Kate's ITP Blog

For this week's assignment, I experimented with 3D photography. As we learned in class, I achieved the 3D effect (which can be observed using a 3D viewer) in the shots below by taking a shot, then repositioning my tripod four inches to the right and recentering the frame. In the last image, I found that the effect worked best when I moved my tripod just two inches, due to the shorter distance between the camera and the subject.

I'm finding that my camera tends to underexpose most shots in Tv and Av modes, particularly indoors, so I've compensated here by manually increasing the exposure. The first shot was tricky because it was taken at night with a bright light source in the center, so I chose to split the middle and left the surroundings underexposed and the center overexposed. Not sure if there would be a better solution for this--I probably would have experimented with a low flash if it hadn't been outside a neighbor's house at night...

As a final note, I continue to struggle with getting proper white balance, even using the grey card, within my apartment. If I had to guess, I'd say it's due to the fact that none of our paint or lampshades are truly white, so it may be that the camera is balancing correctly despite the yellow cast to most of my shots.

View images below with 3D viewer.

Posted by Kate Monahan at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week we learned about intelligent ways to use flash in our photography. In my shots this week, I tried to implement the tips we learned on how to avoid unflattering and/or unnatural-looking portraits through flash diffusion and adjusting the flash intensity.

I experimented with a wide variety of exposures and flash intensities before settling on f8/0"4/ISO100 at full flash in manual mode. I shot these images, intentionally, in very low-light conditions. I did find that by using the plastic diffuser, I was able to capture more accurate, balanced skin tones, though I did need to leave the shutter open quite a bit longer than I'd hoped to adjust for the reduced flash. The results were certainly a vast improvement over the washed out shots I used to get with my auto-flash setting.

What ended up causing me the most problems this week, though, was white balance. I used the grey card to manually set the balance, but because I was only able to hold the card near, but not exactly at the place I was sitting, I was never able to get it quite right in the camera. My initial results, which I've included below, were very green, and my latter attempts never got better than the yellowish shot below that. For my final shot this week, then, I settled for adjusting the white balance in Photoshop--not ideal, but good practice since it was my first time doing so. Another small issue I had was that since I did not place myself at the center of the shot, I was unable to avoid the slight shadow to my right. I wasn't irritated enough to place myself somewhere without a background, but would if that became an issue in future pictures.

Final Image (Adjusted)

Greenish White Balance (In Camera)

Yellowish White Balance (In Camera)

Posted by Kate Monahan at 01:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week, I experimented with panoramic photography. Tackling the challenge of my dim apartment once again, I first set the white balance using my grey card, then followed Eric's recommendation to take the first shot facing the brightest light source. I quickly realized that the uneven lighting in my apartment was going to cause problems.

After several attempts that resulted in images with severely underexposed sections, I began experimenting with the manual exposure adjustment feature in my camera. Ultimately, I found that +2/3 exposure gave me the best results, though there was still with some areas of under and overexposure. The slow shutter speed necessary for the shot had the side effect of blurring one of my subjects (an effect which I liked, in this case).

Another problems which I was not able to solve, unfortunately, was that the seams are perceptible in several areas, most egregiously around the television. This resulted, I'm guessing, from the relatively proximity of the TV to the camera compared to the other areas of the shot. I tried manually adjusting the seams in Canon's PhotoStitch application, but to no avail. Although this week's image is far from perfect, I learned some useful lessons about panoramas, perhaps most importantly that consistent lighting and greater distance from the subjects will probably make for better shots in the future.

Email me if you'd like to see the high-res version of this image.

QuickTime VR

Click and drag mouse to the left and up or down to scroll through the panorama.

Posted by Kate Monahan at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of this week's topic was histograms--how to interpret them, and what to aim for when doing so. I learned that I should be avoiding any shots that had pixels stacked at either end of the histogram, indicating under- or overexposure. In practice, it was a bit trickier to actually take shots in which this didn't occur.

Due to the brutally cold weather we've been having lately, and my work schedule, I was limited to experimenting indoors at night, which once again lead to tungsten spot-lighting in a relatively dark apartment. I wonder whether these conditions caused some of the difficulty I had in making pictures that weren't blown out or greyed out.

The shot below, for example, while visually interesting to me, and by far the best exposure of many attempts, still has a stack of pixels that are underexposed (left side of histogram), and overexposed (right side). The image itself is low-key, with a majority of dark pixels on the left.

Email me if you'd like to see the high-res version of any of these images.

Since I wasn't able to find an exposure that solved the problems in the scenario above, I switched subjects, and repositioned my light for more diffuse lighting. Again after many failed attempts, I was able to capture the following image, which, though less interesting, has a much improved histogram, with just a few rogue pixels in the underexposed range, but for the most part displaying the small space at the left and right I was aiming for.

Posted by Kate Monahan at 02:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I just launched a website for my dad's accounting firm: Padgett Business Services. Simple, but hopefully useful!

Posted by Kate Monahan at 12:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)