Photo Project: Daily Grind

At the end of my 3 week photography class we had to turn in a photo project and present it to the class. The assignment was to take 5 pictures that were related in some way. It could be all people, or all water, or all black and white......whatever you wanted. So I chose to take 5 pictures of my daily routine. Kind of walk you through my day. I like to call it The Daily Grind. I procrastinated all but one of the pictures until less than 24 hours before I had to present (surprise, surprise) so I had to rush through them, but here's what I ended up with.

#1. Waking up. Lesley hates the short shorts, but whatcha gonna do? This was shot with ISO 1600 to increase the light. The noise (graininess) in the photo was done on purpose to give that 'not quite woken up' feel to the shot. One of my classmates said it looked like the person in the picture was really stressed out or depressed. I didn't tell him it was me in the shot.
#2. Biggest Loser workout. ISO 100, F/14, 1/2 second exposure. This took like 30 different tries from about 5 different angles to get the motion how I wanted it.

#3. Work. This is my office building in Provo. I work on the third floor and I wanted to capture my view in the reflection of the windows. Somehow I lucked out and get to look at Mt. Timpanogas all day. ISO 100, F/3.4, 1/400 s.

#4. The commute home. This is at the point of the mountain, just about home, taken around 7:30 pm. ISO 100, F/16, 15 second exposure, .3 stops underexposed

#5. Bedtime. Lesley posed for this photo. 2 steps underexposed to keep everything but the light and hand very dark and also to create the warm colors. ISO 1600, F/5.6, 1/80 s.

I'm now taking suggestions for my next post. I like to have assignments from people because it makes me go out and shoot.

Still waiting for a post from Eliot or Jason................

Rio Grande Train Station Dump

We had our second trip and we went to this retired train station in downtown Salt Lake. I didn't find the place very interesting for shooting, but came away with a few decent shots. This week in class we had been focusing on achieving the shot you want in camera, without using photoshop, by manipulating the exposure, contrast, saturation, white balance, and the like. So all the pictures you see were not photoshopped except for the very last one where I added some saturation after the fact. If you click on the slideshow it will take you to the picassa album where the captions have the details of the shot (shutter speed, aperture, etc.) For example, some of the shots of the stairs were 20 second exposures. Again, feedback is welcome. And I'm waiting to see the results from Jason's field trip.

Field Trip

So I'm in a photography class now at hated University of Utah's continuing education program. I think the program is for all their football players that never graduate. We had a field trip this weekend where we went to a park in SLC to take pictures. The park was really ugly so there wasn't a whole lot to work with. It was more to practice our technical skills anyway. The teacher walked around with us and gave some technical and composition help, but mostly we just wandered around and practices. Here is a slideshow of what I took. The one night picture is of the Utah state capitol and was taken earlier this week. These shots aren't all that great, but they're what was left after I weeded out all the "practice" shots. It's amazing at how many pictures I thought were worth taking at the time but once I went through them I wondered what I was thinking. I always appreciate feedback.