Under the Neon Moon

My love affair with neon continues with a exposure blending of two pics taken tonight outside the Mexican Villa on East Sunshine. I almost got in trouble taking this though, the security guards at St. John's came and asked me 20 questions about what I was doing and why I was there. This is the second time I've been interrogated by "the man" for taking pictures. This one has had a lot of processing done, first I set the color to Vivid in ViewNX on both shots, then I cropped for a tighter view of the two cactus neons. Then tried to tone down the blow out on the main sign but that didn't work so I pulled in an under exposed version created a mask to take the neon and lay it on top of the lighter exposure. I'm not 100% happy with the result but after playing with it for over an hour I give up, enjoy.



Exposure: 6,2.5
Aperture: f/22.0
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0,-1 EV
Flash: No Flash

Still here

Since I didn't post Monday or Tuesday this one is going to be a three parter, I have a feeling that gaps like this will be common but I still will be taking a new picture every day and posting them when I can. So on with business!

First up is Monday (2/15):

Morgan decided we needed to make a snow man before all of the snow melted, so we did... He was about 8 inches tall, has a string for a scarf and twigs for arms. We used a LED flashlight for the lighting which resulted in a really blue cast for the scene. For post processing (PP) I warmed the white balance a bit, bumped the contrast, lowered the brightness to kill the background and upped the saturation a touch to make the scarf pop.



Exposure: 0.025 sec (1/40)
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 800
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: No Flash

Next up is Tuesday (2/16) this one was taken at The Blue Fugue in CoMO not much processing was done to it. Not much to say either.



Exposure: 0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 800
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: No Flash

Finally, Wednesday's (2/17) capture, this is a picture I've been trying to get for over a month now but every time I was there the light was bad and every time the light was right I had to work. Finally everything came together and I managed to get what I was after. I was wanting to capture the contrast between man made/industrial elements and natural ones, I really liked how the bars and concrete wall formed perfectly straight lines while the rest of the scene was formed by twisted branches and leaves. As for PP I converted to B&W, tweaked the contrast a bit and applied Nikon's active D-Lighting to recover some of the texture on the bar in the foreground.



Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: No Flash

Here Goes

First post, so many things going through my head at this point! Will I actually make it the whole year? What am I going to shoot? Is this really going to help my skill with my camera?

The answer is... who knows. Anyway, here's my first capture:



Morgan and I were sitting at Mudhouse talking about her trip to Canada when she got a call from Brad, I couldn't resist taking this.

EXIF data:
F-Stop: f/1.8
Time: 1/30s
ISO: 800
Compensation: -1ev (this wasn't intentional so it was corrected in processing)
F-Length: 50mm
Flash: Off, did not fire