Exploring with a Camera: Aspect Ratios

I always learn so much from Kat's Exploring with the Camera series and this time is no exception...except it was a little easier this time.  After all, while I have a lot to learn about the art of cropping and composition, the math of aspect ratios I've known for awhile.

I had to learn because my first camera didn't shoot pictures in any of the standard printing sizes.  It shot 3:4 as did most point and shoots (according to Kat's article).

3:4 Aspect Ratio

Costco print, or any other place on the street, were offering 4x6 or the now mostly outdated 3x5 (with 3% zoom and crop to create clean edges).  Everyone owned nice hundred page 4x6 photo albums waiting for those darn digital pictures to get printed.  I had to learn to crop so my pictures could fill those little plastic slots.

4:6 / 2:3 Aspect Ratio

It would take me weeks to prepare all my pictures for printing...now you can just use the upload tool for cropping...but I used Photoshop Elements 2.  I was thrilled when we got a Mac and I could just crop in iPhoto.  It was so easy.  But I was still always behind in my printing.

1:1 Aspect Ratio

For one thing, sometimes the most artistic crop wasn't a standard print size...do I add white edges and crop?  But then it doesn't fit in my album!  I tried scrapbooking a little...it was the thing to do...and while it eliminated the pain of non-artistic framing/cropping...it was WAY to much work and NOT very fun for my non-crafty self.

Do you KNOW how excited I was the first time I looked at pictures from my new dSLR last February to realize it shot in a 4:6 aspect ratio?  Now I would save so much time on editing and get upto date on my printing!

Ha!

For one thing...4:6 is still not always the best ratio for my shot.  Knowing I intend to mostly print 4x6's, I tend to try to compose my shot with that in mind, but with moving kids and my single-minded thoughts (focus on the eyes, focus on the eyes, focus...), I often fail.

4:6 Aspect Ratio (original)

But even if I have to try every size on the chart...

5:7 Aspect Ratio

...to find the right one...

8:10 / 4:5 Aspect Ratio

...the amount of time I would spend on editing in order to crop is only a minuscule portion of the time I now spend in Lightroom or Photoshop Elements (now 10, yeah!).

I'm pretty sure my husband would be thrilled if I went back to the days of the only editing I did being a crop and some red-eye reduction, especially as that would be so fast!  Certainly adding a little pop to each image takes very little time...even less time all together than my old edits would take...but I just have so many, many, many images, and there are so many, many fun things to try.

Now that I have so much creative control over my images from start to finish, photography is just too much fun...all aspects of it!

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

All week I was resigned to not doing a hunt this week...though I'd taken many pictures, but I read the custom bokeh information and told my children about and then I couldn't not do it as they thought it sounded so cool.  I gave them my lens cap and they spent a bit of the morning creating custom bokeh shapes for me out of a Corn Chex box.

Luckily, I had taken some pictures this week that would fit the other prompts, so I have a complete Scavenger Hunt and without further ado, here it is.

Before:

We had a lab in my photography class on Thursday where one of the student's sisters came and our teacher set up several different lighting situations.  It was kind of a free for all in terms of who was shooting where, so a bit crazy, but I did learn alot about lighting and shadows.

After:

I don't think this is my best photo from the workshop, but it is the one I'm done editing :)

Opposing Lines:

I don't know if these are opposing lines so much as lines, lines everywhere, but it will have to do for today.

Which Pair of Shoes Should I Wear?

Sunflower has more shoes than every one else in the house combined (due to the generosity of a friend) so it is sometimes a fight over what to wear...no, you may not wear your flip-flops...put Daddy's shoes back!...I cannot find your other cowboy boot...please just wear these!

Little Features:

I love little baby teeth...before the big teeth come in big and crooked and cause me to worry about braces every time they smile.  I know her eyes aren't exactly in focus...she was moving with too slow a shutter speed...but is it obvious that I used my speed light?  I know what horrible flash work looks like, but I'm still learning the nuances of okay to good.

Custom Bokeh:

From Top Right Corner to Top Left Corner--Clockwise--No filter, square, hearts, Mickey head, triangle.  That was fun!  My family even laid the Christmas lights out on a white background on my couch for my photos.  How sweet are they?

I hope you enjoyed my hunt...if you want to see more hop on over to Ashley's blog to see the rest of the hunts.

Color

I learn so much from The Kat Eye View of the World and her Exploring with a Camera series.  This week's theme is no exception...except I am finding it so hard!  Knowing that the current theme this month was The Color Wheel Part 2: complementary, triadic, and tetrad, I went on Saturday's World Wide Photo Walk with the intention of capturing color.   Ummm, not as easy as I thought it would be.

For one thing, there was a lot of monochromatic images.  The skies were gray and so was the cement and a lot of the glass.  For a moment the blue sky was reflected in the gray water, but that only gave us one color.

Monochromatic:

Scavenger Hunt Sunday -- Blank Space

Sometimes it appeared like lots of colors--which is was--but it turned out they were all analogous, colors next to each other on the color wheel, like purples and blues.

Analogous: purple, blue, and almost green:

or
Analogous: red, orange, and yellow:

And this next one was monochromatic, too, blue again being the only color from the sky, but I converted it to Black and White just because, making it nochromatic, right?  No color?

Scavenger Hunt Sunday -- Black and White

But I tried to find some complementary, like red/green or yellow/purple or blue/orange, and maybe this is a stretch, but I have decided that in this lighting, the "blue" hour the grey benches and yellow lights become blue and orange, right?

Complementary: blue/orange:

Scavenger Hunt Sunday -- Complementary Color

No?  Okay, I'll throw one from my archives.  This whole color wheel thing helps explain why my little boy with blue eyes looks so good in orange; this was taken in the area we took the walk, so really it fits right in.

Complementary: blue/orange:

or How about Complementary: Yellow/Purple:

Kind of muted colors, but the yellow in the walls and the purple in the windows, right?  The whites and browns and grays all count as neutral colors.   (I am ignoring proportions for the moment because I can only learn one thing at once.)

Or Complementary: red/green:

Scavenger Hunt Sunday: Food (The restaurant we were supposed to eat at on the walk.)

So then I was supposed to find triadic color--3 colors on the color wheel that form a triangle like red, yellow, and blue--but that was difficult since there were so little color in a lot of the scenes.  But maybe if we define the colors in the building picture a little differently?

Triadic: red/yellow/blue:

Okay, that is a complete stretch, even more than my other stretches, but I like this picture!  The brownish walls and brick could be red, the mustard yellow walls are yellow, and the windows are now blue--just ignore the green and purple in the windows.

Okay, to prove I do know what the primary colors are, I'll share one from a few weeks ago.

Triadic: red/yellow/blue:

If you only have two of the three colors from a triangle it is called a triadic variation.  Those were easier to find on my walk since it only required two colors.  (I have a triadic purple/orange/green in this post.)

Triadic Variation: red/blue:

And

The last type of color sets we learned about is called a tetrad or tetrad harmony.  It is 4 colors that form a square (two sets of complementary colors) or a rectangle.  (Not all rectangles are squares but all squares are rectangles.)  4 colors in a picture, well that is too much to ask.  I can do two, three, five or more, but four...not so often.  At least not on the walk.  Or at least I thought so, but if you look closely...

Tetrad Rectangle: red/green/blue/tiny bit of orange:

But just as there is a triadic variation, there is a tetrad variation where you can leave off one of the four colors and have only three colors.  This makes it possible to fit almost any picture into the theme :)

Tetrad Variation: Rectangle: yellow/purple/green...missing the red:

Tetrad Variation: Rectangle: blue/orange/green...missing red:

Scavenger Hunt Sunday: Landscape, because I don't have a good landscape photo from the walk.

Then the question just becomes, where do colors like burgundy and teal fit in?

Is it a red/blue triadic variation, or is it just a photo from the walk that I want to share? As a child I colored almost every picture/outfit in coloring books a combination of burgundy and teal, or some variation of them.  What does that say about me?

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

It is Friday morning, and I really wanted to finish my Scavenger Hunt before I left for the weekend (girls away!)  Sure a few have to dos slid by the wayside, but my hunt is done.  Now whether my husband will link me up while I'm gone, or it'll be Sunday evening, I just have to wait and see.

Low Key:

I'll admit, I was really tempted to take pictures of my keys on the floor.  As it is, I think this still might be too bright and cheerful to qualify as low-key photography, but my husband looked at it and said, "Well, for Sunflower that is as low-key as it gets."  I also converted it to Black and White in the hopes of it fitting the prompt better.

Oh, my beautiful baby.  You will be seeing a lot of her today.

Monochromatic/Analogous Color:

I was thinking her dress qualified as analogous color with its red, orange, and yellows, and then we went to a playground with red and yellow equipment.  I thought it was quite serendipitous.

Circle:

I had other pictures of circles, but since I could not get myself to unify my processing, I unified my subject instead.  So here is Sunflower and do you see the circles of bokeh?

Scarf:

I had other pictures that showed off the scarf better, but I just love her expression in this one.

Phone:

Not the best picture, but I just love her intensity.  She was saying, "Julie, we'll be RIGHT over!"

Please do take the time to check out some other hunts.  You can learn so much and see so many fun interpretations!  I'll be visiting the hunts Sunday or Monday!

It's Tuesday {Almost}

Time for my favorite Tuesday links.  I cannot think of a way to link these but I want to share them.  There is no theme and it feels so random, so lets just call them all sweet.

And really what is more sweet than my baby girl with her gardening gloves unless it is...

...her picking "flowers."  I used a vintage preset in LR3 for fun.

I love this sweet boy, too.  (And their brother, but no photos of Huckleberry today.)

Now here is a photo I took at the beach a few weeks ago.  I really liked it though I couldn't tell you why.  It might be because it fits the analogous color scheme The Kat Eye View of the World taught about this week in Exploring with the Camera.

Blue and green being next to each other on the color wheel means this photo has analogous color, right?  So much to learn, so little time!

Then two flowers for Texture Tuesday.  Actually, two flowers with texture, but only one uses Kim Klassen's texture.

Kim Klassen Aurora 100% Soft Light; Turned 180 degrees (I don't want to tell you, but you might notice the upside down words.)

I had waited a little too long to take pictures of the flowers I got at the Farmer's Market.  Thank goodness for PSE and textures.  Sorry you didn't get to see the pretty orange flowers we bought!

Pure Love Letter Texture with Scrolls (from Pure Photoshop) 100% Soft Light masked off of flower. 

This is one of the photos that didn't get chosen for Sunday Scavenger Hunt's liquid, but now that I've edited it I might actually like it better than the chosen one.

Be sure to check out the links to see more sweet shots, explorations with a camera, and textures.  There are lots of incredible art to see!