Kalista-black and white

I was playing around with "threshold" tool in photoshop and came up with this photo.




This bird is already grey and white and the background is brown, so changing it to black and white actually didn't change the picture much!

Reflections-Kalista

These were taken in the little area between Questacon and the National Gallery. It was a fun topic Mel!

kalista-architecture

Kalista-texture

Since I didn't do the self-portrait assignment I took a self portrait and textured it. :)

Texture by Kalista and Mel

I love the flower photo that Emma layered with Mel's texture photo, and I thought it would be awesome to know how to add layers in photoshop. Mel is awesome with photoshop and she taught me how step by step using this photo I took of Kasha's hubby and baby. Thanks Mel for teaching me, and thank you Emma for the idea of adding texture into a non-textured photo. :)

Motion-Kalista

I forgot that Sunday was the last date to post on this assignment! Boy, and I'm also late on the new subject. I'm sorry. I'll post the new assignment right away.

Nature-Kalista

I know, these aren't very original and people have already posted bird and leaf shots. I planned on going out today to look for something unique but I forgot until it was already dark. Anyway, this has also been a fun topic, and there have been so many amazing pictures posted!

Lines

Bokeh

Here are a few pictures I took using Akasha's camera. This was a fun assignment, I look forward to the next one!

I love all your creative posts and am sorry to add a boring one! I don't have a computer right now to upload my photos onto and so I had to look for something that would work on my photobucket. This photo is obviously a mixture of natural and artificial light. I wanted to keep the bright color of the sunset and also be able to see Adelaide and not have her a silhouette, so I used my flash.



Recently I learned about using a fill flash. Here is a little about using it.

Because camera manufacturers calibrate the flash to be used in the way people expect (as the main light source), the flash has become one of the most misused components of the camera. As mentioned, people often use their flash when they don't think there's enough light in a scene to take a normal picture, resulting in "bursty" snapshots. On the other hand, when the main light comes from another source, like the sun, or other naturally-lit situations, people don't use their flashes, leaving dark shadows under the eyes, or an entirely black area under a hat because the contrast between dark and light is too much for film (or digital cameras) to capture.

Shooting with a flash in the daytime using the flash in its default setting will burst light thinking it's the main light source (because that's how the camera was configured because that's how most people use a flash), causing an equally bad, albeit different picture. That is, the flash will burst the same amount of light as the main source, leaving a complete flat, bland and pretty ugly photo. Worse, it'll also likely be out of balance with the background or other elements that the flash may not reach (as noted above).

So, if using a flash makes for too a flat image, and no flash makes for too much contrast and shadows, what do you do?

The secret is to find that middle ground by setting the flash so that it only bursts enough light to illuminate the shadows, but maintain the balance that your eye normally sees. This is called "fill flash" because it fills in the details that would otherwise be lost because of the high dark and bright contrasts in the scene. The general guidelines suggest to reduce flash output anywhere from 2/3 to 1-1/3 stops, depending on creative control and the degree of which there is a lighting imbalance in the scene.
http://www.danheller.com/tech-fillflash.html

Here is a link with some before and after fill flash photos.
http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=106

Light Assignment

Late morning lighting.

I went for a walk during the afternoon when the sun was high overhead and not good for photos, so I found a picture to take in the shade, these mushrooms.