I'm amazed at how good the average snapshot camera is these days. Even the cheap ones take great pictures. I've been experimenting with the settings and filters on my Elph and I can't believe what I get just by using the built-in presets.
Like this sepia setting, for instance. The picture above is Steve's kitchen. It's a nice cozy room with a good vibe, but you wouldn't expect to see it in Architectural Digest. With the sepia filter you get a version of the room that looks positively sophisticated. Chic, even. You feel that somebody famous must live there.
It's not just the sepia tone that accomplishes that, it's the camera's exposure computer.
Above, once again the camera set the exposure (above). I didn't have to do a thing!
Do you remember how frequently high end magazines used to use this effect (above)? Now it's a one-click option built into snapshot cameras. Haw! Now that everybody can do it the magazines will probably lose interest in it.
BTW, that's Auralynn and Jo Jo above, opening Christmas presents.
Auralynn took this photo (above) using the same filter as I used in the couch photo.
I forget what this filter's (above) called. It's monochrome with tints of just one color. It looks like it could use some tweaking in Photoshop, but I wanted you to see how it looked right out of the camera.
You can experiment with the aperture to get effects like the one above, and preview the result. There's nothing special about that, probably all digital cameras do it, but I grew up in the Kodachrome era and this commonplace convenience blows my mind.
BTW, I caught Jo Jo in the act of standing up and the awkward inbetween pose isn't very flattering. Sorry, man!
Wow! You can effortlessly do things like this (above) with a snapshot camera now! The future is here!
One last photo (above), but it's not mine. Steve shot this of Jo Jo with his hair messed up and with a five o'clock shadow. He put it up on his Facebook page and Jo Jo was inundated with admiring comments by girls.
You see? That's the power of photography. No. I'm not abandoning cartooning, but I think we should all be nice to Steve since he has the power to make us stars.
I love the pets in the background! These photos are all fantastic. Excellent job, sir and Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteI am going to have to move to an apartment this week. Due to more financial issues, I possibly not even attend college this semester and on top of that, my parents are most likely moving back to Massachusetts within the next six months. There's always something going on with my family and they should have just let me work rather than having a problem with me using their car. Oh well.
Post the picture I took of you and Mike at Halloween. That was a nice one.
ReplyDeleteSteve: I asked Mike about putting up some of the Halloween pictures and he refused.
ReplyDeleteRoberto: Yikes! Well, having your own apartment should be exciting.
I'm still living with my family of course, but you get the point. Could you possibly do some posts about the Byzantine Empire, what you know about the subject, and how they were able to last so long and preserve Roman traditions? A friend of mine got me curious about it earlier today.
ReplyDeleteRoberto: The Byzantines? I don't know enough about them to do a post, but the subject is an interesting one. They had an influence on Catholicism which is visible in the lace and vestments worn by priests and maybe on the use of insense in church services.
ReplyDeleteMy suspicion is that they had a bigger influence on Western thought than anyone realizes but big-name historians don't seem to be interested in the subject.