Angaza Photography PhotoBlog

SKYplay

2008-09-13T18:05:00.003-04:00

So I'm not always the most creative person around. I mean, I love to do photography, and I love to capture on "film" things like gorgeous mountain scenery and stunning architecture. But I'm not so good at coming up with stuff that hasn't already been done a zillion times. But you must check out this guy's stuff - playing with clouds and so forth. Click through this set on Flickr. SUPER creative! Enjoy!

My failed "365 Project"

2008-09-01T11:05:00.011-04:00

Have you heard of these "Project 365"'s? The idea is to take a photo every single day - for the purpose of pressing yourself to keep shooting, but even more importantly to keep thinking and to keep creating.

For a long time, I have known that a 365 project would be difficult for me with my lifestyle - as there are often times that I get up super early, go-go-go-go all day long, and come home for the first time again late in the evening and collapse with only a couple of hours left to sleep before it starts again.

For some reason, though, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to start a self-portrait 365 project. This is another evidence of my fool-hardiness - because I hate doing self-portraits. But the "requirements" for a self-portrait (as defined by one of the self-portrait 365 groups on Flickr) is to have some portion of your body in each image. Well, I didn't get more than a week's worth of shots. Take a look for yourself.

If I must admit it, though, there is one decent shot in that batch, a black & white shot of my arms and legs, sitting on the floor, relaxed and in jeans. I got the idea from one of my former students who had a similar shot of herself in her Facebook album. (I can't show you that shot or link to it due to Facebook's wonderful security features - of which I am fully supportive!) I'll just say "Thanks!" to Liz for the inspiration. :-)

The other thing that I must admit is that I learned a lot from my short attempt at the 365 Project - and that I fully intend to carry one out some day. In my decision to shoot such a very limited subject, I had to begin to consider all of the possible variables to create 365 shots and still avoid having them all be the same shoulder-up shot of my face (uck!) Some variables that I took into consideration were: setting/context, including other objects, unique crops, including other people, and so on.

It won't be soon, but eventually you'll be reading here that I am attempting a 365 again, and the next time I will be successful! In the meantime, here are some links to inspire you:

Photojojo looks at Project 365

Project 365 Group on Flickr

My friend, Vi, takes wonderful self-portraits (She's beautiful to begin with!) She makes me want to learn to do some better self-portraits myself.

Another Flickr friend, Shannon, who started her 365 self-portraits good, and just got better and better. I believe that she's at about 300 out of the 365. Go Shannon!

Solved!

2008-08-30T16:50:00.001-04:00

I do believe that my server problems have been solved. This should take care of the problem!

I will post again tomorrow or the next day. In the meantime, please be sure to check out SapidExistence.

Sapid Existence

2008-08-05T21:31:00.004-04:00

Every so often, I want to point you out to another photo blog or photography blog (there is a fine line!) So today, please take a look at my friend Chris' photo blog. He is one of my online photographer contacts, and he started commenting on Angaza Photography's blog before I even realized that anyone beyond my mother was reading it. :-) Now I've been having a great time following Chris's posts at Sapid Existence - it is truly a photo blog (as opposed to mine which is leaning more toward just a blog about photography). He posts a photo in each post, usually without much text. And he gets a new post up almost every day (at least several times a week). So please click on over to Sapid Existence and say hello to Chris for me!

Blueberry Picking and More

2008-07-31T17:52:00.002-04:00

I have two things today. First of all, a couple of weeks ago I drove up to Upstate NY to visit my brother and his family. We took the kids blueberry picking, and I took a bunch of fun family photos. I also took a couple of more serious photos, just playing around. I think this one came out kind of nice.

Also, although I haven't finished processing or uploading all of the Arizona images from my visit this past April/May, I have created a separate Arizona Gallery. Although new posts to my portfolio will temporarily go into the "Recent Uploads" Gallery, the Arizona shots will eventually all end up in the AZ Gallery. Check it out.

My Buffalo City Hall on Twitter!!

2008-07-29T22:01:00.004-04:00

WOW! I got an e-mail the other day from someone who works at Buffalo's CBS affiliate, WIVB Channel 4. He was setting up a Twitter account for the station and wanted to use THIS photo of mine of the Buffalo City Hall (he found it here at my Angaza site by Google-ing!) for the background for their Twitter homepage. They couldn't pay me, but he was happy to credit me and to put my Angaza Photography website URL on the image.

So, please take a visit to https://twitter.com/news4buffalo to see my image!! He had to desaturate it a bit, and had to blur it a bit (the photo itself has so much detail that he said it detracted from the content of the page....) But I'm pleased. If you're from Buffalo (and, really, who else would be following WIVB on Twitter?) then you'll recognize City Hall easily. (I hope!)

SOoooooo, thanks to WIVB and special thanks to Tim for plugging my photography!!

Smorgasbord

2008-07-26T12:57:00.005-04:00

This weekend I have a smorgasbord of loose ends to tie up for you.

First of all, I continue to process my images from my trip to Arizona. I guess that the last half of the week I spent there I did a lot less landscape/nature shooting than during the first half of the week. I hope you find these shots interesting. This wall abstract is one of several similar shots that I took in various places throughout southeastern Arizona. Many of the buildings and homes had colorful stucco siding, common throughout the Southwest. Shots like this always make me think of my friend Sarah Underhill who I wrote about in a previous post. I learned so much from Sarah as a photographer. Colorful walls were some of her favorite subjects.

Like I said, you will find a smorgasbord today. In my Recent Additions gallery, you will find several photos from Arizona, a handful of shots from my safari in Kenya last summer, and some shots from the monuments in downtown DC. I've been (figuratively) all over the map lately. :-)

Please also notice that I have added an Arizona Gallery. Arizona shots will eventually end up there after they've outlived their welcome in the Recent Additions gallery.

Enjoy your weekend!

Beijing 2008!!

2008-07-22T09:05:00.002-04:00

Are you looking forward to the Olympics? I am. I've always been a fan of the Olympics. Just the idea that the whole world sets aside their differences and comes together in a spirit of sportsmanship and competition - to support and encourage one another - it's so profoundly meaningful!

This year, I feel even more strongly about the spirit of the Olympics because they are being held in China. Many of us will have to think outside the box to embrace the idea that we can enjoy the experience of the Olympics in China!

Recently I discovered a fabulous photoblog at Boston.com called The Big Picture, News Stories in Photographs. They always have fabulous photo essays tied in to current events. This morning I discovered that their latest photo essay is about the upcoming Beijing games. You can see all of the images in this essay at http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/. I especially love the building shaped like the Olympic Flame.

Go USA!!

Digital Photography School

2008-07-19T07:59:00.003-04:00

Another website that I'd like to feature is Digital Photography School. I only recently discovered this site - within the past six months or so. But I visit almost every day and could get lost and spend hours there. Check it out.

There are two main sections to Digital Photography School. First is the Digital Photography School Blog, with lots of great articles and tutorials and very interesting reading. They even run weekly photo contests and have weekly surveys. I always find something interesting in the blog. I especially want to share with you a recent article from the blog with twelve beautiful examples of silhouette photography. Check it out!

The other main section of of Digital Photography School is the Forum. There are so many wonderful discussion sections that I haven't had a chance to visit them all. My favorite section in the Forum is the Games and Challenges section. There is a lot of ongoing photo "play" there. For example, one of my favorites is the Photo Scavenger Hunt where the last post asks for a photo of something specific (for example, "Show me a photo of a banana split") and the next person posts a photo of a banana split and asks for a photo of something else from the next poster. Another game that I like is the Alphabet Game, where each person posts a photo of something that begins with the next letter of the alphabet - for example, the first post might be a photo of an Apple, the next might be a photo of a Basketball, the next might be a photo of a Cat. (My 6 year old nephew helped me with those examples - thanks, Ian!)

Check out Digital Photography School - you'll be hooked like I am!

World War II Memorial

2008-07-10T19:26:00.004-04:00

It is absolutely NOT my intention to make this a DC themed photo blog. Really! But lately I've been doing quite a bit of photography downtown. Yeah. Anyway - I'm working on a "project" for a friend that is centered on the new(ish) World War II Memorial. There are several shots of it in my recent additions gallery. (There are also some shots from Arizona still in there - I am working on creating a separate Arizona gallery...)

Here are a couple of samples of my WWII Memorial shots. Enjoy!

Another stitched image...

2008-07-07T19:12:00.003-04:00

I'm working on some photography of the WWII Memorial downtown in DC. (Yes, I KNOW that this is NOT a photo of the WWII Memorial!) The other day, walking back to my car from the WWII Memorial, I saw a great sky over the Jefferson Memorial, and shot several images in a row and used Photoshop to stitch them together. I wanted to share this with you.

Unfortunately, when I worked out the levels and colors and balance in the rest of the image, there is that hot spot in the cloud in the very middle of the image. Very distracting. I would eventually like to print this big and hang it up. But I need to work on the hot spot first!

The other thing that I'm having a problem with is Photoshop and performance. I have done several stitched images lately and am very pleased with the results. I recently, though, have found that after stitching together more than two shots, the "auto-blend" feature will crash Photoshop. I can't figure out why. I mean, I know that my RAM and memory space are low-ish, but not horribly low, and certainly not much lower than they were when I stitched other shots. Why this all of a sudden? And I would have thought that "auto-stitch" would be more likely to crash the system, and not the "auto-blend". What's up with that?

Food Photography

2008-07-06T17:14:00.006-04:00

You know, sometimes things seem to happen all within a short time frame. A few months ago, I saw an article on Scott Kelby's blog (http://www.scottkelby.com) (which you should check out if you've never been there!) about doing some photography for a cookbook that his wife is writing. The article is here. My initial thought was, "Yeah, yeah - photographing food. What's the big deal? Big enough deal to write a post about it on a significant photography blog?" I'm so dumb sometimes. :-) My first clue as to my cluelessness should have been the fact that I already KNOW that I have difficulty shooting indoors - and with indoor lighting.

Anyway - a couple of weeks ago I was channel surfing on my TV for something to use as background noise. (I always need background noise!) I don't usually watch the Food Network (although I love to cook), but happened across it, and left the channel there. It turns out that the show at that time was some sort of "Food Stylist" challenge. "Food stylist"? There is actually a CAREER path for Food Stylists! Food stylists prepare food to be photographed. Anyway - these three food stylists were given assignments and time limits and had to make presentations for photographers. Their work area was at a beach resort in a rather warm part of the world, and the first assignment was to prepare a banana split to be photographed. And, of course, each of the Stylists knew exactly how to take some other material (can't tell you what exactly that material was!) and use it to look like ice cream, yet without the meltiness that would have happened in the heat. Amazing! And the creations that they came up with were beautiful - and looked delicious!!

Within the same general time frame, I had the opportunity to visit Georgetown Cupcake, a small "cafe" near Georgetown University in Washington, DC that serves only cupcakes and coffee. The cupcakes come in all sorts of amazing flavors and are FABULOUS! You MUST check out their website ... and if you live anywhere near the DC Metro area, you MUST stop in (M Street and Potomac) to try one!

I knew that I wanted to post to my other blog about Georgetown Cupcake, so I took my camera with me and shot my mocha flavored cupcake, using the available light coming in the window. Here is the shot that I took:

Well, I have to say that even if you think that my photograph is pretty with the flowers and candlestick and all, its main shortcoming is that it does NOT have the CUPCAKE as the obvious subject. "Lacking protagonism" is what one of my foreign photographer friends would say to me. Well, the cupcake was DELICIOUS, so I want to work on my food photography now more than ever. Don't be surprised if you eventually see some food presentations from me. It will be a rewarding venture in more ways than one! :-)

I have been looking for some reading on food photography, so here are some links that I would like to share with you:

Food Photography Lighting Techniques on Photo.net

Digital Photography School's tutorial on food photography - simple and step by step

Google Image search on the string "Food Photography"

Food Photographer Michael Ray's portfolio & blog

Professional Photography 101's very detailed article about food photography

101 Cookbooks' Food Photography Tips - practical!

Still Life With - a Food Photography Blog - they even have a Flickr Group

Still Life With's article on Food Styling for Photographers

Three more articles by Scott Kelby dealing with photographing food: (1) Food Photography Workshop, (2) Food Photography in New York City, and (3) A Wine and Cheese food shoot - complete with photos of his lighting/reflector set up.

Lots of reading to catch up on! I may not end up making any fake ice cream (I mean, come on!), but will enjoy learning about lighting and presentation to make food look luscious in two dimensions!

As promised, more Angaza Photography posts to come this week! Keep visiting! Don't forget to Digg and del.icio.us Angaza Photography!

...and we're back!

2008-07-05T20:47:00.002-04:00

Whew! I feel like Google Chat when it's having trouble connecting! :-) My server/host is working on upgrades, which has left my site down more than up lately. But, I am assured that this is *IT* ("it"?) and now the site will be more consistent and will run better. (Yay!)

My goal will be to give you several posts this week to catch up and to make up for the lack of availability over the past two. Check back Monday for some new stuff. The first post for the week is planned to be about food photography. MMmmmmm.....

In the meantime, I have added another site promotion tool. Thanks for Digging me. Now you can bookmark Angaza Photography with your del.icio.us bookmarks.

Happy shooting!!

The Moon over DC

2008-06-18T09:56:00.006-04:00

All week I have been noticing the gorgeous full moon in the evenings (well, the non-overcast evenings anyway). It's been HUGE and low on the horizon. Beautiful! And, on my favorite morning news show (on WUSA channel 9 in Washington, DC!) the weather gal is Kim Martucci - and she's been talking about this "strawberry moon" (the name of the full moon in June ... never knew that before!). Well, I had an appointment in Georgetown last night and took my camera with me - on the way home I stopped to take a few shots of the moon over some of the monuments. I sent Kim a copy of one of the photos (the one you see here of the moon over the Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial) to show on the morning program. And she did!

Not only did she show my photo, but she gave me a shout out, and she pronounced my last name exactly correctly ... that is, if you live in Buffalo. Well, Kim is from Pennsylvania, but worked in Buffalo for a few years. In Buffalo, they say "Apple-back-er" with "back" like "front and back". But everywhere else we say "Apple-bach-er" with "bach" like the composer J.S. Bach. So when she answered my e-mail, I responded, thanking her for the props and mentioned that she pronounced my name like a true Buffalonian. She responded AGAIN to me... with the following link about regional accents. If you're not from the Eastern United States, you will probably not find this article interesting. But if you ARE from the East, ANYWHERE in the East, you'll love it. Read on: New York Times Article on Travel Thanks, Kim Martucci - for the shout out and for the link!

I thought I would take a short break from post-processing my Arizona photos, and show you a couple of shots from the DC area. I love shooting the architecture and people around here. And when the moon cooperates, it's a wonderful added bonus.

Thanks for "Digg"ing me! I will soon add links for del.icio.us and some other site promotion tools. Keep an eye out!

Digg!

2008-06-16T20:04:00.002-04:00

On a never ending quest to draw more traffic to this website, I am promoting it through Digg. :-) If you Digg ... and if you Digg my site ... please Digg my site. (See right sidebar.) If you don't Digg ... or if you don't Digg my site ... then don't Digg my site. And if you have no idea whatsoever what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. :-P

RAW files are wonderful!

2008-06-13T20:06:00.003-04:00

I have only been shooting RAW files for about six or seven months now. You may not know what a RAW file is. Basically, it is a different format of an image file (as opposed to .jpg which most cameras shoot by default). The file size is huge, but in all of that space is saved LOTS of fabulous information about the image. And, even better, the camera does not make ANY automatic adjustments to the image when you shoot RAW. When you shoot .jpg, the camera needs to compress the file so that it will be a smaller file size. Thus, the camera makes automatic adjustments, thus slightly distorting your photo in irreversible ways. That's the basic gist of it anyhow.

Since I started shooting RAW last winter, I haven't gone back. I'm still learning a LOT, but I love it. Today I was working with an image that I shot in Arizona (in Ruby, that ghost town that I have already told you about). Actually there were two images. The shots were taken near mid-day, which is actually the worst possible time to get good light for outdoor photography. Here is the first image that I got of this old truck's flat tire:

Image #1

Obviously, it is seriously over-exposed due to the too-harsh light from the mid-day sun and the foolish ignorance of the photographer. So I noticed that difficulty in the viewfinder (the over-exposure part ... not part about the silly photographer ... it usually takes more than the viewfinder to figure that out!) ANYWAY, I made some adjustments to my settings and took this second shot:

Image #2

Obviously, image #2 is seriously under-exposed. At this point, I gave up taking more shots of the flat tire. I mean, if it's not nature, is it worth more than two huge-sized files on my memory card? :-)

Now that I am home and post-processing shots, I have been working with this one. I played with some of the exposure levels and tried to bring out the shadows and highlights with Photoshop and posted it to my portfolio.

Along comes a wonderfully talented photographer (and down right nice guy) David Roossien. He's even from Michigan. What a bonus. You'll have to check out his work. Anyway, along comes David who makes some suggestions, asks me to send him the RAW file, and then returns to me a whole write-up of his workflow in post-processing the image. Instead of waiting to get to Photoshop to do most of the post like I had done when I first worked with the image, he suggests that I do much of the work in something called Adobe Camera RAW (ACR), which is like a very powerful RAW file conversion program. So I worked through his suggested steps, and here's what I got. Amazing!! Both David AND ACR and amazing. :-)

After working with image #2 in ACR

Well, I obviously need a LOT more practice with ACR. But I'm very excited about what I learned this afternoon just using this one image and the pointers from David. Thanks, Dave!

Ghost town!

2008-06-12T16:27:00.003-04:00

Yes, yes, I know. There have already been several posts about my trip to Arizona. I am still working through the images that I took there, and enjoying the post-processing of those images. One "set" of images from Arizona consist of shots that I took in the ghost town of Ruby. There is a "caretaker" who lives on the property and collects the entrance fee. But no one else lives there. I enjoyed photographing the abandoned, falling down buildings. I also had fun finding "junk" sitting around the town and attempting to compose images around all of the rusty, abandoned "stuff". I'll even, eventually, post a photo of the caretaker. You have to imagine the personality of someone who would voluntarily live up in the mountains, an hour and a half's drive from the nearest town in either direction. He was quite a character. Anyway, in the most recent images gallery, you can see the images from Ruby that have been post-processed so far. Or, if you prefer, I am creating a Flickr set specifically for the Ruby, AZ images. Check them out!

Flickr

2008-06-06T09:26:00.003-04:00

If you're looking for something to do this weekend, and don't feel like braving the extreme heat, why don't you explore Flickr. I am a member of Flickr, which is an online photo community. Although my loyalty lies first with photo.net, I see many benefits that Flickr offers. I also use my Flickr account for some different purposes than I do my photo.net account. For example, when I went to Africa, I posted all of the photos that I took of the women in the group who traveled together to Flickr. I consider photo.net more of my "art" community, and Flickr more of a broad based community.

Here is the link to my Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laepelba/ - feel free to check it out, although I'll warn you that a lot of the images are the same as the images in my portfolio that you see here at Angaza and in my photo.net portfolio.

But if you really want to see a huge variety of images, spend a few hours browsing Flickr. Try their "Explore" section (see the menus at the top). The images featured in Explore are always worth a second, third, and even a fourth look. Or you can look for photos of things that interest you using the search field at the top right corner of the screen. I enjoy looking for Flickr groups on topics that interest me and then look at lots of the photos that have been uploaded to the groups.

If you make a list of Flickr "contacts", you can get e-mail notifications whenever they upload new photos. And you can look at their contacts to find even more interesting photographers. And on and on.........

Enjoy your weekend ... and STAY COOL!!

Stitching

2008-06-02T23:32:00.005-04:00

Yes, I know that the image is too big for the space that I've put it in. And, no, "stitching" does not refer to sewing machines and textiles. :-) Not in this case, anyhow. The photo above is actually an image that has been stitched from two separate photos that I took while I was in Arizona last month.

Adobe Photoshop is a very powerful piece of software. One of my favorite actions that it does is "stitching". I don't use it often enough, but when I do, I am always happy with the results. When I was looking at the scene (above), I knew I wanted to photograph it, but didn't want the distortion that a very wide lens typically brings to an image. So I took two photos, one of the left end of the scene and one of the right end of the scene. I was careful to make sure that part of the images would overlap in the middle. In Photoshop, you open both images and "merge" them using the Auto-Align tool and then the Auto-blend tool. The "align" tool makes sure that the overlapping parts of the two photos are exactly matched up. The "blend" tool matches the colors and exposure (etc.) from the two images so that the one resulting image looks like it is just ONE image. :-)

I have been inspired to play with stitching a bit more, so please expect to see more of these large res images from me! In the meantime, keep following my Arizona images in the "recent additions" folder in my portfolio.

Back up and running!

2008-05-29T21:07:00.003-04:00

Sorry everyone - there were server problems. For a little over a week. Apparently the "wrong" week, because I just sent the link out to a whole bunch of people, who then tried to get on, and couldn't. :-( Oh well ... server outages happen. :-)

SO ... in the meantime, I have been busy trying to process through some of the images that I took in Arizona. It was so wonderful to be there at the end of April and the beginning of May because there were so many cacti in full bloom. This image was taken at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. It's not a "museum" like in a building. It's this huge, outdoor walking experience. You see all sorts of different desert flora AND fauna. They have a wonderful hummingbird display with dozens of them buzzing around lots of gorgeous flowers. They fly by your head and shoot all over the place. They're awfully difficult to photograph. I think that I got lucky with this shot. Much to my delight, this shot got a lot of positive attention on Flickr. A very pleasant surprise!

Please expect me to start updating regularly again! Keep checking back. In the meantime, you can follow my progress with the Arizona shots in my recent uploads gallery.

Arizona

2008-05-09T10:54:00.003-04:00

I recently spent about a week driving around Southern Arizona. I've never spent much time in the desert Southwest. Nor have I ever been in Arizona. I had a blast. I loved shooting the saguaro cacti (seen here at sunset in the Saguaro National Park, Western division). My favorite cacti were the ocotillo, although I found them difficult subject matter for composition. While in Arizona I spent a lot of time driving the backroads, shooting the desert scenery. You'll also eventually see lots of desert landscape images, shots from the Organ Pipe National Monument, the Chiricahua National Monument, the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, the Tucson Botanical Gardens, San Xavier del Bac Mission, and even a ghost town called Ruby. For now, all of the newly uploaded Arizona images will be going into my Most Recent Additions folder. Check back to that folder every once in a while, as I will be adding two or three new photos there every day or so. Eventually, I'll create an "Arizona" gallery.

One of the butterfly shots...

2008-05-01T00:35:00.003-04:00

... won a Flickr "contest". :-) I uploaded several butterfly images into my Flickr account and added them to several butterfly groups. This one happened to WIN a contest!!! I couldn't even believe it. I've never won a photo contest before. (Not that I have joined many ... maybe my ego is more easily bruised than I would care to admit....) Anyway - take a look. :-)

Long time, no post....

2008-04-27T20:44:00.002-04:00

Sorry! I have had a tightly packed schedule, and have made several trips that didn't allow me much opportunity to work with my computer or to get online. In fact, I'll be off line for most of the next week or so before I'll be able to start posting regularly again.

In the meantime, have you noticed how absolutely gorgeous the trees have been for the past couple of weeks!? I especially love these redbud trees. This image was taken in Washington, DC. Near Capitol Hill.

I'll be back soon! Don't give up on me!!

Butterflies!!

2008-04-16T07:15:00.004-04:00

Sorry for the delay in posting. I was in DC last week, having a blast! I had the opportunity to visit the live butterfly exhibit at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. There were lots of beautiful creatures fluttering around, but only a few of them stopped long enough for me to shoot them. I will begin putting some of the butterfly shots in my portfolio soon!

A Model Shoot...

2008-04-06T21:57:00.003-04:00

A couple of posts ago I talked about available lighting. Recap: most of my shooting is done outdoors, using natural lighting. This winter I built a small lightbox and experimented with a small studio-type environment. Then, last week, I made a few photos of some flowers in a window sill using available light coming in the window. Well, on Saturday, I did something that was an absolute first for me. I did a model shoot.

It was SO much fun, and I learned LOADS of stuff about photography. I'm slowly getting involved in a Buffalo Photography group, and the group's administrator owns a studio. He had the group of us come in to work with a group of models. It was a blast! I haven't had a chance to really look through all of my shots, but this is one of the first that caught my eye. I'll put more of them in my portfolio eventually.