A New Perspective (Philadelphia)

Philadelphia is a beautiful city, if you know where to look.  For this shoot I was able to gain access to the top floor of an apartment building off of Locust Street in downtown Philadelphia.  Along with 4 four other friends, I wasted no time in capturing this moment.  We set up our equipment and continued shooting until we got exactly what we wanted.

This is my favorite shot of the city that I took over the weekend.  This picture is actually an HDR photo (3 different exposures merged together).  However, I made sure to keep the realistic aspect intact to achieve a specific look.  The sun was giving a harsh exposure on the right side of all the buildings, so in order to see the detail throughout the image, i decided to merge the 3 different exposures to achieve an image that the natural I would really see.

As the sun began to set, we took to the streets to capture the real beauty of Philadelphia, the lights.  In this photo I used a long exposure to capture the light trails that you see.  The photo was taken on Broad Street while car were passing by.  My shutter speed was set at 10 seconds with an aperture of about f/22.  In the future I will experiment with different aperture sizes and more light.

This is my rendition of an HDR shot of City Hall.  It's a little more surreal than what I originally planned, but it was fun to experiment with.  Problems I ran into with this photo include the grainy texture in the blacks due to the high ISO on the camera, difficulties with focus since I had to keep my aperture completely open to bring in enough light, and compensating for exposure and gamma amount in Photoshop.  Overall, I like the way this came out, but I hope to work on my HDR skills in the future.

Capturing Emotion

This week my assignment was to capture "true" emotion in photography.  The subject could be anyone we knew or someone that we randomly saw while going about our day.  My first thought for this assignment was to capture the bright and transforming face of my friend Adam Mason.

My goal was to get Adam to play video games with my roommates while I walked around snapping of picture after picture of Adam and my roommate in deep concentration.  This is what I came up with:

The process was tedious but I learned a lot while shooting.

• It is important to keep your camera up and constantly look for new expressions of the subject.
• Make sure your getting a variety of shots with many different focal lengths.
• Make sure there is plenty of light for shooting these pictures; for a crisp image you will need to use a quick shutter speed.
• Finally, don't wait till the night before your photos are due to start your assignment; allow yourself plenty of time to choose your subject(s) and shooting area.

Beauty at Valley Forge Christian College

This picture was taken outside of Solomon's Porch at the beautiful campus of Valley Forge Christian College.  When I look at this picture I think about all of the links involved to make this chain stay strong together to serve an over all purpose.  It reminds of a family or a community that comes together over a common goal.  Their purpose is to stay strong through whatever comes their way.  Just like a chain, a strong family can hold together.

This picture was also taken at my college in Phoenixville, PA.  I love this picture because the part of the image that is in focus is the reflection from far away, while the ground that surrounds the puddle is slightly out of focus.  I believe that it is always a good sign to see something clear whether or not your look at a reflection.  A clear image lets you know that you have accomplished something great or are on the right path in doing so.  Even with the blurred vision that comes our way from time to time, we can still look for a clearer picture up ahead.