The Banner #8

The picture I chose for the new banner was taken on October 21, 2012 in Collinsville, Connecticut, during an outing with one of my Meetup groups.

The town is quaint, very pretty, and totally photogenic.  The fall colors simply added to the photo-ops available.  Here’s the full shot:

And the technical details (I was shooting manual):

Camera: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi
Lens: Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
F-stop: f/5.6
Exposure: 1/400 sec.
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50 mm

All rights reserved, NittardiPhotos.com

The Banner #7

Feeling the need to change the banner because I wasn’t too happy with banner #6, I picked this gorgeous view of the Saugatuck Reservoir, in Redding, CT, shot on March 12, 2012 at dawn.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t slept very well that night, and had a very hard time getting up in time to get there at first light.  I can still remember the sadness looking at several marvelous pink clouds while I was driving speeding towards my destination on the highway, still a good 20 minutes away.

I was still able to capture some stunning shots, but it was upsetting to know that in spite of waking up so early I had missed the first light of that beautiful day.  At any rate, this is the full image:

While admiring the beauty of the landscape, I decided to take several shots at different exposure levels in order to try my hand at HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography.  I’m very pleased with the results, even though I might have pushed the “dreamy” effect a little too much (I used Photomatix for the tonemapping).

Camera: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi
Lens: Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
F-stop: f/8 + f/11 + f/5.6 (tonemapped into one exposure)
Exposure: 1/125sec. + 1/250sec. + 1/60 sec. (tonemapped into one exposure)
ISO: 100
Focal length: 17 mm
Tripod

All rights reserved, NittardiPhotos.com

The Banner #6

I got the idea for the new banner when I saw this picture go by on my digital frame:

All the different stripes of clouds in the sky up top, white and blue, contrasted nicely with the brown dirt and black pavement below and looked really cool.  I figured a vertical stripe that encompassed them all, enhanced by the straight white line on the pavement would show a lot of texture and look really cool:

Somehow thought I’m underwhelmed by the results.  I like the new banner, but I’m not crazy about it, but I decided to leave it up anyway.  Any comments?

Picture details: f/4 @ 1/1250, ISO 200, 17 mm., taken in November, 2010, in Arizona, during the fourth road trip with my friend Vittorio.

The Banner #5

For the new banner I picked a picture that conveys the idea of cuddling up in a chair with something to read while outside the cold of the night slows everything down.

The picture was taken in my in-laws’ former family room.  The subject is my dear husband Ray and, although the feelings I described above are all there, outside that night was all but cold, given that the picture was taken on August 2nd, 2008.  Here’s the original, in which you can see Ray’s wearing shorts:

The picture was taken with my Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi set to P, focal length 17mm, 1/15” @ f/4, ISO 500.

After selecting the section of the picture I wanted to use, I set the contrast to –50 and raised the brightness to +60 on a separate layer with an opacity of 30%.  The text color was then switched to white and repositioned.

The Banner #4

For the new banner I decided to pick a picture that went with the season, even though this year we still haven’t gotten any snow since the freak snow storm that came at the end of October.

This picture was taken during a snow storm from the warmth of our family room.  Here’s the original:

The bird house is on a tree, which sits right next to our kids’ jungle gym, hence the ladder steps.  I liked the accumulation of the snow on the steps and the little roof, as well as the snowflakes blown around by the wind.

The picture was taken on February 16th, 2010, with my current dSLR, a Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi with my 70-300mm zoom lens set to 300mm.  The camera was set to P, which picked the following settings: 1/400” @ f/7.1, ISO 400.

I cropped out the part I wanted to use, and then since it was still a little too tall I squeezed it a little by resizing it.  The text was turned to black because it stood out more than if I left it white, because of all the snow.  I like the final result!

The Banner #3

I picked the third banner when the picture randomly came up on my digital picture frame at home.  When I saw it, I immediately pictured in my head how to slice it in order to make it look like my friend Vittorio was looking at or for something.

I like it because it has an air of mystique to it, and it also feels free and fresh thanks to the waves gently splashing in the background.

This is the original picture:

It was taken on September 5, 2007, on day 4 of our second road trip, during a stop on Lake Erie’s shores, on our way to the magnificent Niagara Falls.  I used a Canon PowerShot S400 set to automatic.

The Banner: # 1 & 2

I love taking pictures (and people usually tell me I’m a good photographer), but I’m sort of a purist when it comes to photography, meaning that touching up a picture to make it perfect for me isn’t the same as actually taking the perfect picture, if you know what I mean.

Legendary photographers like Ansel Adams, Herb Ritts, or Robert Mapplethorpe (and I’m not comparing myself to those Gods mind you) didn’t have Photoshop to ‘fix’ their shots.  Sure, they played with light and filters and who knows how many other techniques, but once they took the shot, that was it.  Not much could be done during or after the film had been developed.  Nowadays, software like Photoshop allows you to edit and format a picture so much, the final product might have very little in common with the original shot.

On the other hand, I’ve always wanted to learn to use Photoshop, precisely for how it allows you to manipulate images, but I always felt intimidated by the sheer size of its options and settings.

Hence, taking a page from Andy Towle, who runs the website Towleroad, I’ve decided to occasionally refresh the look of my blog by uploading a new banner.  The banner will always display the blog’s name “BlogElution – The Blog Evolution,” but the background image will always change.

I’m planning to always use a picture I’ve taken myself and then have some fun with it in Photoshop.  Once the banner is ready, I’ll upload it and give a quick explanation of what I did to the original to obtain the final image.

I looked for the original image I had used when I created the first banner but since I cannot find it, I’m assuming it was just a sunset I had downloaded off the Internet:


For the second banner, given the season, I wanted something very summery and since I love taking pictures of flowers and I love sunflowers, what screams summer louder than sunflowers?

For my first foray into picture editing I didn’t want to go overboard, so I simply cropped the original image and squeezed it vertically.

This picture was taken with my first ever point and shoot digital camera, a Canon PowerShot S400 (that worked great till it finally died), on September 16, 2004 in Stratford, CT.  In fact, that was one of the sunflowers I had planted that year in our backyard, right in front of our lovely little porch.