Photography Challenge - Day 9: Someone You Love

Taking a photo of Kevin is hard. He does not like having his photo taken…so I have to be sneaky! Well, he calls it sneaky - I call it capturing the moment.

Anyway, here’s my handsome man reading at my parents’ house. We’ve been spending a lot of time at my parents’ house lately, as my cousins are visiting from England.

Photo stats:

• I took this photo with my new Nikon D5100.
  
• F-stop: f/5.3
  
• Exposure time: 1/3 sec.
  
• ISO: 3200
  
• Focal length 40mm
  
• No flash

 
If you want to check out my previous photo challenge photos, here are the links:
Day 1 : Self Portrait
Day 2 : What You Wore Today
Day 3 : Clouds
Day 4 : Something Green
Day 5 : From A High Angle
Day 6 : From A Low Angle
Day 7 : Fruit
Day 8: A Bad Habit

If you’re working on a photography challenge, let me know! I’d love to hear about your photos.

Emily-Jane

Photography Challenge - Day 8: A Bad Habit

I’m not gonna lie – It was pretty easy to come up with an idea for this day’s challenge.. I mean, I have more my than my fair share of bad habits!

• Consuming more candy than any adult should
  
• Nail biting
  
• Swearing
  
• Talking too much
  
• Spending too much time on the computer

… the list goes on.

One habit stands out from the rest and really bugs me, but I can’t help myself: Hair twirling!

I only do it when I wear my hair curly, especially when it’s freshly washed… it’s just so twirl-able! And all the curls in the back stick together and wrap around each other so I spend way more time than I’d like to admit just idly untangling them and then twirling. I do it a lot at work when I’m in meetings because my hands are idle while I’m listening to others.

In my defense, if you saw how springy my hair is in person, you’d probably wanna twirl it too lol or at least pull a curl and say, “boing!”… which happens to me ALL THE TIME, by strangers no less. People are weird.

To show the “action” of hair twirling, I set a longer exposure time (2 seconds) so that my hand would be a bit blurred while the rest of me remained still and came out relatively sharp.

I’ve also been playing around with digital washi tape that I found on Pugly Pixel. It’s cute and adds a bit of pizzazz to blog photos.

If you want to check out my previous photo challenge days, here are the links:

Day 1 : Self Portrait 

Day 2 : What You Wore Today

Day 3 : Clouds

Day 4 : Something Green

Day 5 : From A High Angle

Day 6 : From A Low Angle

Day 7 : Fruit

What do you think about this photo? Did I do a good job of capturing my bad habit? Would you have done it differently? What’s your bad habit??

Photography Challenge - Day 7: Fruit

My choices in the fruit bowl for this photography challenge were dried orange, a grapefruit, and this apple... I pretty much give up on fruits in the winter (clementines excluded!) because they lose a lot of flavour. I can't wait until the summer!! Ultimately I chose the apple because it has a bit more contrast with colours than the grapefruit and orange. 


As per Kerry's suggestion in my last photography challenge, I put the apple in front of a neutral background so that the colours could pop. Comments and feedback are appreciated! :)

If you want to check out my previous photo challenge days, here are the links:

Day 1 : Self Portrait

Day 2 : What You Wore Today

Day 3 : Clouds

Day 4 : Something Green

Day 5 : From A High Angle

Day 6 : From A Low Angle

Photography Challenge - Day 6: From A Low Angle

I took a bit of a break from the 30 day photography challenge, but I'm finally back! Today's challenge was about taking a photo from a low angle. A low angle...what does that even mean? Taking a picture of something on the ground? Taking a picture of the sky or ceiling? I wasn't too sure, so I ended up taking some really weird pictures of the vaulted ceiling in my bedroom. While the ceiling looks great in person, it doesn't translate so well in photos. I turned to Wikipedia, which stated a low angle shot is from a camera "positioned low on the vertical axis, anywhere below the eyeline, looking up." Alright, that makes sense! A low angled shot is basically a little camera trickery to make something seem bigger or more imposing. I took a couple low-angled shots of myself to make my 5'4" self seem "big and imposing" and I ended up with some horrifically unflattering photos. I'll spare you the details. Then I thought it would be cool to make something small-ish look huge-ish using the low angle method. That's where my little green elephant comes in. I recently purchased a super cute green elephant piggy bank from Urban Outfitters. I love elephants, so obviously I had to snatch up that little guy as soon as I saw him. 

So, here is my attempt at making my little green elephant look large:

Here's an angle from slightly above the elephant. He looks pretty big here too lol. In reality, the elephant stands 7 inches tall from foot to trunk. 

I'd love to hear your feedback! Did I succeed in the day 6 challenge? The top picture is definitely a low-angled shot, but I think the elephant looks bigger due more to the closeness of the shot, rather than the angle of the shot.

If you want to check out my previous photo challenge days, here are the links:

Day 1 : Self Portrait

Day 2 : What You Wore Today

Day 3 : Clouds

Day 4 : Something Green

Day 5 : From A High Angle

Photography Challenge - Day 3 and 5: Clouds & From A High Angle

Hopefully this doesn't seem too much like cheating, but I'm categorizing this photo challenge under Day 3: Clouds AND Day 5: From a High Angle. I took this photo of beautiful puffy cumulus clouds from the plane when we were about 30 minutes or so from landing in St. Lucia.  It's not every day that I get to see clouds from this angle :) This might make me sound like a geek, but I find clouds fascinating. There are so many different types and they all have their own meaning. I guess it's no surprise that I ended up at a job that deals with weather and climate :)

Check out my other photos!

Day 1 : Self Portrait

Day 2 : What You Wore Today

Day 4 : Something Green

Photography Challenge - Day 4: Something Green

What better place to find something green than at the zoo?.. While there the weekend before last, I got this shot of a camelion in his natural colour. He's practically neon he's so bright!

Here are the photo stats if you're interested:
Exposure 1/15
Aperture 4.33
F Number f/4.5
(I sharpened and slightly brightened in Picasa)

Photography Challenge - Day 2: What You Wore Today

This is what I wore to work today - a gray short sleeved cowl neck sweater dress with a thick belt around my waist. My coworker Shannon has a very similar dress and we usually end up wearing it on the same day. My clothes are so generic so I'm sure I always look like someone.


I don't accessorize and most of my clothes are gray, so I've been told I'm a bit of a boring dresser lol My sister works in a library and jokes that if my wardrobe is any indication, people would think I'm  the librarian in the family. Michelle dresses in all kinds of bright dresses and crazy high heels when she goes to work!


Here are the photo stats if you're interested:

Exposure 1/45

Aperture 4.81

F Number f/5.3

(I sharpened and slightly brightened in Picasa)


P.S. You might be thinking this is too short for work...I sometimes think that too, but my work is so casual! This is quite dressy next to a lot of other people there. I once saw a guy wearing a t-shirt with a picture of an empty pack of beer that said, "I used to have a 6-pack"!! No joke


P.P.S What I didn't wear to work today was makeup! I'm the kind of girl who wears makeup every. single. day. (powder, blush, mascara at the very least) and on a whim this week I thought I'd see how it would feel to go without. The verdict: It's kinda nice! I only felt bare faced for the first 2 days. I actually had 2 people tell me I look different, but in the general "Did you do something different...?" kind of way, not the "You look tired today" kind of way.


Are you an everyday makeup wearer? Or do you prefer to go au natural?

Photography Challenge...First Up: Self-Portrait

Here is my first photo for the 30 day challenge. I always feel funny looking directly at the camera when I'm doing a self-shot, so I'm looking out the window in this one. I got to use my tripod (which is AWESOME by the way :-)

Feel free to critique the photos! I'll put a few of them (the good ones lol) up so everyone can see my potential progress.

Here are the photo stats if you're interested:

Exposure 1/15

Aperture 4.14

F Number f/4.2

(I sharpened and slightly desaturated in Picasa)

Have a great weekend!

30 Day Photography Challenge

While pinning, I came across this 30 Day Photography Challenge. My friend, Kerry from This Tinder is doing a year-long photography challenge and I wanted to do a condensed version of something similar to improve my photography skills and get me thinking outside the box...

{via}

I don't know if I'll remember to take a picture every. single. day, but I'll give it a shot (pun-intended :-P) This is probably something that I should start at the beginning of a month, but if I start it by tomorrow I can potentially be done right before my family and I leave for St. Lucia for my brother's wedding.


Have you done something similar? Did it improve your photography skills? Wish me luck!