Day 48-54/365: Trying It Out

I hit day 50 of my 365 day photography project this week! It's crazy how fast it's gone by! Lately, I've been really boiling some project ideas that I'm really excited about. I'm going to start working on them this week, so be on the lookout!

As I Continue To Reach

"Reaching"


Zig Ziglar once said: “Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.”

I continue to pursue this. This past week I've really been trying to come up with photograph ideas with more of a fine art aspect. I'm accumulating a list that has started off with my leg collection: "reaching", "on the edge", and "childhood". Look for these prints soon up for sale on my Etsy shop!

Day 41-47/365: Spring's on the Rise

My 365 day photography project photos of the week.

Free Shipping on ZoiShop

I'm offering free shipping until Saturday, April 16th at ZoiShop with promo code HAPPY100 at checkout!

Shop for surprise me! photo card sets, prints and wearable art. They're all great as gifts!

Photography 101: Adding a Feathered Border

A reader asked me the other day how I added the dark feathered border to my photographs, so I thought I would write about it today.

I usually use my Adobe Lightroom 2 computer program and simply use the options under "Vignettes" to add my desired border.



However, if you don't have Adobe Lightroom 2, you can use Photoshop. It takes a few more steps, but it is still fairly simple.

First you must have the photograph you desire to border on a layer apart from your background. You can do this by simply cutting the image out and repasting it. From here, click the fx option on the bottom lefthand of your layers window (it's the one next to the infinity sign looking icon). Once you have the fx window open, you need to check the box to add an inner glow and set the blend option to multiply.




The standard color on my Photoshop is yellow, so I simply changed the color to black, and set my opacity 100. You also want to set the source option to edge. Then simply play around with the choke, size and range options till you figure out a border style you're happy with.



The follow images are my before and after. Although a very subtle change, the border will be a lot more drastic on bright photographs.




I know the images on this post are relatively small, so I set up the images to open in a new window if you click on them!

Hope this helps anyone trying to figure out how to border their images.

Day 34-40/365: Already Day 40!

I cannot believe it has already been 40 days since I began my 365 day photography project, and I have yet to run out of things to photograph or miss a day. I'm starting to see how many different styles of photography you can try out and am truly happy with my experience so far.

Here are my photos from last week:

Spring Egg

I'd been wanting to try out an egg set up for a while, and today on day 37 of my 365 day photography project, I finally did! I had to super glue the egg down to get to stand up, but I finally got it balanced. I truly love how the image came out, and hope to create more images like this in the future.



You can find the photograph for sale at ZoiShop on Etsy.com. It is available in various sizes, including 20x30 and 8x8.

Sunny Days

Yesterday was the first sunny day in the mid-Peninsula in a long time. It was such a beautiful day that one of my best friends, Jilian, and I took a trip to the beach. It was the first day in a long time that I felt relaxed.





The weather yesterday also made me realize that this summer might very well be one of the hottest. That meant starting to look for spring clothes for warmer weather. The top trends of the new season are floral and abstract prints, stripes, bright colors, long skirts and high waisted pants.

Below are some of my fashion finds for the new season.

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1. Mcginn 'Ivy' Stripe Tank Dress - Nordstrom - $295
2. Plumeria vintage stitched tank - J. Crew - $125
3. Cooperative Grosgrain Block Heel - Urban Outfitters - $69
4. Maritime-stripe Hoodie - J. Crew - $78

Photography 101: Depth of Field

Depth of field refers to the distance between the subject and its foreground and/or background. It can also be thought of as how sharp the subject looks relative to its surrounding.

There are two main types of D.O.F., a shallow depth of field and a larger depth of field. Everything else lies somewhere between the two.

A shallow depth of field is when your subject or focal point is the only part in the photograph that is in focus, while your background and/or foreground is blurred. This is very commonly used in portrait photography. The closer you are to your subject the smaller D.O.F. you will have.



In this image, I was close to my subject, Selina, so I could blur the building in the background, which ended up barely appearing in the photograph.

Another example is the following image, in which I zoomed in and focused on the butterfly. There is a bit more detail in this photograph, but if I had zoomed in more or gotten closer, the background would have been completely blurred.



Macro lenses are great for achieving a blurred effect because they allow you to get closer to a subject and therefore have a more shallow depth of field.

Telephoto lenses are also great when you're trying to achieve a shallow depth of field because the further you zoom in the smaller your aperture becomes. However, it is harder to achieve a deeper depth of field with these lenses.

A deep depth of field is one in which the entire photograph is sharp. The more crisp details there are in a photograph the greater depth of field you have. This is often used in landscape photography and can be achieved by closing your aperture to its lowest f-stop, usually f2.8 or f3.5. In other words, zooming out or decreasing the magnification to create a crisper image.



In the photograph above I was using the same lens as in the first, but I was completely zoomed out and had a low f-stop, which created a deeper depth of field or more detail in the photograph. The same is true for the forest image below. In both, you can see the details in the foreground, background and subject. Everything is crisp, every detail is there. You can see the cracks on the wall and the furthest tree.



Both types of depth of field are important and both can be used to photograph anything. It is simply up to you to decide if only one detail in your image is important or if they all are and decide accordingly if you need a shallow or deep depth of field.

Day 27-33/365

As I search for new photographic ideas to feed my 365 day photography project, it's nice to find myself driving to explore new types of photography. Lately, I've been driven toward food photography, something that's slowly become one of my favorite things to photograph.