Ashland Daily Photo
Ashland Daily Photo - A picture a day from beautiful Ashland, Southern Oregon USA in the Rogue Valley
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Posts tagged photography

SOU basketball still on the road

SOU basketball Eric Thompson

SOU basketball – Eric Thompson (edited)

@SOURaiders

The SOU men’s basketball team continues their road games tonight against Simpson. This will be their fifth (of ten) consecutive road games. Today’s photo comes from their game against Simpson in Ashland earlier this month.

I sometimes have photographers (who have never been in the Riehm Arena) tell me how lucky I am to have such good lighting in a gym. HA! They have no idea how happy I will be to see the new gym lighting when McNeal Pavilion is torn down and the new facility is built. I have shot in many gyms and McNeal has the most difficult lighting. It is a yellow flicker. Most high schools have much better lighting.

Anyway, to give you an idea of how much I have to edit to come up with the photo you see above, check out how the original image started below.

SOU basketball - Eric Thompson (unedited)

SOU basketball – Eric Thompson (unedited)

RAW vs jpg (#6 or 7 or something)

jpg image, straight out of the camera

jpg image, straight out of the camera

I have mentioned several times before that there are situations where images shot as jpgs are “throw aways” that had they been shot in RAW format could be salvaged.

Today’s comparison is one such example. With a rainbow outside a dimly-lit gym, I had the choice of shooting the rainbow and getting a nearly black gym (above) or shooting the action on the court and getting a white sky (not shown). By shooting in RAW I was able to process the above image to come up with what you see below.

ahs volleyball rainbow

Ashland High School volleyball – rainbow out gym window in front of Grizzly Peak

By the way, Ashland won last night, advanced to the Sweet 16 in state, and will be playing in St. Helens on Saturday. The winner moves on to the Elite 8 round.

AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II Nikon Lens

AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm lens vr ii

Nikkor 18-200mm G VRII Lens for Nikon cameras

I haven’t used this lens in over a year. In fact, I no longer have a DX camera or this lens, but I used it quite a bit when I was learning how to shoot with my first DSLR camera.

This was one of my first test shots with my Sigma 85mm f/1.4 lens, a lens that I still use regularly.

Betty Boop

betty boop 50mm f/1.2 nikon manual lens ai-s

Depth of field at f/1.2

The other day I was in Medford for work. On my way I met someone via Craigslist who was selling a couple of manual Nikon lenses. Having never used a manual lens before (although I have used my AF lenses in manual mode on occasion) I was interested to try them out. Plus the price was crazy cheap so even if I didn’t like them I figured I could unload them at a profit.

Most of my lenses are largest at f/2.8. My Sigma 85mm goes to f/1.4 though. This 50mm lens that I picked up has a maximum aperture of f/1.2. It may be the only Nikon lens with an aperture so large. I had a half hour to kill so I dropped into the Medford library to try it out. The above was my first shot. What do you think?

I used it at the Stoneburner show too. My keeper rate at f/1.2 with manual focusing went down of course, but the ones that came out OK are pretty cool.

Photo of the Year 2012

Photo of the Year 2012 - Top 100 snow ashland oregon

Photo of the Year 2012 – Top 100

Three photos I submitted to the “Photo of the Year 2012” contest made the Top 100 and can now be voted on (until January 27, 2013). If you would be so kind I would appreciate your vote for my entries which can be found here, here, and here. You have to vote for 10 photos in total so pick another seven to go along with my three for your vote to count.

Soccer dreaming

southern oregon university soccer women's dreamy photography Alyssa Bricker

I’m not a big Photoshopper. I like my images to look real. Usually the only things I do in Photoshop are crop, photomerge, and do minor work on lighting (to make things look more like they actually did–not less). I’m not a fan of HDR.

However, the original for today’s photo came out sort of strange. The grass near me had a dreamy, out-of-focus quality that I decided to push onto the rest of the image somewhat. I also lightened the shadows on the soccer player. What do you think?

Here is the original .jpg with no alterations:

before and after photoshop adobe cs6 raw jpg versus compare

Los Angeles Panorama

Griffith Observatory Los Angeles panorama hollywood sign

I’m in Los Angeles for a few more days. Here is a photo I took on Thursday as I was pulling into town. Actually, this is a number of photos merged together spanning more than 180 degrees. On the far left is Griffith Observatory. On the far right is the Hollywood sign. Click on the image for a lot more detail. I’ll be posting more photos of Los Angeles on my other blog.

Ashland panorama

sunny ashland oregon grizzly peak covered in snow

Yesterday was a really beautiful day in Ashland. Unfortunately, I had to work most of the day. However, I did get this shot off on my way to work. Actually, this is five shots merged into one in CS5 and probably covers about 150 degrees. That’s why Grizzly Peak, on the left, looks so small even though I wasn’t that far from it.

Other than the sun being too much, I really like how this photo turned out. I’ll have to try it again someday when the sun is behind a cloud.

RAW vs. JPG (RAW isn’t just for weird, indoor lighting)

raw versus  vs. jpg landscape clouds contrast

I previously mentioned how I was getting better results working with RAW files in concert lighting situations. When going through my jpg image results I almost deleted the above image because the amazing clouds my eyes saw were totally ruined in the jpg file. Before hitting delete, however, I decided to see what I could do with the RAW file. Here is the result:

raw vs. jpeg

Bokeh madness

ボケ

Last week, after a bit of rain, I headed outside to check out the bokeh (ボケ) on my newest lens. The tree branches were covered in rain drops and were running towards me rather than horizontally. I focused on a single drop in the middle (just below and left of center) at f/1.4 with the above result.