I've been experimenting lately with adding texture to photographs. I love it and I think sometimes pictures just beg for some texture to be added to it. Stay tuned for a post about the texture I used in these pictures.
Does it work? Or have I gone a little texture crazy? You can be honest! :)
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Los Angeles has been getting higher than usual amounts of rain lately. But right when it stops raining is one of my favorite times. Post rain Los Angeles feels cool, crisp, clean and lovely. These were taken literally minutes after quite a large storm so the sky was still gray and smokey, but within hours it would be the clearest blue you would ever see.
Not so sunny today...
Discarded Christmas trees already liter the side of the road.
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Yesterday I bought some tangerines. And because my new camera has given me the desire to take pictures of absolutely everything, here are some pictures of tangerines!
This first one is my favorite.
And here are some others.
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I posted this Candy Cane photo the other day. It isn't completely straight out of camera, but I didn't do much to edit it. I think I adjusted the levels and whtie balance a bit on photoshop and that brought me this.
Then I cropped it just a bit to get the glass out of the bottom of the picture. Then Michelle at Snapshots by Michelle posted an edit with this beautiful texture posted at Paper Heart Camera. I was eager to try the same texture! I added the texture at a soft light blending mode and used my paintbrush tool to darken the candy canes back up. I added the texture again flipped and did it again. Then I ran a "primrose glow" action from this Morning Garden Glow preset package at 60% opacity. And here's what I ended up with!
I rather like the edit!
My favorite Let it Snow picture, below, is a finalist over at Aspire! Please go check it out here, and if you feel like it, vote for me!
Ok I know I posted a picture similar to this already, but I have this desire to retake everything I've ever taken in my life with my new camera and revel in how much awesomer it is. Yes, I just wrote "awesomer." I also figured its probably about my last chance to keep posting Holiday Bokeh for the year and I loved this picture too much to resist posting it. So here's my final Holiday Bokeh shot (for a while at least!) I hope everyone had a great Christmas!!
I'm so excited! For Christmas I splurged on a brand new Nikon D90 for myself! This is a huge upgrade to the Nikon D70s that I've been shooting with for years! Then my parents bought me an awesome speedlight for my camera which I am really excited about.
Sorry about the poor quality, I took these on my iPhone!
When I got the new camera my mom suggested I take a picture with my old camera and my new camera to compare the difference. Challenge accepted!! I knew the Nikon D90 was capable of much higher ISO's with less noise, so I went into a room in my house where there wasn't a lot of natural light coming in and took a picture of the little white plastic Christmas tree I had on my dresser.
Both of these pictures were taken with the same lens, and all the same settings. 50mm lens, ISO 1000, f/1.8, 1/60 second.
Old Camera
New Camera!
I couldn't believe the difference. Both were taken with automatic white balance settings but the new camera actually got clear whites and very natural colors! Also there was a lot of noise and distortion on my old camera with the high ISO and hardly any noise on my new camera!! I can't wait to see what else it can do!!
Merry Christmas to anyone who may be checking blogs today!!!
How to make your bokeh show up in custom shapes.
First, put your lens on a piece of black construction paper and trace it. Then cut out your circle.
Then I traced a star shape on my black circle.
Then cut the star out and tape it to your lens.
The first time I did this I cut the star too big so my bokeh just turned into blobs, like this.
So I did it again and cut out a smaller star.
And then my bokeh looked like this!
To this day, I don't understand how the edge of the black paper doesn't actually get in the shot, but it doesnt, and it only manipulates the part of the picture thats out of focus. If you guys try it, I'd love to see your shapely bokeh!
Ok, I still want to post a "how to" on this, in case anyone doesn't know how to create shapely bokeh, but I had so much fun with my star photos yesterday, I wanted to try another shape. I know there are a lot of candy cane as heart pictures floating around there, including mine, but now that I know how to take heart shaped bokeh, I wanted to try the candy cane heart one more time!
So Allie's beautiful Heart Shaped Bokeh photo inspired me to create some shapely bokeh of my own. I'll try to post a "how to" on how I did this tomorrow, but for now here are some of the Star shaped bokeh pictures I took last night. I had so much fun with these that I took a walk around my neighborhood to get all the christmas lights I could.
And finally, a self portrait. Anyone notice how the little catchlight in my right eye is star shaped? I love that!
What do you guys think??
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