Alyn Family

So you’ve probably seen by now the photos in the right hand column are getting better. As an early birthday present for me, Gretchen bought me a DSLR. I’ve been experimenting with different techniques and styles and otherwise generally improving my composition and exposure skills. I thought since I hadn’t blogged in a while I’d share some of my favorites so far. You can click on any of these images to see a larger version.

This is one of the first photographs I took with the new camera. I set everything to full automatic mode and so it fired the flash etc. It was after I saw how nice these pictures came out that I realized what a difference the camera itself can make in capturing nice photos.

Gretchen was making dinner one night and I wanted to see how the camera did with Macro photography with the lens that came with the camera. I had also been reading and learning about the interplay between f/stop, iso and shutter speed and so was specifically trying to capture lower light situations without the flash.

I folded this bird probably over a year ago. I wanted to see if I could set the camera to give a grainy black and white image. What I didn’t realize was how much light was reflected off the back of the bird onto the window frame which gave it the backlit effect.

This is one of the older buildings in downtown Rochester. One of the things I am really excited about with the new camera is it’s ability to take nice photographs in low light situations. While this particular photo isn’t perfect (my tripod drifts) it was pretty good and gave me lots of things to think about for future night shots.

I had been trying to take a picture of Symbiot when I turned around to shush Dart who was very upset I was beyond the invisible fence. I snapped three consecutive shots and found this one funny. I converted it to black and white and Dart really popped out from the leaves making a nice photo.

Oskar was walking Dart in a nearby park and so I was playing with composition. I was really pleased that the background was out of focus and Oskar wasn’t paying attention when this photo was snapped as it really captured both of them in a natural moment.

I was curious to see if I could capture the moon and spent several nights perfecting the shot. While this is cropped in significantly from the original, I was please by how much detail was retained. I must have taken 50 bad shots that turned into washed out white balls before I got this one.

This drink was sitting on the counter at the Old Sugar Distillery in Madison, WI, which is a poorly lit space for taking photographs. However with the backlighting and shallow depth of field I think it captured the feeling of the place. The drink wasn’t bad either.

This is the dome of the Madison, WI capitol building. We were walking up the hill and thought I’d try and capture this. I didn’t have a tripod so was wondering if I would be able to capture any of the detail. It came out nice although you can see the camera struggled with the white balance with all the different types of illumination they use – pinks down low and greens up high.

I was really excited with how nicely the colors were captured in this photo – although it’s really like a caricature of what the sky looked like!

If you want to support my continued learning, this is a list of gear I’m interested in buying.