Even though I've learned a little bit more about my camera, I feel like I'm not getting any better at taking pictures! Still, I suppose it's a good sign that I'm still trying. :)

P.S. The photoshop actions from Pioneer Woman are amazing and totally free to download!

Strawberry Napoleons

2010-05-22T09:22:00.000-07:00

To commemorate finishing my last midterm of the quarter, I decided to whip up something fun for dessert. Of course, I needed photographic evidence of my culinary efforts.

Macro setting, automatic flash

I think this distance was a bit too far away for the macro setting. The flash washes everything out.

Auto white balance: white fluorescent light, no flash

I don't like the lighting in this picture as much as I like the lighting in the macro picture (first picture at the top).

Auto white balance: white fluorescent light, no flash

This one is probably a little too dark, so I lightened it up in Photoshop:
I think the picture at the top is my favorite - it makes me wish I hadn't limited myself to making just three servings. I also need to find better lighting inside our apartment. :P

A cloudy day in LA

2010-05-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

LA has been particularly rainy this year, although today was really more misty than rainy. As my classmate Max puts it: "Just enough rain to be inconvenient; not enough rain to get the grime off my car. Lame."

Auto white balance setting: cloudy
HDR image of the same view

I like how the colors are more vibrant and the buildings and trees in the mist are clearer in the second image. I'm not sure if it's the cloudy weather but this HDR image doesn't seem as cartoon-like as the sunny HDR image.

Watching cars go by

2010-05-20T07:01:00.000-07:00

I wanted to play with shutter speeds while taking pictures of cars going by to get that blurry car effect. These pictures aren't particularly artistic but the effect is still kind of cool. I wish I could have stood in the middle of the street to get a shot of cars coming at me but I figured that wasn't particularly smart so I made the difficult decision to sacrifice art for safety. I also played a little bit in Photoshop to adjust the lighting, since the longer shutter speeds made the pictures way too bright. I don't know what I'm doing in Photoshop and I know it can't transform me into a good photographer but I want to learn how to use it to enhance my pictures so bare with me as I practice and play.

Case in point:

shutter speed: 1/8 second

Auto white balance: daylight

I thought this picture would be a lost cause until I used Photoshop to tone it down (image --> adjustments --> variations --> darker).

Much better! I know it looks obviously photoshopped but I like the grittier texture and the more vivid colors.

shutter speed: 1/8 second
Auto white balance: white fluorescent light

Overexposed again. Here's how it looks after a few tweaks in Photoshop:

This picture is definitely a lot more blue than the one above. I like this bluish tone more - I might experiment with taking more outdoor pictures in the sun with the white fluorescent light setting.

shutter speed: 1/8 second
Auto white balance: white fluorescent light

I love the contrast between the moving truck (white moving blob on the left) and the clarity of the parked car right under it. I thought the lighting wasn't too bad but I adjusted it a bit in Photoshop just for some more clarity.

That's pretty much the extent of my Photoshop skills. Even with my limited skills I'm starting to see how powerful Photoshop can be. Of course, if I were a better photographer, I'd be able to take better pictures straight out of the camera so that all this photo editing wouldn't be necessary. But hey, I'm still learning - Rome wasn't built in a day. :)

What I've learned so far

2010-05-18T06:22:00.000-07:00

Having the technical knowledge and the fancy expensive tools can only get you so far. To be a great (or even just good) photographer, you need to have the artistic eye to capture the right image image, frame a good shot, visualize what would make a good picture. A truly talented photographer doesn't need the expensive camera to get the good shot - he/she can take an amazing picture with a point and shoot.

These days, I carry around a big camera and I hunt for cool pictures to take. I totally look and play the part of a "real" photographer - my camera looks sufficiently fancy and I fiddle around with the settings long enough to make it look like I know what I'm doing. But I'm not satisfied with my pictures. Once in awhile I get lucky and I think "wow that looks kind of cool." But most of the time, the pictures are not cool at all. Sometimes I think "if I only had a wide angle lens, I'd fit more stuff in the frame and that would make this shot so much better" or "if only I was in a more interesting setting, surely my pictures would be awesome" or even "if I had some amazing Photoshop skills, I could turn this into an amazing picture". But I know that's not the case, and I know that fancy tools don't make a good photographer.

I'm not naturally artistic so I can't rely on my instincts to take good pictures but hopefully I'll be able to improve with more practice. Most of these posts only have a handful of pictures so it looks like it only took a few minutes to take them. But in actuality, it takes me much longer because my ratio of good/post-worthy shots to the total number of shots is so low. For every one good picture I'm willing to share with the world, I've probably taken at least ten bad pictures (most likely more). I'm trying not to let this discourage me - what I lack in natural abilities, I hope to make up for with hard work and experience. In the meantime, I'll just sit back with a glass of sangria and be glad that photography isn't my day job!

Taking my camera out for burgers

2010-05-16T22:42:00.000-07:00

It's not easy lugging a big SLR camera to dinner - people look at you funny if you're standing or crouching at the table trying to get unique angles with your camera. Luckily, my friends are really understanding and Umami Burger is pretty casual.

I love Mexican coke

Ricky's Triple Pork Burger

My Truffle Burger - it doesn't look like much but it's delicious

Jeff's manly burger - also very yummy! Too bad this picture came out blurry. :(

Some cheesy tater tots and sweet potato fries to round out our very nutritious meal :)

It's much easier to experiment with photography at home than out in public while my dining companions are waiting to eat. Still, it's good practice and it gives me a greater range of things to take pictures of.

High Dynamic Range

2010-05-15T06:42:00.000-07:00

Today's post gets a bit more complicated than usual but learning it has made me feel like I know what I'm doing as an amateur photography enthusiast. As a disclaimer, I am by no means a photography expert so some of the information in here may be technically incorrect. I'm much more tactical when it comes to photography - I learn better through hands-on experimentation, not reading through lots of research to figure out the technical details.

Taking a high dynamic range (HDR) shot requires taking the same picture under 3 different light conditions and then layering these pictures on top of each other for one picture with more depth, color, and texture. It's a bit complicated so try not to get lost as we journey through this together!

First, you go to the menu and adjust the AEB setting until it's at -2, 0, and 2. AEB stands for Automatic Exposure Bracketing and the setting I described will take three shots at different exposures. Then I adjusted the camera to shoot continuously so that once I had a shot, I could hold down the button to take 3 consecutive shots very quickly. Here are the 3 shots I took for my first HDR picture (yes, I used my balcony view as the subject again):

Then I used a photo editing software to mesh the three pictures together and play around with the color settings. I used Photomatrix but I'm sure there are plenty of other good programs out there that can do this. Be gentle in your critiques of the finished HDR image - it's my first and I had no clue what I was doing!

Pretty neat, huh? It almost looks like a painting rather than a photo.

Macro setting

2010-05-13T05:13:00.000-07:00

For today's session, I used the macro setting to take pictures of things up close.

For some reason I really like this picture, even though the earrings aren't totally in focus.

I'm so impressed with how sparkly and radiant these earrings look in the picture. If only they were real diamonds. ;)

Here's a beautiful necklace that my dear friend Janie made for me as part of a thank you gift for being her maid of honor. She's an amazing artist so don't hold my lackluster picture taking skills against her - my picture definitely does not do justice to her beautiful designs!

It was driving me nuts that I could see myself in the shiny reflection of this bracelet cuff. Oh well, at least you can't see my face.

Yes, I am subjecting you to more of my culinary creations. This is pretty delicious, despite how unappetizing it looks. My oven is a little moody, which is why some of the twists look darker than others.

I didn't take this on the macro setting but I felt that I needed to give credit to the bowls I used to model the jewelry. Wonder if I could pass this off as a picture from the Crate and Barrel catalog? :P

The detail that you get in pictures from using the macro setting is definitely a big plus. I'll probably do another post later to compare the same picture on macro setting versus the regular setting.

A view from my balcony

2010-05-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

We're lucky enough to live in an apartment with a fantastic view from the balcony. This gorgeous view will probably be in a lot of my practice shots. Last night, I decided to use the night view to experiment with shutter speeds. I've taken enough bad pictures in low light conditions to know that the camera needs to stay very still to take good pictures so I used a tripod. I have this one in black - I like that it's light, portable, and flexible although I don't really have anything to compare it to.

And we're off!

shutter speed: 1/8 of a second

This picture is awful. This shutter speed is way too fast - it doesn't let enough light in to illuminate the scene.

shutter speed: 1 second

This is definitely better, although still way too dark. At least there's some contrast in color between the sky and the buildings.

shutter speed: 2 seconds

This one has a little more color and the lights are just that much brighter.

shutter speed: 3.2 seconds

By this point, I had my camera set on automatic timer to make sure that the camera would stay very still. The buildings are starting to look a lot clearer.

shutter speed: 4 seconds

I love it! Admittedly the picture isn't as crisp as I would like but it's definitely way better than the first one. I think that's my fault though - the camera plus tripod was standing on top of a stack of Ikea dining table chairs, so it wasn't exactly the most stable structure.

Now that I had my ideal shutter speed, I started adjusting the ISO settings (all the pictures above were taken at ISO 100). As you can see, the pictures gets lighter and brighter as ISO increases.

shutter speed: 4 seconds, ISO: 200

shutter speed: 4 seconds, ISO: 400shutter speed: 4 seconds, ISO: 800
shutter speed: 4 seconds, ISO: 1600

Excuse the blurriness of the ISO 800 picture - I'm pretty sure that was my fault (or rather the fault of my wobbly chairs) so don't fault the ISO setting. I love the last picture, although it does look grainier at the highest ISO setting. I think it would make a pretty awesome postcard but I'm a bit biased. ;)

ISO fun with dolls

2010-05-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

All auto settings except for white balance set at shade

Today, my subjects are two little dolls I acquired on a trip to China six and a half years ago. They look suspiciously Japanese to me but regardless, they are adorable and they make very obedient subjects.

I'm not going to pretend I know what ISO is and how it works and all that jazz. There are plenty of great websites that go into tons of technical detail about that. For me, I wanted to see for myself how different ISO settings affect the picture.

ISO 100: I can barely see them - are you girls still there?!

ISO 200: Slightly more visible, although not by much.

ISO 400: Getting better and we can actually see some purple on the right doll.

ISO 800: Much more visible - I've read that higher ISO settings will make your pictures grainy looking on regular cameras. I think it's not as obvious here because SLRs can minimize the grainy look.

ISO 1600: The Rebel XSi is an entry level DSLR so it doesn't go beyond 1600 in ISO settings. Still, this is plenty for my uses. I like that this picture is much brighter but when you zoom in a bit, you can tell that the picture a tad grainy. I can see how this is a good setting for low light conditions, especially when you don't want to use flash (which for me is like, never).

All right, time for the girls to return to their rightful places on my bookshelf. They're exhausted from the photo shoot!

White Balance

2010-05-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

I wish I had learned about the white balance settings earlier since every digital camera has this feature, not just the fancy SLR ones. It's really easy to play around with and makes me feel like photography might not be so daunting after all!

Don't let the subject of this series of photographs distract you from what we're trying to learn today. I probably shouldn't combine my cooking with my photography - my abilities in these areas are pretty lackluster! Rest assured, I am desperately trying to improve both skill sets. :)

Auto setting

Daylight setting -pretty similar to the auto setting with slightly warmer tones

Cloudy setting - the difference is more obvious here
Shade setting - the color here is a lot warmer, a bit too orange-y for me

Tungsten light - totally on the opposite end of the spectrum here, with lots of cool bluish tones

I think I like the daylight and the cloudy settings best. Still, I could see how any of these settings might be optimal depending on the subject and surroundings.

Just for funsies, here's a super close up picture of my fried rice:
I don't know why my cabinets are open. Please excuse my messy kitchen!

So the journey begins...

2010-05-07T10:23:00.000-07:00

I'm starting this blog to document my attempts to learn how to use a Digital SLR camera. It seems like everyone and their moms is trying to be a professional photographer these days - well, that's not me. I have zero artistic talent so I have no illusions that I will become an amazing photographer in a few short weeks (or ever). I'm just hoping to learn a bit more about my fancy camera and take pictures that aren't totally blurry, awful, and/or boring all the time.

In the meantime, I will be putting aside my Nikon Coolpix S1, which recently survived a drowning incident in my waterproof handbag. I've had this camera for 5 years and I don't love the way it takes pictures in low light settings so I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a little disappointed that the camera survived.

Here I am with my indestructible Nikon, captured on a real camera by Bill Xie

The aforementioned DSLR camera I will be using in my learnings is the Canon Digital Rebel XS i. The only reason I have this camera is because Jeff (the hubs) bought it two years ago and tinkers around it with every now and then. As for me, this endeavor is really outside of my typical comfort zone so please keep the expectations to a minimum and feel free to offer any advice, tips, or comments along the way. :)