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Normally, I don't post a lot of photos of mine here. It's not that I don't take them, it's that I tend to be fussy about them. Unlike the modern trend of "let the camera do all the work, and you push the button", I was taught to look for the picture, and the camera just happens to capture what's already there.

It's possibly a harder way to learn, because there's fewer tricks. No "rule of thirds", that's more of a guideline than a rule. You just look at something from different angles until the voice in your head says "THAT is the picture". Sometimes you have a lot of time to do it, sometimes you don't. Both of these pictures were of the "you have some time" variety, and both are multi-shot panoramas. No, I didn't let the camera stitch them together. My lovely, and far more talented than I am wife Melissa did that. Mostly because I'm a klutz with Photoshop, and she's not.

For those who care about gear, I took both of these with a 3-4 year old Canon PowerShot G5. 5.0 Megapixels, with a little built-in 7.2-28.8mm zoom lens. Since it's not an SLR, I let it stay in auto mode, as the manual focus controls really suck. They're exactly as bad as the autofocus, only with me controlling the button, instead of it. Since there's no way that doesn't blow, I leave it in auto. Then again, it cost me like $200 bucks, and it takes better pictures than any P&S with 2X the MP and 10X the feature count I've bought since.

The first one is of the St. Louis Arch. To take the pick I sat as directly underneath the center of the Arch as I could and just took a series of pictures. For the "down" side, I just lay on my back and took the last two shots upside down. I wanted to capture the really interesting way the Arch is built, and the fact that while most pictures almost make it look like it's made of concrete, it's really nice shiny steel, and reflects the sun nicely. I'm very happy with how the reflections turned out, both of the sun from the west, and the foliage at the bottom of one side. What you see is pretty much what I saw in my head when I took it, and that was the idea:

If I had to put an exact time on it, I'd say around 4pm in late spring.

The second image was taken during my honeymoon. (Same camera as the first.) This was taken during the tale end of sunset from the Duval street docks, pretty much right at the end of Duval street. It had been raining hard, (iirc, it was still raining), but I hadn't gotten a single pic of the sunset. So I went down and hoped I'd get lucky with the pic. As it turns out, I got really lucky. The clouds obscured the sun directly, but I got a really nice bit of glow from the clouds to the southwest, and the streetlights just coming on reflected nicely off the wet brickwork and pavement on the ground. I like the feel it gives, of both the calm after the literal storm, and the calm before the figurative storm of tourists and locals drinking themselves into a coma. The distortion from the panorama makes things look a lot bigger than they really are. There wasn't a lot of wind, so while the water wasn't glass-calm, there wasn't any kind of chop or whitecaps either, so I get the same feeling of calm from the picture as I did while taking it. It was sauna-warm, and just enough breeze to make you think that if you had to spend the night, the Duval street docks would not be a bad place to do so.

It also shows the other side of Key West that I love, namely, that even with all the drinking, partying and commercialization, it is still, in many ways, this odd little town that's quite content to be, well, itself, and to not be in a particular hurry to change whatever that is. If I ever "retire", this is where I plan to be when I do:

Technorati Tags:
Pictures, Key West, St. Louis Arch, Don't get too busy to look at life

Comments

Normally, I don't post a lot of photos of mine here. It's not that I don't take them, it's that I tend to be fussy about them. Unlike the modern trend of \"let the camera do all the work, and you push the button\", I was taught to look for the picture, and the camera just happens to capture what's already there.\n\nIt's possibly a harder way to learn, because there's fewer tricks. No \"rule of thirds\", that's more of a guideline than a rule. You just look at something from different angles until the voice in your head says \"THAT is the picture\". Sometimes you have a lot of time to do it, sometimes you don't. Both of these pictures were of the \"you have some time\" variety, and both are multi-shot panoramas. No, I didn't let the camera stitch them together. My lovely, and far more talented than I am wife Melissa did that. Mostly because I'm a klutz with Photoshop, and she's not.\n\nFor those who care about gear, I took both of these with a 3-4 year old Canon PowerShot G5. 5.0 Megapixels, with a little built-in 7.2-28.8mm zoom lens. Since it's not an SLR, I let it stay in auto mode, as the manual focus controls really suck. They're exactly as bad as the autofocus, only with me controlling the button, instead of it. Since there's no way that doesn't blow, I leave it in auto. Then again, it cost me like \$200 bucks, and it takes better pictures than any P&S with 2X the MP and 10X the feature count I've bought since. \n\nThe first one is of the St. Louis Arch. To take the pick I sat as directly underneath the center of the Arch as I could and just took a series of pictures. For the \"down\" side, I just lay on my back and took the last two shots upside down. I wanted to capture the really interesting way the Arch is built, and the fact that while most pictures almost make it look like it's made of concrete, it's really nice shiny steel, and reflects the sun nicely. I'm very happy with how the reflections turned out, both of the sun from the west, and the foliage at the bottom of one side. What you see is pretty much what I saw in my head when I took it, and that was the idea:\n\n\n\nIf I had to put an exact time on it, I'd say around 4pm in late spring.\n\nThe second image was taken during my honeymoon. (Same camera as the first.) This was taken during the tale end of sunset from the Duval street docks, pretty much right at the end of Duval street. It had been raining hard, (iirc, it was still raining), but I hadn't gotten a single pic of the sunset. So I went down and hoped I'd get lucky with the pic. As it turns out, I got really lucky. The clouds obscured the sun directly, but I got a really nice bit of glow from the clouds to the southwest, and the streetlights just coming on reflected nicely off the wet brickwork and pavement on the ground. I like the feel it gives, of both the calm after the literal storm, and the calm before the figurative storm of tourists and locals drinking themselves into a coma. The distortion from the panorama makes things look a lot bigger than they really are. There wasn't a lot of wind, so while the water wasn't glass-calm, there wasn't any kind of chop or whitecaps either, so I get the same feeling of calm from the picture as I did while taking it. It was sauna-warm, and just enough breeze to make you think that if you had to spend the night, the Duval street docks would not be a bad place to do so. \n\nIt also shows the other side of Key West that I love, namely, that even with all the drinking, partying and commercialization, it is still, in many ways, this odd little town that's quite content to be, well, itself, and to not be in a particular hurry to change whatever that is. If I ever \"retire\", this is where I plan to be when I do:\n\n\n\n\n

Technorati Tags:\nPictures, Key West, St. Louis Arch, Don't get too busy to look at life\n

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