Photo Project 365

This is a photo blog focused on but not limited to study of composition and tonal relations in photographs.

It is a continuation my Project 365 from 2010 a moderately successful attempt to make and publish one photography each day for one year.

The Project lost it's steam somewhere half along the way and this place became a depository of my more satisfying photos.

Click photos to enlarge.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

D 53 - Charming the Spring



Another photo that sort of came out in green-yellow hue. Looks like someone here is looking forward to the snow melting away.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios lens. Longer exposure in place of flash.

What I learned

In body stabilization of Olympus as compared to better high ISO performance of Nikons and Canons is a double-edged thing. It's a pain in the back when you want to catch your kid running around or other scenes with people in motion, because it allows you to shoot at longer exposures but it doesn't compensate in any way for the motion within the frame.

However in such cases as my today's photograph it is great to have an old manual lens stabilized and shoot just slightly softened picture at 1/6 second shot from hand.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

D 52 - Mistletoe's Log



Today I tried and tried again to catch an interesting triangular composition. Not entirely without successes but while I was doing so I encountered another fantastic frame just waiting for me a hand reach away from my front door.

A mistletoe hanging on here since Christmas with a part of poplar branch which it fell down with.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 58mm lens. Flash with softbox.

What I learned

My triangle shaped compositions are getting better and better.

Prime lenses force you into seeing the world through their focal length. I shot for last 3 weeks almost exclusively inside my apartment but I did it with 30mm Pentacon (60mm after 2x crop factor) and few times with my Zuiko 14 - 42mm zoom.

Once I put on the 58mm lens (116mm after crop) I found new photos in the very same places which I exhausted with shorter focal length(s).

This forced perspective limitation provokes creativity and exploration. This makes photography fun and even adventurous in a way.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

D 51 - Cheesy moon with strings attached



Today I was trying to catch a triangular composition.
But I failed. It was quite ironic that I suddenly saw interesting compositions in all but triangle shapes.

I can't complain, I got at least two nice photos from the other shapes that exposed themselves to me so aggressively.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30mm.

What I learned

I'm not sure why couldn't I get the tonal range in the background, which I saw on the camera's LCD, from the RAW file in Lightroom. It came out almost uniformly black.

Vintage lenses with their lomo effects should not be shunned but embraced and explored. And getting special effects from your lens isn't the same as editing the photo in Photoshop, really.

My Pentacon does pretty poorly against the light when counting objectively. But with the photos I'm making it doesn't bother me a single bit.

Monday, February 8, 2010

D 50 - The World, spinning around



Big day today.
We cut our son's hair... and he ain't like it a little bit.
Fortunately he quickly forgot about it and went on having fun all around our apartment.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442, flash on slow synchro, softbox.

What I learned

Slow synchronization of the flash is a fun technique. It works great with panning. The thing is to make a good balance between natural light coming on the sensor and the flash strength.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

D 49 - The air is thick



Another thing I had on my mind for some time. Because of photography and because of that I need to clean it, of course.
I joined it with horizontal rhythm theme I was looking for today.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

Another photo left for the 5 mins after I intended to go to sleep.
When will I learn?...

Previous photos