Cycle Quark

Explosion on Flickr

Mike Procario — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 02:49:13 +0000

I had a massive jump of view on Flickr on April 25. 2012. I had 738 views. I tend to average about 50 views a day and have had days over a hundred.

A single photo that I took of the terminal at Dulles airport was responsible for 295 views.

I like that shot, but I have had many better shots. I must have been featured somewhere on flickr that I don’t know about.

Spring Evening in Baker Park

Mike Procario — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:58:16 +0000

After dinner I took some photos of our weeping cherry, which is blooming now. I then drove over to Baker Park with my camera. The sun was setting but I had about 30 minutes to take some photos. The first one that I got that I liked was of Carroll Creek and the setting sun.

I then started walking towards the Bell Tower and I took this photo.

I toned the highlights to blue in Lightroom. The sky was dull gray without the toning.

I then walked past the Bell Tower and took a shot with the setting sun behind the tower. I think this was my favorite shot of the evening.

I thought I was done, but as I walked back to the car I saw these trees spanning the walking path. I think the dog walkers added a nice element to the shot.

Good Day for Photos

Mike Procario — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 01:10:06 +0000

The light was dramatic today and constantly changing. I would see something that was nicely lit, but I had a bad angle on. By the time I got to a good angle, the light had changed. I finally lucked out and got some shots of old farm on Butterfly Road.

My favorite one is of the whole farm with the dramatic sky in the background. I even caught a flock of birds flying above the barn.

Most of the photos were overexposed due to the high contrast and the bright sky. I was able to recover detail in the sky when I processed the photos in Lightroom. Digital photography is quite forgiving.

The photos are posted on flickr. You can click on them and got there to see bigger versions.

Take What You Get or Try Harder

Mike Procario — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 04:31:52 +0000

I am trying to do the photo a day challenge that is so popular on Flickr. I am doing it to improve my photography. Today, I took a picture of my wife’s Valentine roses. They have opened up a bit since Tuesday, so it seemed worthwhile to photograph them again.

I placed them on the dining room table, and I took some shots with my 50mm f1.8. They were lit only by the dining room light and the program mode on the camera chose large apertures. I thought parts of the photo looked in focus, but I was not satisfied. I suspected that I did not have enough depth of field.

I had two choices. I could get my tripod or add more light. I got my tripod. I took shots from f7.1 to f2.0 in aperture priority mode. At f7.1 shown below the small white flowers still show detail.

I knew about depth of field for years. What I really learned today, is that you can take what you get or you can get serious and work to get what you want.

One Month Down

Mike Procario — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:09:07 +0000

I successfully got through the first month of the Flickr photo a day resolution. I took at least one photo for every day in January and posted them on Flickr. I used our pet rabbits as subjects for six of them. I would have posted seven or eight others to Flickr, if I wasn’t doing photo-a-day. Seven of the photos were taken with my iPhone, four were taken with my Canon A590IS, and the rest with my DSLR.

The big thing I have learned so far is a better understanding of my fairly new camera. I have worked on aperture priority mode. I adjusted the default hand held speed in program mode from 1/30 sec to 1/50 sec.

I have been struggling for subjects. After a long day at work, I just have time snap a few shots around the house. The photo below is of our kitchen cabinets. I used the noise reduction in Lightroom for the first time on this photo. It was shot at ISO 1800 with visible noise, but it cleaned up quite nicely.

Foggy Morning

Mike Procario — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:32:34 +0000

It was foggy this morning, and it got foggier as I got closer to work. After I parked the car, I took this picture. The sun was fighting to break through the fog.

The photo is in color. If you look closely at the bottom you can see some green grass. It is another photo taken with the Canon A590IS. I really have to think about taking my DSLR to work with me.

Black & White or Color

Mike Procario — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:41:41 +0000

It snowed Friday night, and after I shoveled I got out the camera to take some shots. There was no a lot of snow, so I couldn’t get one of those shots where the snow softens the shapes of everything. It was also still very overcast, so it would not be a shot of colored objects against a blinding white background.

I ended up selecting this photo for my photo of the day. I ended up with a square crop. I was trying to emphasize the empty swing and the potted evergreen bushes. The fence provided a swath of color in a somewhat muted scene.

I posted the shot to flickr as my photo of the day, but I continued to play with it. I converted it to black and white and recropped it. I went with a broad landscape crop which emphasized the fence cutting across the photo. I think I preferred this one over the original, but I left the original as my photo of the day.

What a Difference a Few Minutes Make

Mike Procario — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:05:03 +0000

Yesterday’s photo of the day of a sunset was not as good as I had hoped for. I came out of work just before the sunset and I thought the red and blue and the black tree silhouettes would look good, but it was pretty dark especially for my Canon A590IS point and shoot.

Well, today I came out of the work about 10 minutes earlier, and I tried again with the same camera. I think the results are better.

There is more red in the sky in this photo, and the shutter speed was higher due to more light. If you look at the trees in this photo you can see fine detail in the branches, which was blurred last night.

Serious photographers talk about waiting for the light to be just right. Well for these daily shots I don’t often have time to wait for the light, so I will keep trying and see if I can find the right light one day.

Working on Picture a Day

Mike Procario — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:36:07 +0000

It was raining this morning, so I put on my rain coat. I discovered that my Canon A590IS point and shoot was in my pocket, so I had another choice for a camera for my photo of the day. As soon as I got out of the house I saw the raindrops hanging off the Japanese maple in our yard. I took this photo of it.

I think this might have been a nice photo, if I had taken it with my DSLR and set the aperture wide open to blur the background. As it stands now, it is lesson learned.

When I left the office, the sun was had almost set and it was getting fairly dark. I took the photo below with the Canon A590IS. It only has a maximum ISO of 200, so my DSLR has much better low light performance, but for this shot it may not have made much difference. I am pretty happy with the trees just being silhouettes.

I decided to pick the sunset as my photo of the day, but I may take my DSLR to work tomorrow to see what opportunities present themselves.

Picture a Day

Mike Procario — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 22:22:46 +0000

On Flickr there are quite a few groups that invite you to take and post a photo a day. I tried to do that in 2010 and I succeeded in taking 78 photos for a 21% rate. I am going to give it another try this year. I am now two weeks in, and I have succeeded 100% of the time.

I don’t have the time to grab my SLR and go out and find something very interesting to shoot everyday, so I will have to be happy with catching shots with my iPhone. In 2010 I did get several nice shots with my phone, which was then a Motorola Droid. This is one of my favorite shots from any camera. It was taken with my Droid in the parking lot at work.

If everyday turned out this well, I would be delighted. Clearly, they won’t, so I take this challenge as a chance to experiment more and generally keep my eyes open for photo taking opportunities.

On the 7th, I took my DSLR downtown and took about 50 photos. I was happy with about 10 of them, so the challenge there was which one to pick to represent the day. I picked this one.

I could also have picked this one

or this one

I find all of those interesting as photographs, but some days I just go for fun like this one. The caption was “In Chicago, the cars pray to the snow gods to not be buried.”

You can follow my experiments on Flickr, my 2012 photo a day set.