Photographer's Perspective: Entry #001

Description:
This little beautiful girl is my newest baby cousin. The picture was taken with a Canon Rebel T1i, my new favorite toy and usually my camera of choice for the pictures I will be uploading. I used photographers shooters mode, set the ISO to 100, used a wide angle lens with a macro attachment and turned white balance to sunlight.

I like natural looking pictures when I'm shooting faces so in order to do this I try my hardest to keep the person I'm shooting unaware that I am taking a picture. The easiest way I found to accomplish this is to talk to the person and to keep them in a good mood, usually by making them laugh. Waiting for the right time to shoot can be difficult so you can also shoot continuously, and when you get good, use one shot skills so each shot becomes that much more meaningful. For this shot, I told her (Jenna) to go find me a seashell on the beach which is why her face seems brighter the further you go down her face. The sand was bright white so I knew I didn't need that much ISO. I waited for her to get settled then I told her to look at the water and in that second, this picture was born.



Description:
This photo was taken on the 3rd Floor Bridge at Hunter College. It was a rainy day so everyone was sitting on the bridge. I always seem to have my camera on me and someone always decides to play with my camera. My friend actually gave me the idea for the pic, aiming outside and shooting. I realized that what stuck out the most were the little droplets of water on the window so I tried different angles and looked for the spot where the most drops were located.

For this photo I used the aperture shooter mode so I can make the foreground of the image the point of focus and blurred the background. I used an ISO of 700, and put the shutter speed to 1/200 because it was still raining and drops were still running down the window. For window shows I highly recommend using a macro lens with no flash. You need steady hands or a tripod to get the full effect because it will get blurry easy.

I like the mood of this picture. It reminds me of any other rainy day, gloomy with a side of depression. It's easy to captivate a mood when it is right in front of you. I'm fond of capturing moods, especially when they are natural and from nature. A sunny day would represent happiness like a rainy day would represent depression.



Description:
This photo was taken in the backyard of my aunt's house. She has an object back there that supposedly attracts bee's so I sat there and waited for one to come. After about 5 minutes a bee came and sat right on the flower in the photo. Be warned that this can be quite frustrating at first. For camera settings: ISO was at 800, Macro mode shooting, Flash, and shutter speed of 1/250 were enabled.

I love this picture because of how long it took get it right. I used a one shot so I had a lot of retries to finally get it right. The hardest part was not being able to look in the eye sight because the bee moves too quickly. I had to aim and shoot with a naked eye and hopefully it would focus right. Focus on the flower first then aim for the bee that way it captures correctly.

Hope you enjoyed my first photography entry =).

-J.Cazares