What do you do with your pictures?

I was once asked, "What do you do with your pictures?  Do you just keep them on your computer?"

That made me think for a minute.  Hmmmmm?!?!!!

I was telling the person how much Annette and I enjoy photography.

• How we take vacations in picturesque places just to capture the pictures. 
• How no one else would enjoy our vacations because we just drive around and stop when ever we see a photo opportunity.
• How we take Sunday drives just looking for pictures.
• How we enjoy doing portraiture.
• How we enjoy photography workshops and classes.
• Etc., etc., etc.

But...What do I do with my pictures?

I have over 20K pictures on my computer. Is it a waste if no one else sees them?  (It's probably less embarrassing if no one else sees 99% of them!)

Annette and I have done a small handful of weddings.  For most of the weddings we have created an album for the couple and then we create a photo-book.  Each photo-book we have created, we have ordered a copy for ourselves.  You would be surprised how many times we have shown those books around!

We also belong to the Harrisburg Camera Club, which has a projected image competition.  Now that is what I like to do with my pictures!

Two years ago Annette put in pictures for the first competition of the season and I didn't bother.  But I went to see the competition and I was hooked.

At the competition, the photos are projected onto a screen.  A score is given and the images are critiqued.  It is an amazing opportunity to learn!  (Now I know all about convergence!)

There is a points race.  The scores are totaled for all of the competitions for the club year and the person with the most points gets a blue ribbon and bragging rights!

This year there will be six monthly competitions running from October to March.  Each club member can submit up to two images each month.

The club year runs from September to summertime.  We have had the October Competition and it is time to submit the images for the November Competition.  Here are my submissions:

What do you think of them?

Galleries Open to the Public

Way back on July 19th, I wrote a blog about a wedding that Annette and I shot the Saturday before.  I put some teaser pictures in the blog.

Annette and I are always careful that it is the bride and groom who are the first (outside of us) to see the pictures.  In this case, we put passwords on the galleries so that only they could see the pictures.

Well, we have gotten to the point where the pictures are online and the couple is ready for the password to come off of their wedding galleries.

So, if you would like to see some of our pictures of the wedding, please go to www.garthwaite.smugmug.com and go to the wedding gallery.  Click on the wedding that is in a Sub-Category and enjoy.

I especially like the picture of the bride dancing with the flower girl.

I set up two flashes with remote triggers (PW's), one to the left and one to the right. 

I also like the picture of the Flower Girl signing the picture frame.  I liked the low angle of the warm light streaming through the window and onto the girl.  The look of extreme concentration is priceless!

Anyway, take a look, enjoy and leave a comment.

Thanks!

Blurry Pictures

At the Project Image Competition for Harrisburg Camera Club this past week, the judge told us not to be afraid of blur.  Sometimes blur is a good thing, like when using a small depth of field to make the background blurry and focus the viewer's attention on the main subject.

One of the club members has been experimenting with abstract photography, which is also a good place to use blur.  On our trip to the cemetery yesterday, that photographer put a polarizing lens plus a neutral density filter on the lens of his camera so that he could get a long exposure.  He then shook the camera up and down or left and right or in circles for the whole exposure so that he made some wild abstracts.  He has shown his abstracts at the camera club meetings and actually gives talks on how to create them.

So as I watched him doing those crazy things with his camera yesterday, I decided to try it myself.  I didn't take the time to add the neutral density filter so my exposure outside in the sun was limited to 1/13 of a second.  Not that long really.

Anyway, here is the best image of the half dozen I took using this technique.  What do you think?

Lowlight Photos at Renfrew Park

Annette and I were very lucky this week.  Almost the whole week was about photography!

Tuesday night was the Projected Image Competition at the Harrisburg Camera Club

Wednesday night we met with our wedding couple and showed them a virtual copy of their wedding album.  Other than a few tweaks, which Annette has already taken care of, the album was good to go.

Thursday night we went with the Antietam Photographic Society to Renfrew Park in Waysnesboro for some low light photography.

Saturday we went with the Harrisburg Camera Club to Paxtang Cemetery.  See the previous post.

What a week!

This post concerns the Low Light Photos at Renfrew Park, which is a museum and park that is based on an old farmstead.  It is very nice.

One of the Society's members instructed the group on how to take low light photos.  Here are some of the results...

The first two pictures were at the beginning of the shoot.  You can tell because there is still light in the sky!

There are two techniques on display here.  The first technique gives a warmer result.  See how warm/yellow the little building is. This was accomplished with a large battery powered flashlight. While the shutter is open, the building was "painted" with light from the flashlight.  The light was just moved back and forth over the front of the building.

 The second technique gives a whiter light because the flash for a camera is designed to give off white light.  So as you correctly figured out, while the shutter was again held open, the bush and the building were "flashed" with a flash strobe several times.

Which of these two do you like best?

 Annette found this next picture.  It is interesting because there are a couple of light sources.  There was a night light behind the smaller building that was lighting the face of the larger barn.  To add to the light, I opened the shutter and wandered around the picture using a camera flash to light the tree, the smaller building and the dark side of the barn.  The tree came out a little hotter than I would have liked.  You can tell that the shutter open time was fairly long because the clouds are kinda smeared.

bi

The last picture tells a little bit of a story.  This is an empty house at night, waiting patiently with the lights on for the owners to come home.  

I lit this picture with a flashlight.  Trees are real light suckers.  It takes a lot of light to get the tree to be anything other than a black silhouette.

Paxtang Cemetery Shoot

Well, guess where the Camera Club went to shoot!!!  A cemetery!!

This morning we went to the Paxtang Cemetery in Harrisburg.  I thought there would be a boatload of things to shoot.  There is a Mausoleum, beautiful trees in the fall foliage finest, tombstones with details, etc.  Annette went along with me to keep me company.

It turns out that I struggled to find things of interest to me.  Still, I took 275 shots.  Of course now that I have gone through them I have narrowed them down to less than half of that.

Let's take a look at some of the pictures I got and I'll give some random thoughts on each.

The first place we started was the mausoleum.  It was a beautiful building.  Each little wing had a stained glass window at the end.  I worked with this window for a long time.  With just the available light, the window was bright and everything else was pitch black, so I added flash to try and even the exposure out.

The area was not a brightly lit room like an office or a classroom.  It was fairly dark.  After all, it was in a mausoleum!  I wanted a more somber lighting.  It was difficult to get the amount of flash to the point where I wanted it.  I also played with the color compensation.

After the mausoleum, I went out into the open air.  It was just a beautiful day!  The temperature was just on the cool side of perfect.  There was a bit too much wind for some of the tree and plant pictures that some of the other photographers were taking.  But otherwise, perfect!

When I went out side I decided to work on details.  So I went around looking at the various tombstones.  Everybody is unique in life and I guess that want to maintain that uniqueness after death, because there were so many types of headstones.  Here are some of the detail pictures that I took...

 The angel in this next picture was envisioned over a hundred years ago.  So I was thinking...I wonder if humankind's idea of beauty and peacefulness have changed in the past one hundred years?

My answer, judging from this angel, is that, no, beauty has not changed all that much.  I have seen the square neckline with the stylized flowers in cloth in my lifetime.  The girlish face has smooth skin and would still be attractive today.

 This next little statue was only about 8" tall.  I enjoyed its calm demeanor.  I didn't know whether to include the tombstones in the background or not.  The light color might draw your eye away from the angel.  But without the tombstones, the statue could be in a garden rather than a cemetery.  I think part of the angel's story is that she is watching over a grave.

I often call Annette, Nettie.  Annette asked the nieces and nephews to call her Aunt Nettie because Aunt Annette was hard to say and sounded like Antoinette.  I think Annette should use this image as her wallpaper on her computer, don't you?