D 116 - In the Fountain

I liked the reflection of staircase, people and lights in the orb but wasn't sure how to show it. Besides it was a bit dark and my point-and-shoot limited my possibilities.

Equipment

S630.

What I learned

Always take a walk around the subject and check the frame edges before shooting.

D 115 - Growing

One of my favorite objects (and subjects) for photography: free standing tenement house.

Equipment

S630 with a +2/3 EV bias.

D 102 - Mustang

I know I promised no more photos made by my son, but this one I actually like. A matchbox car on a town street-like carpet.

Equipment

S630 on macro setting.

What I learned

I think that it is the pedestrian crossing stripes and fence that make this photo dynamic.

D 100 - Cute...

First of all I'd like to state that "I know" and "it won't happen again, I promise".

This is one of the first photos that I've taken together with my 2 year old son. We were pointing the camera together, than I held it steady and he pushed the shutter release button. And then we reviewed the photos together. There was much rejoice.

Equipment

S630 in Auto mode.

What I learned

As much as the aim of this Project was to make better photographs in the end, isn't it really just about the fun of photography? It well should be. This therefore makes it at great photo for day 100 of my Project.

D 96 - Watch the weather change

It would be an awful waste not to take a few shots of this gorgeous clear sky we were having this week. Even more since a storm front is headed our way from Germany due to visit us on the weekend.

Equipment

S630, program mode with +1/2 EV bias.
Some highlight recovery (in the bottom left corner) and sharpening done in Lightroom.

What I learned

I got into a habit of saving photos in RAW files. Subsequently I learned to adjust the camera settings not for directly optimal effect but so that there is maximum information in RAW file for further digital development in Lightroom.

I want some change now. I'm not making any large prints of my photos recently, so I don't need all that 100% zoom clarity. I'm publishing my photos on-line with no more than 1200x900 output resolution. I can afford to go SooC: Straight out of Camera. I'm gonna make photos the old way - only what I set in camera and on scene determines how my photos look, not the (digital) lightroom mambo-jumbo.

D 92 - The Factory

This is an old factory being adapted to a modern tenement house with lofts.

Equipment

S630 shot through a car window.
Saturation, sharpness and levels in Lightroom.

What I learned

I had never been a fan of HDR or high sharpness and saturation photos. But when I get a sort of dull colored photo I can either push the contrast and make it a monochrome photo or like today, artificially increase the saturation.

D 91 - Father to son

Taking repose on the park bench, father and son.

Equipment

S630.

What I learned

Portraits do not need to show faces to be meaningful.

D 87 - Does not apply to trams

Just a scene as seen from a car.

Equipment

Samsung s630.

What I learned

Any dirt stains on the windshield can be made irrelevant by putting the lens very close to the glass. Reflections however are a big concern and difficult to avoid when the shot must be done quickly.

D 81 - Getto dining

I made the light at a dinner table more intimate by lowering the lamp to some 50 cm above the table level.

Equipment

Samsung S630.

What I learned

Even though I long to have a good flash, I love to use natural light for photography.

D 80 - Pencils

I just love pencils sharpened with a knife. They are to the automatically sharpened pencils the same what hand written letters are to emails.

Equipment
Samsung S630.
Edited in Lightroom.

What I learned

When going for macro, tripod is a must.

D 79 - The Loop

The place where the city ends? The end of tramway line. Anything further on should be considered suburbs.

Equipment

S-630.
Edited in Lightroom.

What I learned

I wish I jumped the little fence and came up closer. It wouldn't do any harm to anybody and the shot might have come out better.

D 77 - NKVD on Victory Square

A dubious result of carrying a camera with me at all times. This particular times were completely inebriated and late for the last bus home.

This place is really called Victory Square in Polish but the fur hat isn't Russian.

Equipment

Samsung S630 on high ISO (thus the noise) and long exposure (thus the blur). But the lamp light was too good to waste by turning the flash on. Or so I thought at that time. Well, maybe "thought" wasn't the word to use in my condition.

What I learned

It is hard to make long exposure photos. It is very hard to make them while being totally smashed. Each time I looked at the LCD to frame, my labyrinth went a bit crazy, my upper body went backwards and I had to try to compensate it with my hands to keep the camera steady. I wish I could see myself doing that. Must have been quite a disturbing sight.

The city is amazingly quiet on Sunday midnight. Even more so, when two major local football teams (soccer for some) play an evening match.

All restless souls of that night had been pacified in clashes with the police. And then it was quiet. Shhh... shhh... It was so still and so peaceful until I felt like singing on the bus. :D

D 74 - Crude oil went up again

I keep the Samsung compact camera with me all the time. I just have this pesky lock on my bag in which I carry the camera, so usually before I get it out and running it is too late.

The automatic gas distributor didn't run away.

Equipment

Samsung S630, slow sync flash, +0,7EV exposure bias.
Channel mix, levels and crop correction in Lightroom.

What I learned

I must keep the compact camera in my pocket.
Even on my way to work by car opportunities fly in front of my nose.

D 65 - Neuroplant

Those hairs on twigs of this plant were intriguing me for few days. They are bright red and make a nice contrast against green body of the plant. The moment I changed it into black and white photo and manipulated the color mix in Lightroom a bit I found it to take alien, electron microscope look.

Equipment

Samsung S630 on a gorilla tripod.
I manipulated color mix and contrast and cropped the photo by about 50% in Lightroom. I added some yellow/green hue by split toning.

What I learned

I need a macro lens with a 1:1 magnification for my Olympus E-510 DSLR. I used to scorn macro-photography as a strange hobby for insect hunters but it does open new spaces for abstract works.

D 60 - This ugly meltdown

The mercury bar jumped above the melting point for the first time this year. Some winter it has been.

As everything in life this boon also has its downside. With this much snow changing to water, we are bound to get mud. Loads of mud.

Equipment

Samsung S630 on manual settings.

I did some tonal curve adjustment and faded out the buildings (by local adjustment of contrast and clarity) in Lightroom.

What I learned

I tried to separate a single bush sticking out from the snow cover, then I tried to catch those heaps of snow as mountains striking against the sky but none of those photos came out well. So I went for this one with buildings oddly contrasting with the mountain-like snow formations.
If at first you don't succeed try again.

D 59 - Hide behind

Ah! The beauties of my city. Major chimneys can be easily used for orienteering in the industrial areas.
This one is the same one that I can see from my window. "Blink, blink!" my son calls them, for the red lights they flash against the night sky.
Here it is seen from a platform in front of my office.

Equipment

Samsung S630.

I didn't like the way it looked on the camera LCD and with a 3Mpix I shot it with (for the sake of saving memory card space) I didn't think it would be any good.

In Lightroom I cropped it by around 20% and pushed up saturation a little. The clouds merged with sky too much, so I had to adjust levels and increase clarity. I also used a gradual filter at the bottom which increased contrast but took off some saturation and clarity for the smog look.

What I learned

I must admit that I'm a bit confused by what to think and what to say about if my photographs have been "photoshopped" or not. I don't ever use Photoshop, when I need to work on layers I go for GIMP, which would be the same thing actually. The thing is I don't use it on more than 1% of my photos.

It would seem that I don't edit my pictures, right? But I do. Not a single photo on this blog can be called straight-out-of-camera. I adjust levels, sharpness, white balance and quite often I re-crop in Lightroom (usually by less than 10% of the frame size). This was why I started to shoot RAW in the first place.

So what is the real photo and what is "photoshop" work? Not that is matters to me, but people ask and I always hesitate what to say.

D 47 - High

I'm glad. It looks like I start to like my own photos. Another afternoon walk with the son.

Equipment

Samsung S-630.

What I learned

"Be careful!"
As I reached for the camera to my inside pocket of the jacket, kept there to keep the batteries warm, I was following my son with my eyes. I took the camera out in my woolen gloves and as I shifted it to my right hand I accidentally caught the short line attached with one of my left hand fingers and dropped the camera into the snow.
Nothing happened, lucky as I was, and I could go on making photographs after I cleaned it with a tissue. Still the lesson learned is to be careful with the camera.

D 45 - Blue as a boy can be (in January)

Today I was having some more practice with shooting without looking through the viewfinder or on LCD. Some shots were quite nice but I'm posting this one from my walk with son simply because it was shot with point-and-shoot camera. I like to think of a p&s as my handy second camera. It is no worse than my DSLR for taking pictures because it isn't the gear but the man behind camera who makes a photograph good or bad.

Equipment

Samsung S-630, "Program" mode with disabled flash and exposure corrected by +1 EV.

What I learned

I wasted about 30% of the shots while trying to find out what this Samsung can and what it can't do in the snow. I was lucky (as a photographer, not as a father) that the harsh sun became overcast about 15 minutes before we got out. Otherwise some more shots would be wasted by burned highlights probably.
Anyway the camera didn't do as bad as I might think.

D 40 - Fragile

A tulip just before falling apart.

Equipment

Samsung S630 camera, macro setting. Delayed shutter release and on a tripod. Aluminum foil sheet as a reflector.

What I learned

No reflector - no indoor shots with natural light.

I was sloppy with clearing the background. Once again I was too focused on the camera and 'getting it right' that I forgot to actually "look".

D 27 - Orb

This is a goodbye photo for this years Christmas Tree. I'm taking it down tomorrow.

Equipment

Samsung S630, mobile phone flashlight.

What I learned

I need to get out with the camera more. I'll start this week.