Half Day / Sunny Day

Good morning, everyone.  I have to work this Saturday, so I had a half day yesterday.  The morning was pretty gray, rainy and gloomy, but by the time I got home, the sky cleared up nicely.  I figured since I had some sun, I would go out and take some pictures.

I chose to go out the the Lake Highlands Greenbelt in Dallas off of Skillman St and Walnut Hill Ln.  Ironically, this area is where my last apartment used to be.  It has since been bulldozed and this nice area built in its place.  I really liked it.  There was tons of parking and it was easily accessible from both Skillman and Walnut Hill.  Lots of benches around to sit on, trees, grass for picnics, etc.  I would recommend checking it out now that we are starting to get some nicer weather.

So on to the pictures.  With the sun out, it was quite bright.  There were two types of shots I was going for.  I was looking for some nice landscape pictures, which wouldn't be too much trouble with the sky being so bright.  The second type of shot I was going for was a nice blurred motion on some flowing water features throughout the park.  The sun was going to make that tricky.

 

 This picture was taken with my Canon t2i with 18-55mm lens.

It is at f/22 to increase my depth of field, 1/10 sec. exposure, ISO 100.

Some things about this picture. I liked the line of the fence and the curve that it made.  I set the "F Stop" of aperture high, so that the camera would focus deeper into the picture.  When you set the F Stop this high, the camera closes off the lens, shutting light out.  The easy way to counteract this is to slow down your shutter speed.  That will allow more light to come in as the picture is being taken.

These next couple of pictures I used a technique called HDR (High Dynamic Range).  This is a technique that merges multiple pictures into one.  Usually 3 pictures, but up to 9, the technique uses a combination of overexposed and underexposed images combined with a correctly exposed image.  The benefit of this technique is that with the combination of exposures, you get the best of the highlights and shadows that you can't capture in just one image.  Here are my HDR images below.

 1/25 Sec Exp., 18mm, F/8, ISO 100

1/3 Sec. Exp., 55mm, F32, ISO 100

This last picture is the one that like because of the flowing water.  I had to slow the shutter speed down to allow the flowing water to blur.  With the slower shutter speed, too much light came in, so I had to close off my aperture to allow less light in.

Ok.  So that's enough for now.  I'm going out with my friend Jill tonight as her "muscle" for her Downtown Dallas photo shoot tonight.  Of course, I'll be taking my camera, so we'll see what I come back with.

Until next time...