"A technically perfect photograph can be the world’s most boring picture." - 365 Project, Day 362

I saw a music video the other day.  It was someone mixing dubstep with classical violin.  The best I can say is the video was crap, but the song sounded nice.  However, the dubstep was very... clean.  There was nothing particularly bad about the song, but it was very clean.

By the same token, I'm also on 500px.com, and a lot of the shots are very, very nice.  However, they all look the same in style: all perfectly clear with nothing grungy at all about them.  It's all very sterile.

Having said that, my shot today is very weak, but it's all I had given the day wasn't all that nice to go out walking.

My lonely shot for the day.

Pat

My friend went snowboarding today so in her honour, I took a shot of Mount Vanier - some random snowbank on the end of someone's driveway.  Actually, the most interesting thing about this picture is that it's actually about 15MB, when the RAW file is 18MB, which is pretty rare, if you edit files at all.

We're entering the last few days now.  We'll see what happens tomorrow.

"The most important attribute a photographer can have is enthusiasm." - 365 Project, Day 351

Just like everything on this planet, you know what you want more than anybody else.  In terms of camera performance, I've known this for a wee while now, and today was a perfect example.  I was trying to get a shot of something and decided to get the Peace Tower.  This was probably the only shot I took that had an interesting sky, as the whole day was very bland.  Nothing about nature was helping my in my photography.

First, here's my shot for today.

I tried taking in-camera HDR shot with my Canon S100.  This is not that shot.  This is a RAW I edited to look fake-ish HDR.  I find it looks better than the HDR, which looked strangely similar to the standard non-edited version of this picture here.  This shot was taken at ISO 80, shutter speed 1/250th of a second at f/8.0.  I boosted the contrast and clarity to max levels, which bought out most of the detail in the final image. I simply had to tweak the shadows and highlights sliders to bring out the most detail possible.  This is the end result.

At night, when highlights and shadows are very obvious, in-camera HDR works fine, but during the day when the range is a bit more subtle, the camera struggles.  Here's the HDR shot the S100 produced.

It's a bit blurry, but that's my own fault, and that's not the point of showing you the shot.  The point is to show how flat it looks compared to my edit of the raw shot.  The HDR in definitely a bit bright, but you can see more detail and definition in the sky and especially in the snow in my edit.  The parliament building is a bit more clear in the HDR shot, but there's as much detail in both shots, if you decide to look closely.  Besides, I like the dramatic look of my own edit over what the the camera did.

Just as a comparison, as well, here's my original shot without any editing.  I took the same RAW file and simply converted it to JPEG without any editing done.

As you can see, there's not much difference between the HDR and normal shots.  The HDR may have a tiny bit more detail in the parliament building but not much.  The sky and snow are basically the same, as well.

I'll have to wait until night to take in-camera HDR shots with this camera.  You can get nice shots with that mode, but the range has to be very big.  More subtle scenes won't get that same look, unless you want a more standard look to it.  Again, most compact cameras are very good and will give great picture quality.  They'll do the best job they can do, but it may not be what you want.

I hope you liked this, and hopefully there will be three pictures tomorrow.

"I don’t want anyone to appreciate the light or the palette of tones. I want my pictures to inform, to provoke discussion – and to raise money." - 365 Project, Day 342

I happen to be posting solo today, but I'll ask you not to expect too much.  I don't really have anything to show other than my shot, and even that's pretty weak.  I'll be back tomorrow with something better.

My shot

This is pretty self-explanatory.  I wasn't particularly bored, but I didn't know what to shoot.  I should have something better tomorrow.

I have ideas for tomorrow so check back to see what they are.

"I don't speak emotionally about my pictures. That's for other people to do. I will say that I love my photographs. That's what keeps me going. That's what keeps me ambitious." - 365 Project, Day 338

It was intensely misty/foggy today and this is the best example I took.  It's quite difficult to take a shot of mist without making everything look white.  Even in post-production, tweaking the photo is pretty tricky.  You don't want to overdo it because it ends up looking fake, or not as misty as you want it to.

I'll explain.  Here is my shot for today.

This is the best shot of mist I've ever taken.  I'd prefer it if that apartment building in the back was a church (not to mention that it would make more sense in the shot) but I'll take what I can get.

Here's a slightly different tweak, a tiny bit darker:

And here's yet a slightly darker one:

My shot for the project is the brightest one and shows the least detail, but that's how misty it was.  Making the shot clearer also messes up the foreground, which is now completely dark and unrealistic.  The tombstones really didn't look at all like that.

My first edit is the least clear and distinctive, but is also the most realistic as to what I actually saw.  Editing through mist is a tough thing to do, and I think I found the right balance.

Onto the last month.  Thanks for sticking with me, and hopefully you'll stick around for longer.