D 254 - Keep your eyes on your car

Bouncing around the external flash (pointing flash in all possible directions but straight ahead, that is).

Continuing a polarization between my compact camera and my DSLR, I carry the compact around at all times but if I grab the E-510 it is not for the extra functionality or better noise reduction - it is to have fun with manual, vintage lens.

D 220 - Off-camera

One of my initial, clumsy attempts to use external flash.

D 218 - Towards the light

Fooling around with 300mm (x2 crop) focal length.

D 213 - "α"

A black belt.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD4015.

D 210 - Twin-Valve

Some derelict hydraulics outside industrial complex now turned into offices.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD4015

D 155 - Busy Bees

On a walk in the park with my son he collected sow thistles and suddenly a hungry bee came down to feed on those I held in my hand. I just had a mobile phone handy and took this macro shot.

Equipment

Sony-Ericsson W810i.
Cropped and enhanced saturation in Lightroom.

What I learned

I learned to finally leave behind Picasa and do the works in Lightroom. I don't even need to use GIMP, because I don't do any multiple-exposure shots or collages and I gradually learn to appreciate the functions of Library module.

D 122 - Back-lit trunk

A trunk of an aspen with a stick pushed in from the top with the camera put low on the opposing side to the setting sun.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

Golden hour ftw.

At some point you begin to think that you don't even need a subject to get a nice photo at dusk or dawn. It may be even true. All in all, what your sensor registers is light, not the subject.

D 105 - Too close

Macro and lighting experiments.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 on tripod, white-sheet reflector.

D 95 - Cone

A spruce cone, one of the treasures gathered while walking in a park with a two year-old.

Equipment

E-510 with 6+15mm extension tubes and Pentacon 30. On a tripod.
Changed to monochrome with selective color mix, adjusted levels and sharpened in Lightroom.

What I learned

I was considering publishing this photo in color, it had such a nice warm colors:

But all in all I decided that colors are stronger in the background than the cone and divert attention from main focal point.

I was surprised when while taking this photograph my camera refused to turn on the long exposure noise reduction. I was changing modes back and forth and it was the same everywhere. I knew this option was active when I was doing the same kind of shots before. Only later I realized that I'd changed shooting mode into a series of shots and that (go figure) blocked noise reduction.

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.

D 29 - The art of maroon

I got this e-book that says my photography can be better, see. It says that I need to work on making my eye see and by brain compose. It says that there are points, lines, areas and edges that really count in photography. It's got Don't panic! written on the cover exercises to put the theoretical concepts into practice.
It told me to photograph stones or rocks. I don't have any! I got walnuts and chestnuts.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 44-4 hand-held, softbox for built in flash, sheet of white A4 paper and smaller sheet of aluminum foil as reflectors, LED light in my mobile phone.
I set the whole thing up in a corner of a sill with paper sheet on the right and aluminum on the left. I had to edit out some of the aluminum foil in Lightroom, because it was partially visible as a darker area (what a precision of reflecting surface setup!) in the upper right corner.

What I learned

Reflected light is a treasure to be deeply studied. Composition is the basic building brick of photography. To the point that having mastered it one can make great photos without much of an interesting subject.
You'll likely to hear me complaining for those exercises some more. I plan to improve my workshop with the book: Photography the art of composition.

D 17 - Time to go, Starboy

Od Dark Light Back

I have been playing around with my new softbox today. It works quite nice as a main light source but also makes a great fill light, which is something I have been looking for a while. I like to use the natural light (sunlight or indoor lights) and now I can use it without having to use a tripod.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 44-4 and my new DIY softbox on pop-up flash. ISO 800 and 1/90 sec exposure time.

What I learned

I had today a primal fun taking shots of everything around with my new gadget, because it opened new opportunities for me. Still I have to compromise by going high ISO and getting grain (which I learned that is mostly chroma noise which can be easily dealt with in Lightroom with minimum loss to sharpness).

For now I'm ignoring the differences between tungsten or sunlight and the flashlight in color temperature because I like doing b&w photos. But it is a problem to be faced in the future.

D 7

Od Dark Light Back

Exit our Santa through the front door...
This Christmas is a sticky subject. I would like to tell you that this is the last photo about it but I planned to visit a crib by our cathedral tomorrow, so I suppose the next entry will be in the holiday mood as well.
I came up with this shot while watching a late night rerun of some CIA-supercomputer-plans-to-kill-the-president movie. With the lights far in the background I put the camera on a gorilla tripod and Santa near the other edge.

Equipment

E-510 on a gorilla-pod with Helios 44-4 for its long focal length. No flash, only Christmas lights and two dim lamps: one at the wall by the tree and the other right from Santa figure.

What I learned

Helios gives a nice bokeh... but wait! This aren't exactly pretty background lights! They are sharply cut hexagons. I didn't notice that after stopping down to f 1:8 the bokeh changes shape. On the other hand I moved from larger apertures to increase the sharpness and decrease the level of background blur. Now it seems that I should have moved the figure and the camera closer to the background instead.

Gorilla-Pod is not as stable or precise as a regular tripod but it is small, light and flexible. It was a good buy.