2014 Happy New Year - Update for year to come.

Wow, the last time I posted here was September 16th of last year.  Time really does fly. I started several different projects in 2013, and towards the end of the year, just couldn't find the time to maintain this one the way I really want to. My main resolution for 2014 was to get my internet affairs in order, kill off some of the projects that I'm just not feeling and put more time into the projects I really enjoy ! This , I'm happy to inform you is one of the projects that I really enjoyed and plan on posting here much more in 2014.

One of the projects I started towards the end of the year is the creation of new-aeon-design.com. This is a web design, graphic design company that I'm slowly getting off the ground. This project really took up most of my time and is why I just couldn't find the time to post here. You can also follow on twitter @NewAeonDesign. The feed features a lot of stuff on photography, web design, blog design, graphic design and linux and open source software. It's twitter so you really never know what will end up in the feed if you decide to follow.

With that said, I plan on posting to this blog a lot more in 2014. Twenty seven posts in 2013 wasn't a banner year for blogging on My Amateur Photo, but I have a couple different ideas to keep things interesting in 2014.

First, last year I tried to do a picture a day thing that just never even got off the ground. One of the main reasons for this,  it was just such a pain in the arse lugging around my camera and equipment to accomplish this goal. I quit before I even started :-( However, a few months back I purchased a smartphone and I'm actually pretty impressed with the camera that came with it. I'm also pretty impressed with some of the different camera apps for smartphones. This year I'm going to do the picture a day, but some will be with my SLR camera and others will be with my smartphone.
Along with the picture post I'll try to explain any post processing that was done, special apps, or filters used.

Next, I'm going to try and post at least one tutorial a week. Some will be my work, others may be links to other peoples work, and some youtube videos as well. I've been coming across some really great stuff on the net that I'd love to share with you all. I may even try my hand at Youtube videos this year.

 You can also look forward to software and product reviews and maybe a few surprises.

Finally, I'm planning on making some design changes to the blog. I'm always tinkering with it but I think I'm going to be making some major changes.

Anyway, thanks to all who started following in 2013 ! I really appreciate the support. If you're on twitter please follow and introduce yourself, I'd love to meet you. If your into graphic design and web design you may also want to check out the blog at new-aeon-design.com

New Years graphic courtesy of http://www.webartfreebies.com/

Smart Phone Photography Samsung Galaxy Stratosphere II

It's been some time since I've posted here. I'm trying to get my own business off the ground, I've had a bunch of web design projects I've been working on, and I have a bunch of photos from the summer to go through. Things have been moving pretty quickly around here.

While trying to get my business off the ground, I went out and purchased my first smart phone. I needed a planner / scheduler, access to the web and email wherever I am, and as a bonus I now have a camera to play with wherever I go. I ended up with the Samsung Galaxy Stratosphere II and I'm pretty impressed with the camera on it. Yeah, I know there's better camera phones out there right now, but for my first one, which happened to be free with the phone contract, I found it to be pretty impressive ! Now, I can't wait till my contracts up so I can upgrade.

Anyway, I'm going to be posting occasionally about phone photography and getting the most out of your smart phone camera. For today, I thought I'd just post a few of the better shots I took with the camera, and a word or two about post processing in Gimp. In the future I'll post some more detailed tutorials and projects to work on with smart phone photography. Click the images to enlarge.

The first image is of my cat. It was shot at night, in my bedroom. The lighting in this room is terrible. I opened the image in Gimp, played around with the levels under the colors tab, adjusted the curves under the colors tab, and did a basic desaturation removing any color.

This next one I took out in the country. I came across an Amish buggy parked on the side of a store while visiting my uncle at his summer home. I really played around with this one a lot. The horses face was really dark, and it took a bit of manipulation to get it light. Again I played around with the levels, adjusted the curves ( which is what got the face to lighten up), played around with brightness and contrast, and then did some masks to adjust the overly bright spots in the image.

 The morning glory shot below, was the first image I took, the day I got my smart phone. It's been cropped, and brightness and contrast were adjusted. Outside of that there was nothing else done.

The pink flowers were found on the side of the road at my uncles place. Using the same process as the rest of the images I adjusted the levels, curves, but using the brightness and contrast, I brought the brightness way down, and the contrast way up. This seemed to bring out the depth of the weeds and grass around the flower. I also tweaked the color balance a bit going heavy on the magenta for the flowers, and then heavy on the green.

The final image is of my mothers dog. I like the way this one came out, but I wish the left eye was more defined. This dog will not sit with a real camera pointing at her. As soon as she sees a real camera she runs into her dog house. However, the smart phone didn't seem to bother her at all. She actually sat there and let me get off a few shots. Again the lighting sucked for this picture, I adjusted levels, curves, removed some background clutter using the clone tool, and then used desaturate to remove the colors. Under filters, decor, I added a fuzzy border.

I'll post more phone photography soon with some more detailed information on using different filters in the phone, Gimp, and playing around with different lighting.

September.

September, with autumn approaching I should be posting here more often.

Haven't been posting here much.

I haven't been posting here much. Honestly, with summer here I just haven't been researching a lot about photography. I have been getting out taking pictures though and posting them to my Tumblr. As soon as the weather cools off and I start to hibernate for the winter again, I'll be posting some links and tutorials and stuff. Anyone interested can check out my tumblr here.

Use Gimp To Turn A Color Photo Black And White And Add Fog.

Here's two tutorials I used to turn a color photo taken on a sunny day into a darker goth style image using Gimp. This is the original photo taken in a cemetery on a fairly sunny day.

Using the tutorial found at the Gimp website. I changed this to this.

I also made some slight adjustments using Colors/brightness-contrast.Then using the tutorial found at gimpguru. I added some fog.

The entire process took under 20 minutes, and changed a bright sunny day into a darker Gothic style seen.

Daily Pic, First Photo With Light Tent

So I didn't do the DYI light tent. I ended up buying one at the local camera store. Knowing how I am, I figured I would of spent close to as much as I paid for a new one. More on that in another post when there's more time to write. For now here is the first photo I took with the new light tent !

I'm using the light tent to shoot jewelry but thought I'd try this first. I took a few shots of jewelry and they came out o.k. When I set it up at the job and start shooting , I'll post some pictures and how I shot them.

DYI Projects

Whenever I do a DYI project it ends up costing me almost as much as if I would go out and by the finished product. Over the next week I plan on building a small light box / light tent for taking pictures of jewelry. I'm doing research on the project, and trying to make it as durable and affordable as possible.

I've seen a few different plans with some cheap solutions. So I think I'm going to combine a few DYI instructions and try to come up with something cool. I'll post the tutorial here, along  with some pictures and different ideas. Hopefully this doesn't end up costing me more than if I just purchased the damn thing from the store :)