DIY Thrifty Macro Lens

As I was brows­ing¹ a close­out deals chain store last week, I stum­bled upon a set of mag­ni­fy­ing glasses while look­ing for some bar­gain rate note­books. When I saw them I remem­bered this tuto­r­ial I had read a few days before. While I wasn’t specif­i­cally look­ing to make this project, I took advan­tage of my find and spent all of two dol­lars on 2 sets of 2 mag­ni­fiers. Let me just say this now, I am very fond of macro pho­tog­ra­phy. Before I pur­chased my first *real* cam­era, I had a point and shoot with a jinky lit­tle flower but­ton which would allow you to take macro/close-up shots. Until now, this is the only expe­ri­ence I had with macro but I still loved to get up close to pho­to­graph flow­ers, bugs, etc. and when I found this tuto­r­ial I was really look­ing for­ward to try­ing this out some­time to see how it worked. My father gave me a Sigma APO MACRO 180mm 1:2.8 lens but unfor­tu­nately it does not work with my mod­ern DSLR and can­not be re-chipped. So until I can fully use that lens when I even­tu­ally enroll in a film pho­tog­ra­phy class, I am will­ing to try what I can to get some under­stand­ing of macro photography.

Con­tinue reading »

1. with my son, while daugh­ter was at P.E. class [↩]

Filed under photography | Comments (2)

Learning Light

In my ven­tures to learn all about pho­tog­ra­phy, I have been focused on light (pun intended) this past week, specif­i­cally, learn­ing how to prop­erly use avail­able light and how to break the basic rules of using light in pho­tog­ra­phy. Since my main edu­ca­tional means is just tak­ing pho­tos as much as I can and see­ing what comes out and what doesn’t, time has not been on my side in learn­ing the basics of rec­og­niz­ing when the light is right for shoot­ing. I have got­ten frus­trated over the last sev­eral weeks numer­ous times when I have been out shoot­ing hop­ing for great results only to be dis­ap­pointed when I look at my pho­tos later and most if not all are just not pleas­ing mostly due to light­ing issues.  Some are blurry because of not enough light and some have blown out high­lights because of too much light. Oth­ers have bright spots or poor reflec­tion from harsh light or don’t come out at all from using wrong set­tings (or when I am in a hurry to catch a fleet­ing oppor­tu­nity I for­got entirely to change set­tings before press­ing the shut­ter release). With this recent post from This Week in Pho­tog­ra­phy and my par­tic­i­pa­tion in this assign­ment last week from Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy School, I now have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of light as it per­tains to mak­ing great pho­tographs and why I have been very dis­sat­is­fied with the out­come of my photos. 

Con­tinue reading »

Filed under photography | Comment (0)

Aperture Nature Photography Workshops Contest

This Week in Pho­tog­ra­phy is spon­sor­ing a new con­test (in addi­tion to their bi-weekly assign­ments) where sev­eral ama­teur pho­tog­ra­phers will get the chance to go to four dif­fer­ent US national parks (Olympic, Tetons, Yosemite and Yel­low­stone) and receive train­ing and tips from pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phers. They are hold­ing four dif­fer­ent con­tests and the first has only one week left for sub­mis­sions. My dad went to Yosemite one sum­mer on vaca­tion and I would love to go not only for the beau­ti­ful scenery but also for the chance to receive instruc­tion from some very tal­ented artists. I have just put up a vot­ing wid­get in my side­bar so vote for my photo if you think it is worth your vote and also check out the other sub­mis­sions. There are a lot of really well made pho­tographs sub­mit­ted already so it looks as though a lot of peo­ple are as excited about this oppor­tu­nity in the same way that I am.

UPDATE: Vot­ing is now closed. Thank you to all who voted for my photo.

Filed under environment, photography, travel | Comment (0)