D 150 - The Worst

A T-shirt.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW edited in Lightroom: crop, levels, sharpness and yellow filter.

What I learned

I felt really good about my photography yesterday. I had to choose some good family photos which I made since December. It was hard for me and my girlfriend to cut down below 120, because each photo left at this point was too good to reject.

I thought that my cheap Chinese tripod was a junk already, but it came out that after fixing all the loose screws and lubricating joints it is works smooth and stable.

D 149 - Flooded in Spring

One of new houses built in my neighborhood. It was built right next to a small park, opposite half-ruined buildings from Running Down the Gutter.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD4015.
RAW edited in Lightroom: contrast, saturation, noise/sharpness and slight crop.

What I learned

Colors on rainy days have a particular quality, they seem brighter, more saturated because of the air having been cleared of dusts and because of contrast with blue-gray sky.

D 148 - Staircase-Well

Peculiarity of staircases in my block is that they are in the middle of the building without any outside windows. It isn't a problem until the electricity shuts down. Then it turns into a parade of Will-o'-Wisps when people try to get in or out of their homes.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW file developed in Lightroom.

D 147 - Creepy Guards

Ivy planted at a poplar trunk.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD4015.
RAW developed in Lightroom; corrected contrast, sharpness and added green b/w filter.

What I learned

The same story happened to me twice this weekend: I shot a frame, thought I could correct it and shot some more photos. Than while choosing which photos to post I went for the first attempts in both series. I liked them the most.

D 146 - Dandelions O.M.G.

I spotted this field while on a short bike trip, then I fetched my camera and went back to get the photo.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD4015 (a strange lens for such a shot, I know).
RAW file developed in Lightroom: red filter, stronger contrast, sharpening.

What I learned

I was without a tripod and day was rather cloudy, so at f/16 and 40mm (80mm after crop) I wasn't able to get this sharp as I went down to 1/6 exposure time. In effect, the trees on horizon and the rock and the first row of dandelions are slightly out of focus.
I do tend to neglect the fact how much longer I need to expose to get proper photos at small apertures. Tripod isn't that heavy, is it?

If I used wider lens, than the DOF would get bigger and the trees on horizon would become apparently smaller, but the rock would grow too big.

D 145 - Sunset +

Sunset on an overcast day.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW file edited in Lightroom (levels and split toning with bright parts reinforced with purple.

D 144 - The Entrance

Entrance to a staircase of my building just pass the sunset.

Equipment

E510 with Pentacon 30mm.
RAW file edited in Lightroom.

What I learned

I've hit the invisible wall again. I can't think of any good photo and I can't see interesting frames around me. Frankly those are some photos from last week, because I didn't make anything I'd like to see on this blog for two days.

D 143 - Bird Receivers

The same location as the last time. There are patches of satellite dishes every few dozens meters on the backyard walls of the mansions.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD4015.
Developed from RAW in Lightroom.

D 142 - Running Down the Gutter

A gutter and a walking path all-in-one. This is a place running 3 meters below street level just next to my block. It is situated between a row of mansions and a thin parked passage. The neighborhood is quite shady.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD4015.
Developed from RAW in Lightroom using Green color filter.

What I learned

This is a second photo for the last few days when I choose to brighten the leaves with a green filter effect. It takes the scene somewhat away from realism. But this is for the better.
I look at my photos and I must admit that the subjects which I chose are not extraordinary. They are mostly mundane objects and scenes. The only way I can make them into interesting photographs is to capture unusual lighting or perspective.
Filters are the third tool which can add "interestingness" to a photo. It changes the way light is present in the scene.

D 141 - Bark

A damaged tree trunk.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30mm.

What I learned

In dispersed light of overcast day I found it extremely difficult to isolate this trunk from the background. Too small contrasts of the whole scene and similar colors of the object and background. Even wide open aperture didn't solve the problem. It wasn't the clutter in the background - it was the color (or the tone to be precise).

D 140 - Canine Communicating

Village raised dog is trying to get his way with the city guys.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30mm.
RAW file developed in Lightroom.

What I learned

I have a constant problem with standard focal length lens. The ones I can afford to own are manual prime lens or kit zoom lens. The first group needs to be focused very precisely if it is to be used at largest apertures, because of small depth of field and the kit zoom is too dark - having maximal aperture about f/5 at standard focal lengths.

D 139 - Rememberance

There has been a controversial initiative proposed for this year, to honor Soviet soldiers fallen in 1945 during the march for Berlin of the Red Army.

As the Polish Prime Minister said although they released us from Nazi occupation they didn't bring us freedom because they didn't have any themselves.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30mm.
Usual Lightroom edit from RAW.

What I learned

With a small viefinder of Olympus Evolt line and manual lens I had problems with focusing on the first tombs and gradually going soft towards the end of the line.

D 138 - Boring Photo

A little surprising detail in a neglected mansion just few hundred meters from my home.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30mm.
Usual edit in Lightroom.

What I learned

I'm a voyeur in denial. I love to enter dark yards of neglected (but not necessarily abandoned) mansions at night or to capture little insights into other peoples' homes while walking down a street and wonder how their homes are like.

Sometimes it translates into really good photographic opportunities. Of course I don't feel tempted to photograph naked people through the windows. It is more about exploring possibilities of other lives, getting beyond my personal circumstances of life, as seen through the places people live in.

D 137 - Leaning out

Another forced perspective from my balcony.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
In Lightroom: levels, blue filter, sharpness, noise, little crop to remove some distractions at the bottom and left edges of the frame.

What I learned

Photos don't have to be straight to be O.K.

D 136 - Soul Trap

A disfigured tree in the park.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
In Lightroom: levels, clarity, noise, contrast.

What I learned

I walked around this tree which struck me to have a growth which looked like a face from a distance. I shot at least 8 photos to capture it and it still doesn't look as suggestive as it did in reality. I probably missed a tele lens for this one.

D 135 - Bottoms up

And there I have it at last. Satisfying photo using a pattern. It's shot through a large wine glass pointed at window blinds.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30.
In Lightroom: graduated filter (desaturate), levels, clarity, noise, sharpness and certain crop which moved the focal point closer to the golden section.

What I learned

Experimenting does not contradict thinking twice before pressing the shutter. Less is more.

D 134 - Generation Again

My son loves to climb on the desk under this window and watch the cars, clouds or planes. I'll be anti-climatic to inform that he usually laughs and shouts to me about whatever he sees down there. He was not even sad when I took this photo.

Equipment

w810i
In Lightroom corrected: levels (strengthening blacks), decreased saturation, split toning, sharpness and noise.

What I learned

Again the same conclusion: it isn't the lens or matrix that makes good photos.

D 133 - Trek

I don't like the background. But I like the cute and the way light works on the chick in this photo.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

ZD1442 kit lens is not fast enough for candid indoor photos. It is f/4.7 at standard focal length (50mm after crop) and auto-focus takes a long time to snap in low light. I should look for a way to obtain something prime around 50-70mm and f/2.8 or better.

D 132 - By the fire

First campfire of this season.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW file edited in Lightroom: levels, split toning, crop from 4:3 to 3:2 format, noise and sharpness adjustments.

What I learned

I played around with different automatic presets and programs in my camera. This time I wanted to check out the 'By the Candles' scene mode. It used smaller ISO and aperture than I would. It surprised me with using simply 'Daylight' white balance but it gave a nice result.

D 131 - Stage

An old open-air scene in a park. Now included into a children playground.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
Edited in Lightroom: tone curve, sharpness, red filter done with color mix.

What I learned

I lacked a tripod or monopod to rise the camera some 1-2 meters and expose the stage proper.

D 130 - Old Pair

I did it! I managed to think thrice before I pressed the shutter. And despite, or maybe due to that I was able to produce some pleasant photos.

This is a pair of old trees on two sides of a pathway in a park. Once again they sprout buds in the Spring. They will keep doing that every year until they fall down.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
Converted from RAW in Lightroom: tone curve, contrast, sharpness and effect of blue light filter in color mix.

What I learned

It feels different than before when I think about the the shot and walk to and fro and around the subject to pick the best frame. When I try to visualize the photo and consider exposure elements to make it right in one shot.

Before I felt lucky and quickly snapped at what I thought was interesting. Then I checked how it came out on LCD, didn't like it, corrected setting or position and shot again. And so on until reaching a plausible result.

D 129 - Depravated

From the "My Way or the Highway" series. This time I went for panoramic shot comprised of 7 stitched photos.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
Stitched in Canon Stitch Manager.

What I learned

I need some better stitching software, because despite exposure being locked throughout making all 7 photos there are visible stitching lines (or rather bands) particularly obvious in the sky areas.

Comments, please!

I just re-enabled Comments to the posts.

You are welcome to let me know what you think I do right or what I'd better work on some more.

Or you can just let me know that someone just pissed you off and you need to vent it on me and my photos.

D 128 - Lesser Deities

Traditional Polish wooden figurines of saints. They are a sound part of our folklore. They often don't depict any specific saint or even no saint at all, just a figure taken from everyday village life.

Their crude style suggest that their origin lies well before Christianity and it's saints.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442

What I learned

I learned that I've already shot 17 thousand shots with my E-510. Which means that the shutter life-span is a growing concern for me. It is not unheard of for those cameras to give up after 10k shutter actions but I suppose that 40-50k is mean average.

It is a bad news but potentially a lesson as well. Most successful photographers say that to make good photography you don't have to point-and-shoot at every scene which grabs your attention and fire a rapid series of shots at it. Masters of photography shoot few photos. What they do more is think, feel and look around themselves with analytic, not just enthusiastic, eye.

D 127 - Cont'd

Another photo from my modernist concrete building shots.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442

D 126 - Bird's view on raw concrete

Finally I get to shoot my block before it is insulated and repainted. The works already begun and by this Winter it will not look as I remember it since childhood any more.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

Converging vertical lines of tall buildings when shot with wide angle lens are supposed to be avoided for classical, balanced photographs. I like them crooked and seemingly folding within, like they were on a brink of collapsing.

D 125 - Sitting idle

My son watching his favorite cartoons.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

I like portraits made with wide-angle lens. Generally I'm rather after surreal, impressionist quality of portraits than the nuances of classical portraits which are supposed to be favorable for the model. It's the surprising and unusual in people that I like to see.

Colors

I'm about in a third of the way with my 365 days Project.

I wanted to concentrate on the simplicity and beauty of monochrome photographs. I still do. But I've noticed that most of my recent photos were color.

I hope this is just the thing that Spring does to me with the sudden flood of extra sunlight hours and intensity. In a way its a result of not working out photography ideas but documenting beautiful sights and details.

That's nice but that is not why I started this 4 months ago. I wanted to improve my photography, not share snapshots of my surroundings.

I need to refocus on the original aims and get back to compose photos. Black and white photos which are better for composition and form studies.

Like this one:

D 124 - Infloration

The chestnut tree, which I have planted from a crooked twig dug out from underneath terrace stairs, blossoms for the first time this year.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

Series of shots which I took trying to portray this flower buds was (contrary to the shots of the motorway construction site) too focused on the subject and lacked a proper background or secondary subject contesting with the main one.

D 123 - Loader wanted

One of the favorite toys of my son.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

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 121 - Dead Dog

A dog. Asleep. Right in the middle of the busiest pass in the house.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
Developed from RAW in Lightroom: levels, color mix, sharpness and just a 1-2% of a frame cropped from the top.

What I learned

Coming back from the land of no editing I admit that many shots should be leaved as they come out of camera without any changes and only some need anything more than sharpening and a slight crop correction.

There is however no way I can imagine making b&w photos without playing around with the RAW file in Lightroom. Just to show my point, here is the same photo as it came out of E-510 in jpg format (click to enlarge):



With each level of zooming in the amount of detail lost becomes obvious. And remember, that in Lightroom I was working on the original 10 megapixel file, so I was able to witness 10x more details that this 768x1024 file.

D 120 - Where is T-Rex?

Shooting up the tree is one of those cliche but effective techniques. In this case the poplar has a long bare trunk with some branches (still leafless after the winter) at the top.

To me it looks like one of those prehistoric giant ferns.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
Saturation, levels and sharpness corrected in Lightroom.

What I learned

Cliche techniques and compositions are not to be avoided during the learning process.

D 119 - Birds

Bird tracks in a river mud. Part of "My Way or the Highway" series.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
Developed from RAW in Lightroom: saturation, levels, color mix and sharpness.

What I learned

After the time of posting straight out of camera shots I'm trying to assimilate the skills learned into my regular photography. I think the most important thing is acceptance of the original crop. Framing the scene properly is what I should expect myself to do before pressing the shutter.

D 118 - Ivy

Nature shots at sunset. These were taken on a shaded side of a large tree trunk.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

When avoiding direct sunlight golden hour is also very good for black and white shots.

D 117 - Tracks

A photo from a series of shots of a nice spot that will be run over by a major East-West trans-European motorway in a few months. Some terrain bulldozing has already taken place.

I plan to call this series "My Way or the Highway".

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

I'll make a comment to the entire series of shots I made, after I reviewed it on a PC. I made too much similar general shots and panoramas. In a series there must be more shots showing details and single objects.

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 114 - Rain filter

Some more exploration of natural filters. Entrance to cemetery shot through wet windshield.

Equipment

w810i

D 113 - Flowers interwined

A pair of spring flowers.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 44-4.

What I learned

I gave into the temptation to edit the photo. I took it in JPG but I didn't like a distracting fragment of another flower at the edge. While I was at it, I also improved the tonal curve and noise/sharpness settings.

It feels that after 2 weeks of posting only Straight out of Camera photos I learned to look at my photos critically first and only then when it's necessary edit them in Lightroom. Before I knew I would edit every photo anyway so I didn't really care how the photo looks like before I "develop" it digitally. I only cared to capture as much tonal information on the sensor as possible without clipping.

D 112 - Spider curtains

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 44-4.

What I learned

Apparently back-lit photos must be taken with some positive exposure bias. Without it this one came out to be about one EV stop too dark.

D 111 - Warm light

A lamp lit in the night.

Equipment
E-510 with ZD1442.

D 110 - Half-lit grapes

Night shooting of grapes on a dish.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

I tried some back lighting with a flashlight from underneath but the results weren't better than this photo.

D 109 - Dog couchant

Another snapshot made with mobile phone camera.

Equipment

Sony-Ericsson W810i.

D 108 - Road stop

A parking lot with barbecue next to some gas station North of Czestochowa, Poland.

Equipment

W810i Sony-Ericsson phone.

D 107 - Metal box

I'm reaching a breaking point as far as Straight out of Camera photo posting is concerned. I will either move on to give more thought to every photo before I take it or return to shooting RAW and editing in Lightroom.

I'm dissatisfied with the quality of my photographs which haven't been optimized with editing software.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

D 106 - Self check

Easter can be quite straining for the organism.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

D 105 - Too close

Macro and lighting experiments.

Equipment

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

D 104 - And now we have... EGG!

Happy Easter! Hang on to the Spring power!

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned
I'll just skip this section for remaining overdue posts.

D 103 - Spring sprout

First signs of spring sprouting from under the grass.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

I must always keep some photos ready to upload for sake of contingency. Like this time when I had to devote all my time to my family and the Easter festivities. If I even had a few photos ready I could just prepare posts to publish in advance.