Bed and Breakfast in Fredericksburg

Here are a few pictures of the bed and breakfast we stayed at one time in Fredericksburg, Texas. Enjoy!

The B&B...



Our cabin...
The local cat...

More from Alaskan Cruise...(they just keep comin')

More from Alaska

Please enjoy...

Alaska Cruise - Mendenhall Glacier Park

It was a real treat to get to get this close to the glacier. I was perhaps only 100 yards away and it sure was a sight to behold.

Enjoy.

Austin

This is just a simple picture from when we hooked up with Nancy's cousin's in Austin, TX.

Enjoy,
Pat

Alaskan Cruise - Day 1

Nancy and I just returned the other day from our first cruise together. Here is the first of a few hundred pics taken. Enjoy for many more will be coming.

Pat

More favorite pics

A few of my favorite pics...

Sunsets...they are beautiful

Just thought I would share one of the best sunsets God has ever let pass before my eyes...

Enjoy!

Converting color photos to black and white

You have seen it. These magnificent photos that are in black and white with great contrast and detail with that dated look that sometimes only black and white can portray.

Well...I plan to post a picture that I will convert to black and white from color and tell you exactly how I did it.

Stay tuned...

Digital Camera Workshop 2.0 2nd Field Trip Notes

I think this field trip was a great success to the Edith Moore Santuary. I had never been and with the weather partly cloudy, we had a great time with Mark showing us all how to take better outside portaits and children's pictures using shade, direct light and reflectors. We had a great crowd and I am sure a number of wonderful pictures resulted.

I will post a few of the photojournalistic pictures I took to capture us all having a great time.

I know that Mark and I received a great number of question from lighting to how to use a certain part of the camera.

One of the ladies attending asked me about converting to black and white. She uses Photoshop Elements and I recommended the book by Scott Kelby that I saw Mark Depew using titled Photoshop Elements for Digital Photographers. I have the book by Scott Kelby for the full Photoshop and it is wonderful how he simply tells you how to set things and get it done. You can always tweak your results, but sometimes getting 90% there is the biggest battle and he can get you there through this book if you need the help.

Regarding black and white, I plan to post a photo I took on this latest field trip, having converted it to black and white with Photoshop Elements, then tell you exactly what I did, settings and all. That way, you can duplicate this on one of your photos, then tweak to your taste. If you don't use Photoshop Elements, then use your software program of choice. They may not have some of the tools that Photoshop Elements has, but you can certainly get your photo into black and white for starters.

One thing to remember, I suggest you do not use the black and white mode in your cameras to get black and white photos. The problem is that if you ever want that photo in color, you cannot get the color information because your camera doesn't record the color information for the photo when you are in black and white mode. Therefore, I believe that you should always shoot in color (you probably do this already) and then convert to black and white in software. You can have the color and black and white version anytime. You never know when a photo may be the "one" and you cannot get color when it was never there.

Stay tuned...

Mercer Arboretum pics (part 2)

Here are the rest of the pics I took. Please enjoy and let me know if you have any questions as to what I did to take these...

Pics from Mercer Arboretum Field Trip (set 1)

Well...as promised, here is the first set of pics from the Mercer Arboretum field trip.

I am a bit ashamed because I do not remember the type of flower this was, but they sure were beautiful. In taking this photo, it begins all with the prep of my equipment. I knew that the photos I sought to take would benenfit greatly from a circular polarizing filter due to the bright and sometimes high-glare conditions from a sunny environment. Also, I used a very wide zoom lens (16mm-35mm) for I like the look of the picture from this lens. This simply comes with your own taste and preference and you will need to determine in time what lens you like in certain situations. I would say I chose this lens because I wanted to practice getting some landscape-type shots (this one isn't like that, but the next one is) that day and the arboretum was well suited for it in some areas. Next, I chose to use my monopod vs a tripod for versatility. You probably saw I was using this everywhere. A monopod simply attaches to the tripod threaded area under your camera (they all have one). This keeps your camera more steady so you minimize camera shake from your hand holding. For this shot, I tilted the camera to get a unique angle. It makes things more interesting to be diagonally positioned. There is some background, but it is blurred to give some ambience to the scene. For camera settings, I keep the camera almost always on aperture priority mode and set my aperture to 5.6 and the camera will choose the shutter speed from there. Also, I used ISO 50. ISO is the same as your film you used to use (remember 200, 400, 800 speed film). I always seek to use the lowest ISO to get the least grain in the picture. The shutter speed set was 1/125 by the camera. Something to note is that a circular polarizing filter prevents enough light from entering the camera to require a shutter speed twice as slow (to allow more light in) as you would get without it. On a bright day, this is usually no issue unless your shutter speed the camera wants to set is below 1/60. Regarding focus, when I am focusing on a field of the subjects I want to shoot (as you see there are a bunch of flowers in this pic), I will focus either 1/3 or 1/2 of the way into the subject. If I had wanted to the front in focus, I would have, but then most of the other flowers would have been out of focus and I didn't want that. Please let me know if have any questions/comments.

This next photo I used the concept of leading lines, framing, repetition, and color to emphasize the subject matter. I hope you were able to guess the subject matter was the bluish plants starting on the left and moving off to the right and away. I was positioned very close to the rock border at the bottom of the photo and focused about midway into the scene. Again, this was aperture priortity with a f/11 aperture setting. This ensures most of the photo is in focus, except really close and really far parts of the picture. My shutter speed was 1/160 and ISO 200. You may ask why ISO 200. Well, if I would have had ISO 50, then that is 2 stops slower, or would have required twice as slow a shutter speed and would have required me to shoot with a shutter speed of 1/40 (160/2=80; 80/2=40). Even with a monopod, 1/40 is still slow and if I can get the quality I want with ISO 200, it is better than a blurry photo. That's about it.

I really liked this plant and just had to take a couple of shots of it. I walked around a bit and got it with the sun at the back and the sun at the front. This one had filtered sun hitting it and had some great shadow effects. You will noticed that when shooting flowers and such, I generally squat down and get almost level with the plants for most people do not look at them that way and it makes a more interesting perspective. You may want to try shooting from under a plant sometime:). For this, I used a f/11 aperture and since the aperture was so small (remember, high aperture number means smaller amount of light, but more in focus), my shutter speed was a really slow 1/13 because the light was filtered and remember I had my circular polarizer filter on to remove any glare and help to get more saturated colors (this is a colorful plant, do you agree?). My ISO was 400 and I still had a shutter speed of 1/13, so you are getting the idea that with the darker areas of this plant, to get good exposure, I needed more sensitivity in my sensor (or faster film for those of you still thinking of film).

Well, here is the last photo for now and it is one of the last I took. It is from just after the office and I tried to use the sidewalk to lead your eye off into the distance. I was sitting on the ground when I took this shot. I used an aperture of f/11, shutter of 1/25, ISO 200 and used the lens at its widest angle to get everything in. I hope you like it.

Please let me know questions/comments and I will post more later.

1st Dig Workshop 2.0 a resounding success!

If you attended the first Digital Camera Worshop 2.0 this past weekend, then you know it was a resounding success. The weather was beautiful, and the Mercer Arboretum was not too crowded so that it was very easy to get around and explore the concepts Mark has been teaching in the 1.0 version of the Workshop.

Thanks so much to Mark Depew for setting this up and Bill Page for allowing us to have this workshop.

I will post some of the pics I took with an explanation of what was behind my mind and settings in the camera for so too often, we see a picture, but are not sure how or why it was taken.

Please feel free to post questions within the comments section and send pictures to me or Mark for review.

We were so glad to see those who showed up and those that wanted to, but couldn't, we are hoping you can show up when you can. There are two more field trips this month: one on March 10 at the Memorial Arboretum just inside 610 on Memorial; and the second on March 17.

Thanks so much for coming and we hope you had a wonderful time.

Software...which do you need?

Well...the answer to this question is...what do you want to do with it?

Most amateur photographers simple want nice photos to show their friends and family via the web, slideshows, or prints. But some have a more creative side and would like to see their photos in black and white, duotone (where the picture prints uses a variation of two selected colors), infrared, high key (very bright picture), low key (darker photos), and the list goes on and is only as long as the imagination of the user.

What softwares really address these ends of the continuum?

Well...let's start with what your manufacturer's dedicated software provides. Normally this software contains all you need to manage the downloading of your pictures, minor edits capabilities (i.e. red eye removal, cropping, straightening, brightening, darkening, contrast, etc....), then prep for your output. This software probably satisfies more than 75% of users.

For those in the other 25%, there are many more options. Some other good software are as follows:
1) Google's Picasa - this is free software and has many very user friendly features. If your manufacturer's software isn't getting you the results you need, try this since it won't cost you anything.
2) Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 - this software costs between $70-$100 and is a trimmed down version of the full Photoshop by Adobe. I recommend this software for those wanting to make selections of certain elements of their photos, apply certain graphics effects, and have more precise control over your photo editing and be able to edit in a non-destructive manner (I will post something addressing this specifically in the coming weeks). I have used this software and recommend the quick edit and full edit capabilities, but ask that you totally avoid the organizational functions because they are very non-intuitive and are very possessive when you try to upload photos to your computer, trumping all other software you may want to use instead.
3) Noromis Photolab - this software is around $50 (for internet download, $60 for mailed CD)just came out with a software to streamline and simply direct you through the "workflow" of importing, editing, and managing your photos for output. I haven't tried this software personally, and I suggest you try a trial version before buying.

You may ask, what do I use?

Well, I currently use Adobe's Photoshop Creative Suite 2 and Adobe Lightroom. These are expensive and have more ability than most people would ever need. I use them because I would like to have at my disposal the ability to do more, if I ever want to. I am a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, I study their magazine, and have books I use on Photoshop to learn more. This is what I use to edit and save the photos for posting to the church's website. I will gladly go into more detail about these software in future posts.

Here is a great list of digital camera sites for you to browse through and should give you plenty of resources.

Well, that is it for now...

Canon cameras and your equipment

I have been using Canon cameras since I became deeply involved with photography. My wife has an SD700IS point and shoot camera, while I have a Canon digital SLR. Also, I have a Pentax Optio W20, however, it is for situations where I want to capture a picture and the weather isn't so good since this camera is a waterproof camera.

I have had questions about why I chose Canon. Simply said, I read quite a bit and found much discussion about the quality of those cameras and primarily that the CMOS sensor in the dSLR Canon's was one of the best sensor's on the market (remember, the sensor is like the film).

I have been very pleased with Canon cameras, however like any piece of equipment, the more you read the manual and experiment, the more you get comfortable and figure out if the camera will do what you want it to.

I suggest, whatever camera you have, experiment, then get the photos on the computer and look at them. Seek to obtain an understanding of what the settings where and that you understand why the camera took the photo right, or not.

Yes, the point and shoot cameras are supposed to handle most situations automatically with a good exposure, however, they fall short in some areas and where you understand those pitfalls via experimentation, the better you will be ready to compensate for those few situations with a successful photograph.

Until next time...keep shooting.

Welcome to The Camera Blog's first post!

Well, this is Pat Flanakin and this is the first post of The Camera Blog setup to discuss photography topics covered in the Digital Camera Workshop. You are welcome to ask questions, and respond to my postings.

I am excited about the kickoff of this discussion forum and welcome you to The Camera Blog.