Billy Goat Trail

So yesterday, Carrie, Burns and I went out for a hike at the Billy Goat Trail. It is a fairly intense, very rocky path along the Potomac River that requires some climbing, but its a fun trail to hike. The scenery is always nice, but fall is probably better than any other time of year. Unfortunately we were probably 2 or 3 weeks early for really bright oranges, reds and yellows, but there were some trees starting to turn.

This was the first time I really got to bust out the Canon in a nature setting. I didn't really have any idea what kinds of pictures I was going to take, and I didn't want to slow us down by taking pictures every few minutes so I mostly only got shot when we were stopped taking a rest. The other thing preventing me from taking spontaneous photos was that I could not keep the camera out around my neck because of the climbing of rocks and jumping off them and branches everywhere, I did not want to damage my camera. A lot of the pictures this day were taken while we were stopped for our little picnic.

The sun was very bright and I could not see the photos that I was taking on the lcd very well because of how bright it was. Therefore I couldn't see what I needed to do to adjust the settings. Because of this, a lot of the landscapes are very bright with too much sunlight. I mostly used my 55-250mm lens as everything was pretty far away from me.

I got some pretty good shots and more importantly, I had a lot of fun climbing and hiking and the weather was amazing (last time we did this hike it was 98 degrees), so I'd say this day was pretty successful.

Caps-Bruins 10/19

Brendon and his friend from Boston asked me if I wanted to go with them to a Capitals game against the Boston Bruins. I haven't been to an NHL game since 2004 when I saw the Lightning beat the Maple Leafs in the Playoffs, so I was looking forward to seeing hockey for the first time in a long time and a chance to take some live sports photos. Earlier in the day, I had received the 55-250mm telephoto zoom lens in the mail. There was no way I would have been able to get any good shots with the 17-55mm lens that came with my camera. I was a bit worried the lighting inside the arena would make it difficult to take pictures, especially considering how high up we were sitting. The bright ice seemed to provide enough lighting for the photos, but I still needed to slightly edit the pictures to make them a little brighter. I wish I could have gotten a little closer to the action because even when I was zoomed all the way in, peoples faces were a little grainy and not very clear. I think the new lens worked pretty well, especially for it being my first time using it.

It was a fun game and the Bruins won 3-1. I didn't really care who won, but Brendon and Chris are Boston fans so I guess I was rooting for them a little bit. We also saw two fights, so It was an entertaining game and a successful photo shoot.

Tim Thomas

Ovechkin

My First Learnings

So I started reading the manual this morning on the metro and was reading about adjusting ISO and shutter speed and depth of field settings. I feel like I learned a lot, so I was eager to get home and see how well I could apply it. Apparently using the flash is not the best way to get more light into your pictures. I was fascinated by how different a photo looks when it is taken in the automatic settings than when you manually adjust the shutter speed and ISO. These were all taken in fairly low light.

Auto w/ flash

Manual adjustment shutter speed

 

Auto w/ Flash

Manual adjustments

 

Auto

Manual

I think you get the idea. I feel like I am getting a good grasp of how to adjust for lighting, but I'm sure there is much more to learn. I messed around with different settings for a while trying to get a feel for when and how much to adjust certain things. Here a a few...

 

Gumby

"Anything is possible!"

Somerset Back-to-School Classic

On Sunday, Carrie and Ingrid ran an 8k at the Somerset Elementary Back-to-School Classic. I was already planning on going to watch earlier in the week, but since I got my camera I figured it would be a good opportunity to try some action shots. 

I sprained my ankle the day before, so I was hobbling and it made it difficult to get into a good position to get shots. Also, the bright sunlight combined with shadows from all the trees were hard to deal with, and the auto settings were not turning out very well. Plus, with so many people walking around the auto focus was going crazy.

Once the race got started, I switched to sports mode to get good action shots. I was pretty disappointed with what I came up with. I guess I've got a lot to learn. I feel like most of the photographs this day could have been achieved with a normal point-and-shoot, although being able to take 3-4 photos in a second is nice, but I need to be able to control it better. 

A New Hobby

I really like taking pictures. Mostly landscapes and architecture, but I like to get creative too. The problem was I never had a very good camera and my photos were not very captivating. I've been thinking about maybe buying a digital SLR camera for the past few months, but that's a lot of money to drop and you always hear about people spending a ton on a new, fancy camera and not knowing how to use it. I went back and forth, did some research and thought about it a lot. I decided that if I buy a camera, it's going to be a Canon EOS Rebel T1i with an 18-55mm lens. Last Wednesday night, while perusing Amazon on my phone and checking my bank account a few times, I semi-impulsively made the purchase of a new camera ($90 off the retail price). Two days later, I was the excited new owner of a Rebel T1i.

I got the package on Friday at work, then took it out for a spin in downtown D.C. that evening. I went by the White House and then down to the Washington Monument and got some good shots. At this point I am just using auto-settings for all my photos, but I do like experimenting with the manual focus.

After that, I headed towards Columbia Heights for Nikki's surprise birthday party. I got there a few minutes before Nikki and Eric arrived and I got a pretty good shot of her being surprised except for a little red-eye. I suppose I should get Photoshop or something.