The Munchkin's Notebook

This year was a busy year for me, I started a 52-week photo challenge, which I did not complete because of all the cosplay work I ended up doing at conventions (Katsucon and Anime USA) and with the DC Cosplayer and Photographer group. I loved working with the DC Cosplay group, because it is an excellent group of cosplayers and a great venue to practice new techniques. I also did do some landscape work during my annual vacation; this year it was to Yosemite and Sequoia National Park.  Overall Yosemite was nice but preferred Sequoia.  So now, it is time to look back as some statistics and my favorite photos from the year. This year I edited 5851 photos, (that is the number of edited images sitting in Lightroom not the number of photos I took); my most used focal length is 28 mm, with a shutter speed of 1/100s at an f5 and f8 aperture, and ISO 100 and ISO 400. You can see the distribution of each of focal length, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO below. I also looked ...

A few weeks ago my dog was lying in a sunbeam coming through the window.  I thought it would be an excellent photo opportunity, to catch his relaxed expression in the sun.  I took this picture with my Cannon 70D with an 18 – 200mm lens.  This photo was taken with only natural light, at ISO 100 an aperture of F5, a shutter speed of 1/160 at 18mm.  As you can see my dog’s face is slightly over exposed and while the background is dark, you can still see several distracting elements.  Original For the final image, I pulled the photo into Lightroom, darkened the exposure, and adjusted the highlights and shadows.  Specifically, I darkened both the highlights and shadows to reduce the distraction in the background. I also added local adjustments to darken the bright spots such as the computer screen, reflections off the chrome on the chair, and the second window.  I then bumped the color saturation and clarity up a little bit. I also adjusted t...