Messing Around

I was going for an old, grainy film look. I pumped up the ISO and created a lot point of view. The photograph reminds me of a still-shot from the TV show, COPS.

A learning experience

Today I had one of those "Crap, I wish I was ready/prepared" type of moments. On my way to work today I was driving in the rain, in the left lane as traffic was steady. A quick glance in my rear view revealed a red car, coming up close, followed by half a dozen red and blue flashing lights. The driver immediately passed me on the shoulder and the police followed. More police pulled onto the highway about 1/2 mile ahead, until the State Troopers came blazing by. In the half second that I realized what was going on, I grabbed my camera bag, unzipped it, frantically pulled the camera out while unwrapping the cord from around the lens, flung the lens cap off, turned to Program Mode, and with shutter firmly pressed began to fire away. Once I got to work I took a peak at the shots I took hoping I might have got a decent one. To my surprise, nearly pitch black images were shown on the screen. I switched back and forth through the several pictures I took only to find them all black. A quick look into the processing information showed the following: ISO 800, Shutter 1/2500, Me:Still Confused. Then I noticed the -3.0 exposure compensation and the Focus Mode: Manual. I had forgotten to reset the settings from my previous shot the day before which required a lot of attention.
Lessons learned:
1. Reset settings after shot.
2. Always have the camera ready.
3. These lessons make me better!

A little bit of Photoshopping brought some 'light to the subject' and actually would have made the photograph somewhat salvageable if: 1.Lower ISO (less grainy) 2.Auto focus 3.Image practically not usable due to poor angle of shot (still learning how to blindly shoot) 4.Windshield Wipers (I believe strongly in RainX, I just need to reapply....)

Here's the News Article

Night Vision

I've been fascinated for a long time about how we can see in the dark, and how cameras can see in the dark. For instance, in the dark, if we close our eyes and open them for just a split second we can still manage to make out objects in the dark. If you are standing in the street you'll see a street light and a silhouette of a house, a car parked on the road, etc...

However if you take a picture in the dark for just a split second, you'll see virtually nothing. On the same hand, with a long exposure or a extremely high ISO (in the 20,000's or so, which yep you better believe cameras are at and above that these days...) you can actually see better than a human eye. That being said, I think there is a lot of complexity in that relationship to be discovered and explored. Here's a picture of my car, with a couple of lights reflecting off of it. By carefully finding the right exposure, I was able to capture exactly what it looked like through my eye.