First Picts

This overcast and dreary Northeast Ohio weather has made it hard for me to get out and shoot picts. Saturday was the first day the sun broke through for the whole day. The best times to shoot are in the early morning and the late afternoon/early evening. These are my first shots with the Canon 20D.

I spotted the green grass color coming through a very thin layer of ice. The knarly tree trunk still had a patch of dried debris under it. It was a bit reddish, not brown, in its color. Can you see the dog checking me out in the background? I used the RAW format instead of JPG when shooting. This allows me to process the image before taking it to TIFF then to JPG. I slightly brightened this shot but left the coloring untouched.

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This was not a great job from a technical standpoint. The snow was falling in heavy clumps. I couldn't shoot at a faster shutter speed than 1/60 while hand-holding a 200mm lens. The snowfall added noise and a few blotches which I decided not to cleanup.

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This is the Chagrin River, and while it has some great floods, the dreary light and winter scene made it hard to get anything dazzling out of it. But there will be more floods here and I'll try again in the spring.

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These magnificent birch trees had a perfect "glistening" look to them. It's nice to be able to take snow picts without the snow turning blue all the time. The 20D, like most modern digital cameras, comes with built-in "white balancing" technology.

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Now I'm working the flash on the 20D. Here's a shot of two Paul's, Wehrmeister and Fresty, taken at the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast held at the Marriott Downtown Cleveland. The flash did a nice job on the two main subjects but since it was a direct flash from the built-in flash unit, you can see little white dots on all the water glasses in the background.

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O.K. should you let a kid drink Mountain Dew? This is my nephew, Paul, and no, it's not a good idea.

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See what I mean? No more Dew for you!

Because the table had a glass cover the flash bounced off of it and laid the brown blotch across his shirt. A few of the shots showed brown blotches across his face.

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As things brighten up around town you'll see better stuff from me. Check back again!

Copyright © 2005 James D. Fisher
All rights reserved.