Tumwater Falls - Sandy

I went back to the park because I wasn't happy with the pictures I took on our trip.  IS0 was set at 100 and Shutter Speed 1/4, f/22.  I like this picture because the water has a nice flow to it.  Not too solid looking.The sun popped out for about a minute and I was able to capture it's glow in the water.   I had a good day at the park.

Bruce Smith - Catkins, Tumwater Falls

Because I wanted to focus on the catkins and blur the background, I shot this photo with my 14-45mm zoom lens at 45mm with an aperture of F/5.6 and a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second.

Svetlana. A field trip to Tumwater Falls Park. My goal was to capture water, its power. SoI didn't want to have it frozen, I tried to make it look as blurry as possible. Fortunately, it was cloudy, and low light allowed me to use slow shutter speed as  1/3 or 1/5 with  aperture f/22 and low ISO. Besides I was looking for places where I could capture some other colors to contrast to light color of the water.  I saw a beautiful dog in the park. She turned out to be a great model. The aperture was f/11. shutter speed 1/15.

Mary -- Tumwater Falls

The first photo I took from right next to the water, looking back toward the south.   Shot at ISO 80, f8, 1/8th second exposure, WB set on cloudy. Maybe a little underexposed, but I struggled to balance the brightness of the water with the dark background on the opposite bank.

The second and third are of the same site.  In the 2nd photo I attempted to blur the water, and shot at ISO 80, f8, 1/6th second exposure.  In the 3rd I attempted to stop the water, shot at ISU 400, f/3.4 with a 1/160th second exposure.

Tumwater Falls Field Trip

As most often happens, I learned more by looking at the results on my computer after the event than I did while I was shooting. I had originally wanted to go for the crisp stopped-in-action look of water, but I think because it was a cloudy day it was hard to capture that look in an appealing way. I found, looking through the pictures, that I preferred the milky blurred look of the water as an element of composition. The pictures that showed more water texture were too "busy" looking, and the ones with the milky blurry water made the water into almost a background element with more attention available to focus on the textures of rocks and moss. Or maybe the viewer can split the perception into two categories of water vs land textures and it is easier to take in. So my current theory is that, at least on cloudy days, when there is a waterfall with a lot of other interesting things going on in it, the blurred look is a great choice. Now I am motivated to go back when the sun is out and see what that is like.

The first picture was the only one where I thought that the fast shutter speed worked well. The water in the back (top left) could almost be a huge textured rock instead of water, so different does it appear from the splashing water in the middle. I like the stillness of the mossy rocks with the little sputter of grass to give some contrast to the splashing water.

Aperture Priority Mode
f 5.6
exposure time 1/500
ISO 160
focal length 135 mm


In the second picture I like the look of the calm still pool with the textures of the tree and the grass and the still-water reflections contrasted with the motion of the waterfall. I chose this picture out of the full range that I took because this one showed the tree and calm pool off the best and clearest. Again, it would be interesting to go on a sunnier day and see if the moss might look greener and the shadows on the tree trunk might be clearer. It looks like a clear case when spot metering might be necessary--or care needs to be taken to get the tree to show up well.

Aperture Priority Mode
f 32 (?!)
exposure time 1/3 sec
ISO 100
focal length 55mm

One thing that I wish I had done better was to have had the landscape (non-water) elements in sharper focus. Maybe it is a trade-off, but I'm thinking that there has to be a way to ensure that I can have my cake (enough light) and eat it, too (greater depth of field). I could have bumped up the ISO a lot, yes? But of course I did not think of this at the time.

Third image

Aperture Priority Mode
f 8
exposure time 1/5 sec
ISO 100
focal length 37 mm

Fourth image

Aperture Priority Mode
f 8
exposure time 1/5 sec
ISO 100
focal length 35mm


Fifth image
f 14
exposure time 1/3 sec
ISO 100
focal length 38 mm


Sixth image
f 22
exposure time 1 sec
ISO 100
focal length 45 mm

Pièce de Résistance

Practicing with Shutter Speed and Composition

Practicing with Aperture - framing/composition

Oops!  How'd this get in here? 

Aperture-plus he's just so cute!  

 Aperture - Rule of Thirds

I have been mesmerized by my cat's eyes for quite a while.  He's pretty rad.

Tumwater Falls Park

ISO 100  112 mm   f/36   1/10

Tumwater Fallls Park

iso 4000     235 mm    f/5.6   1/250

Class Field Trip Tumwater Falls Park

ISO 100, 112 mm       f/6.3      1/320

Class Field Trip Tumwater Falls Park

ISO 1000 140 mm f/5.6 1/100

Beyond Basics Photograpy Class Field Trip, Tumwater Falls Park 2/11/12

ISO 1000 140mm  f/5.6 1/100  Class Field Trip

Bruce Smith - Oil Lamp

This is the last shot I took in the process of photographing one object using all White Balance settings.  After viewing all of the previous shots, I decided that none of them brought out the true color of the wall, which is a light lavender, because the lamp shades on my ambient light sources produced tones that were too yellow.  Therefore, I removed one of the lamp shades and shot this using a Kelvin setting of 2500.

Mary - Walking toward the light

This was the 29th of 29 photos I took last night at 11PM outside my front door. I was really attracted to the neighbor's truck under the street light, and the fog.  ISO 100, f 4.5, 15 second exposure, WB set on cloudy, on a tripod.  Using AWB, there was less gold in the photo.  Tungsten was blue and cold.  Cloudy setting  really added warmth to the color of the light.  Remembering what Barbra said earlier about needing a person or animal in a photo from our 1st or 2nd class, after about the 20th photo I took of the truck, I added myself into the scene.

Jaded - Sandy

I took this photo early in the morning.  Shutter Speed at 1/500, an Aperture of f/2.8 and ISO at 200.  The colors in this are not to exciting, but I like the fact that It captures his boredom with his slight curiosity for the shrew.  I think it had been dead for a while.  Miles just kept going back and would toss it up in the air to see if it were still alive.  Hillarious!!

Radiant - Sandy

This picture was taken along the water near East Bay Drive.  I set the ISO at 100 and the Aperture of f/11.  Shutter Speed was automatically set at 1/250.
I liked the way the sun made these look iridescent. 

Bruce Smith - Home Office View

This photo was taken using "center weighted average" metering in Manual mode at an aperture of F/8 and a shutter speed of 1/5th of a second.  An ISO of 100 was selected because it produced the least amount of "blowout" in the white areas.  I also tried to use spot metering and the AF/AE Lock while focusing on the water in the background to see if I could get more detail in that area, but to no avail.

Ken - Indoor exercise

Had to do this indoors:

Shutter 1/30

f11

Exposure comp +1.0

ISO 12800

My dear friends, it is our last class 'Beyond Basics'. I would like to share some of my pictures with you. It has been a nice experience, I mean photography class with Barbra Kates. I've learned so much in this class. It was so nice to meet you all. I wish you keep on doing great job we started here. Happy shooting! And hope to see you in the next class.

Ken - Fading sun

Focal: 200 mm

Shutter: 1/10 sec

F Stop: f/5.6

ISO: 100

Late afternoon/sun low.

Bruce Smith - Lower Tumwater Falls

This shot was taken at an aperture of F/14 at a speed of 5/16 th of a second, and I cropped it slightly on the left and top to improve the composition.  I found with a lot of the other "moving targets" that I tried to shoot this week that I was just taking a lot of pictures in hopes that some would turn out well.

Stellar's Jay taking off

Hummingbird ISO 800, f/5.6, 1/1600

Hummingbird ISO 1600 f/5.6, 1/4000

Blue Heron

Bill Anderson - Leaves of Old

I took this one to show the motion of the falling leaves, using a slow shutter speed (1/30th of a sec).
I especially liked the subject and I think the pic captured my intent.
I would have liked to see Doreen in sunlight, rather than overcast skies. Also, I would have liked a better location and background. This would have been great in the fall with colored leaves.

Shutter speed: 1/30
F/11
ISO: 1000
Focal Length: 45 mm