The Munchkin's Notebook

No, you are not missing week 5; I am just flipping week 6 and week 5.  Week 5 is supposed to be a black and white landscape, however due to the snowstorm last week it is still difficult to get to places. I know what you are thinking, it has been a week and they have not cleaned up all the snow.  This is DC most people on side streets were not able to leave their houses until the Wednesday after the storm, which was on Saturday.  Several of the roads here still only have one lane plowed out.  It is just not pretty.  So I flipped-flopped weeks, and did the artistic challenge. The artistic challenge was candy.  Thus, I went to the candy store and bought some random little candies. I thought it would be appropriate to use the little candy hearts since we are getting close to Valentine’s Day. I could not find the little cinnamon hearts that I wanted so mini-mints were going to have to work instead.   I also bought a stick of rock candy to experime...

This week’s photo challenge was a portrait of someone else, specifically a head shot.  I lucked out on this challenge because I actually had a cosplay photo shoot already set up due to the snow storm here in DC. Yes, I specifically scheduled a photo shoot because we were going to have a snowstorm.  The photo shoot was with Life of Cosplay doing Anna from Frozen , thus the snow was fitting.  This shoot was a combination of studio and outdoor pictures to take advantage of the snow. In studio, I shot with a gray backdrop, and two 430EX II speed lights of which one was bounced off an umbrella to light the whole area and the other was gridded to provide highlight.  The ratio of flashes was 3 to 1 respectively. I used my standard 18-200mm lens at ISO 400, an aperture of F4.5, with shutter speed of 1/200s. For this particular photo was taken at a 40mm focal length.   I then edited the photo in Lightroom and Photoshop as follow.  I balanced the color, ma...

This week’s challenge was an artistic challenge that stated the focus of the image should be red.  Therefore, this week I shot a red rose using macro lens, which filled whole frame with red producing a bit of an abstract image.   For this shoot, I used red roses that I misted with water set in a tabletop studio box.  I used a 60mm macro lens on my camera, which was mounted on a tripod.  I also used two external 430EX II speed lights.   I used an aperture of F2.8, with a shutter speed of 1/2 second and an aperture of F4 with a shutter speed of 1/100s both at ISO 400. After taking the images I imported them into light room and adjusted the them because Cannon occasionally have issues with red. In this case, the red was too bright and was not the actual color of the rose.  Thus, I darkened the image, increased the clarity a bit, and increased contrasted.  I then did a creative edit on the image that faded it to give it a more antique loo...

I have to be perfectly honest with you; I was a little lazy doing this week’s challenge.  The laziness was not because I do not enjoy landscapes, I do, but is winter and the scenery in DC is not that great right now. It might be better if we had some snow but we do not so it just looks dead.  In addition, I did not get up early to catch the sunrise, and the sunset I had just did not work out due to all the clouds.  I know these things sound like excuses, and they probably are, but sometimes I think you are allowed to be lazy at least during the winter. Now onto the photo. I took this shot on a hill behind where I live that is actually a tiny park marking a historical site.  Historical sites are everywhere in DC.  I shot this around 5:00PM, facing towards DC with heavy cloud cover.  This is the direction the sun rises but the direction of sun set has no points of interest and the sky in that direction was shrouded in heavy clouds so there was no color i...

I have decided to do the Dogwood 52 week photo challenge , which gives you a new photo assignment each week alternating between a portrait, landscape, and artistic photo types.  The goal of the challenge is to increase your creativity and improve your photos in each of the three areas.   I will be blogging each weeks assignment, which will show the original out of camera and the final edited image.  I will also note which setting I used and some of the edits I made. This is week one which was to take a self-portrait.  For these images, I set up a gray backdrop (very wrinkly) behind my couch, placed a 18-55mm lens on my camera with a beauty dish on a 450EX II Speedlight on camera. I used my cell phone as a remote trigger.  The settings on the camera were ISO 200, at F4.0, with a 1/15s shutter at a focal length of 18mm.  The first image I cropped the image to focus on my face. I then adjusted the lighting to brighten my face, then adjusted the ...

This year was good year for photography for me even if Iceland was disappointing from a photography perspective.  So, at years end, I reviewed my photo statistics and found that I edited 2,871 images (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 1/125s at an f8 aperture, and ISO 400. I also looked back at the photos I posted this year and determined my three favorite photos in Cosplay, Travel/Landscape, and Animals.  Then looked at my website and determined which photo was the most viewed. The photo really was not a surprise because overall, the cosplay was great and the photo turned out well.  It was Maleficent from Katsucon, it had over 1300 views.    Cosplay Travel/Landscape Animals Most Viewed Photo That is my wrap up for the year. I am looking forward to a great 2016, working with awesome people, and traveling...

On December 6, I participated in Star Wars Cosplay Photo Shoot hosted by the DC Cosplay Group at the National Building Museum , which is a great location to shoot in, due to its grandeur.  The meet up consisted of several cosplayers and photographers.  The rules for the shoot were simple no blasters inside the museum, but light sabers were ok, and photographers could not use light stands or umbrellas.  Thus, this meet up was perfect for photographers practicing for Katsucon. At the shoot, I used a Cannon 70D with an 18 - 200mm lens and an external 600EX-RT on a stick held by my assistant, who is also my husband.  Using an off camera flash, was good because it allowed me to get different angles of light.   I took over 200 photos, however only kept 136 photos mostly because several were repeats poses.  My camera was set ISO 400 with an f/8 aperture, which is the sweet spot form my lens.  My shutter speed varied between 1/20s to 1/200s, with ...