Sculpture
somewhere in Washington, DC.
I made several attempts
trying to get a sharp image,
but my rudimentary
instrument
hampers me somewhat.
Flash completely ruined it
because of the light stone building
and the wet sidewalk in the foreground;
plus the effects of the uplighting on the sculpture
were utterly destroyed.
So I did the best I could to hold still
without a tripod
and use available light
to capture the image.
All things considered,
this one is OK, eh?
Taken 16 November 2010.
Looked great to me until I blew it up, then I saw what you were talking about. Blowing it up you can see the streaming light effects of tail lights or some sort of lighting.
ReplyDeleteRight-o. The zoom factor fuzzes it up. Did you notice what appears to be an angel ascending out of the frame in the upper left corner...?
ReplyDeleteI see the angel! In the small version, I like it. You show the size of the sculpture in the context of the building and I can see clearly that the sculpture is on the lawn. The streets have a coblestone effect. Which is pretty cool, and the shine is nice. The man walking is also a very nice touch. You do have some motion blur with the tail-lights and camera shake. Don't laugh but actually this can be a good thing : ) In one of my lessons from NYIP we were challenged to shoot a photo with motion blur... I shot my husband riding a stationery bike, He was in focus and his feet moving. Great concept, but it made him look so bad I nearly had to sleep on the couch. Knees flaying all over, stomach over a yardstick wide. The lesson is, motion blur=good! Learning to control=practice practice practice! For a shot like this with no tripod, you can use a gorillapod resting against your chest, or a monopod. Your legs are 2 of the tripod legs and the monopod is in front like the 3rd tripod leg (they are really light and easy to carry). Excellent composition and lighting though- so don't give up! I really like the colors too- blue is orange's complimentary color. I would use a wide aperture like 2.8, and hopefully a higher shutter speed, with maybe 400-800+ ISO. But in all honesty sometimes it takes a few retakes for me to get something like this right.
ReplyDeleteI walked away and realized you may not even have the settings I described... doh! If you are using an automatic camera see if there's a setting for the shutter speed in the manual- and the camera will take care of the rest of the settings. For hand held shots, you'd want it over 1/60 of a second, 1/100 is usually very safe. There may be a sports setting that will do this for you too.
ReplyDeleteWow, thank you for all the terrific ideas and advice, Karen. You're right, I'm just using a plain ol' OTC auto-snapper for dummies, which I generously referred to as my "rudimentary instrument" in the post. But my camera does have several "settings" with which I should experiment more.
ReplyDelete