Focus on Life:Moment of Focus

Exploring a Shallow Depth of Field.

When Sally Russick set our April Moment of Focus photo prompt, a chance to explore using our cameras to capture a picture with shallow depth of field, I warmed to the task of doing something a bit more technical with my camera, which has manual as well as automatic settings. I read Sally's hints, I even read my camera

 manual. I was set.

But, as with other times that I have tried to "go manual" with the camera's settings,   I found that what that camera is best at is doing things on automatic. With an infinite depth of field. Above is the closest I could come with some of the options on the camera.  So I got going in the Picmonkey editing site, and came up with these reasonable facsimiles of altered depth of field. Sally made a video about using Pixlr's photo editing to blur the background, but my computer does not seem to like to play those videos. And frankly, using Pixlr is beyond my capabilities. 

Focal Pixelate

Spotlight

Zoom Blur

Maybe some day I will get the hang of using depth of field to improve my photography. I kind of like that last one. And did you notice what the subject is? Daffodil buds! Spring!!

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Focus on life: Industrial Photography!

Making Art From Industry.

Sally Russick's prompt for this week was Industrial Photography. While out on a mission to drop my daughter off at work and pick up a few groceries, I visited a small industrial area near her workplace.

To introduce our topic Sally Says : "It is amazing how something perceived as cold and [its] purpose is to perform a function can have a beautiful soul."

Not sure that I have found any beautiful souls but here is an assortment of sights from our nearby industry. I played with them a little to enhance their features. 

First a little introduction:

We have an Industrial Drive, but precious little industry is on that road. 

Some artsy play with industrial scenery: 

Just a little "retouching" with this one. 

Using PicMonkey's "Warhol" effect. 

Everybody seems to remember to display the flag. The rest of this picture turned out more interesting for me in pixilated shapes.

Kind of looks like sand castles.

A row of imposing cement trucks.

Ready for tomorrow's job.

Click here to see what others have done:

 

Focus on: A Monochrome Experiment

Photography Without Color

Our prompt for this week, from Focus on Life by Sally Russick at The Studio Sublime, is "Monochromatic."  We needed to come up with pictures either captured originally in black and white, or ones that we shot in color, then processed into monochrome, like black and white or sepia. 

I used the black and white setting on my camera for the first time, and it was fun, because taking pictures with black and white film (remember film?) was not that unusual when I started taking pictures. But back then, you saw your picture framed in the viewfinder, in color, and now you can see your picture on the screen in black and white. 

Interestingly, I found lots of subjects that are close to being monochromatic already, because winter is not a season of color around here. Here are the images I chose to share with you.  

Weeds and driftwood. And a little dirty snow.

Doorway to an 18th century house.

Cement mixer.

Then, I started to experiment. Here is an old weather beaten door. The one on the left was originally taken in black and white. The other? That one is in color. Sometimes you just have to find the right subject!  

Oh yeah, this one I played with by darkening the exposure.

Brings out the detail and shadows.

And finally, picket fence, unretouched in black and white, and then in sepia, cropped. 

Wait wait, one more: 

This is a shot taken in color, then played with in PicMonkey. It is ice forming on the edge of a stream. I use it as my desktop image!

Thanks for looking. I really enjoyed this one. Hope you did too. Visit The Studio Sublime to see what others have come up with!