Tripod - A photographer's best friend

Here is the slide I made to illustrate what a tripod can do for you.
This was part of the presentation I did for Sheboygan Visual Artists "Art In The Gardens" workshop.

Beaten by the sun.

On July 23rd, with fellow SVA member photographer Pat Ryan, I taught workshop on outdoor and close-up photography at Bookworm Gardens. A few days before, I was there taking some pictures to use as examples for the workshop.  Here are a few slides I made trying to explain the technique needed to get a picture with the water in motion and the rest of the scene in sharp focus.

So, I challenged the workshop participants to make this shot with a tripod.

I used a tripod too.  I have to admit that I still haven't been able to get the results that I'm looking for.  The sun was out on both days making it very hard to get a long enough exposure at my lens's highest f-stop.  Some of the others had better light when a cloud came by to help out.  Using a polarizing filter, I was able to make a few shots that I put into Photoshop and tried to do an HDR merge.  The shots weren't perfectly aligned and the result is not good. So, I did my own merged shot.  Here they are, HDR automatically first and then my attempt.  I'll give it another try under different lighting conditions and post those results.  These were shot right around noon.

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Today Pat Ryan and I taught two sessions of Art In The Gardens.  We covered some photography basics for outdoor and close-up photography.  It was hot and humid but we had a good turnout and I think our presentation was helpful.  I'll post some pictures soon.

3D Cha-Cha

I came across a technique for making 3D pictures without having a multi-lens camera.  The person on whose site (I think it was Flickr) I found it, called it the 3D cha-cha.  It is done by taking two pictures of the same scene; one picture shot using your left eye to compose the picture, then without moving too much, shoot the same picture looking through the viewfindwer with your right eye.

The 3D effect is achieved by combining the photos on the computer and then viewing cross eyed as is the case with these examples or making a print that can be used with a 3D viewer.  Both photos are copyrighted by Richard Biemann 2011.

Click on the photos to get a larger view then cross your eyes.