Kat Eye Studio

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Share Your View: Capture the Sky

Aaaaah, another sky image from the Amalfi Coast. Would you believe, this was taken from a bus? Yep, a public bus careening around the corners of the winding coast road. It was all in the preparation and timing, along with a little bit of cropping.

Have you noticed the sky more this week? That always happens to me, when before or after I post an Exploring with a Camera. Capture the Sky is no exception. I hope you will come over to the blog, link in and visit some of the other images that have been posted. The link tool will close March 9 so you still have time, and recent or archive shots are welcome.

What’s your view? The sky’s the limit!

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Share Your View: Breaking the Rule of Thirds

What have you discovered in the last week since the Exploring with a Camera: Breaking the Rule of Thirds post? Do you follow or break the rule of thirds most often? Link in below and let’s take a look! I saved this image from Via dell’Amore for today because it was a perfect illustration of the rule of thirds along with the love-lock tradition I talked about in yesterday’s post.

When you link in your examples of following and breaking the rule of thirds in the link below, and you have two chances to win. I’m giving away the “C is for Camera” notebook below and Tammy Lee Bradley of Bliss and Folly has joined in to giveaway a Vintage Camera trio – head over to her blog here to see how to enter for her fabulous giveaway. Thanks so much Tammy for sharing the love with us!

So, without further ado, please share your view! Link in below or click the thumbnails to see the other great examples shared so far. Thanks so much for participating! You can find the code for the Exploring with a Camera button here, if you want to share the love on your blog too.

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Share Your View: Fog

Yesterday I took my camera and spent time noticing the details of Parco di Monza as fog hid the greater world. I saw new things, like the moss and roots of this tree, because I was looking closer. I almost felt done with the fog this year, but I reviewed my images from yesterday’s photowalk and I’ve fallen in love with fog all over again.

Have you seen fog this last week? Did you find a favorite fog photo in your archives? It’s not too late to share your view! Even though I opened the linky in last week’s Exploring with a Camera post on Fog, you can still link up for another week. Come by the blog to see who’s already joined in. Visit some of these sites, there are some wonderful and creative fog photos included already.

Don’t forget there’s a giveaway of postcards too – I’ll draw a winner from those who link up. One lucky person will win a set of my Black and White postcards this week! I can’t wait to find out who it will be.

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Exploring with a Camera: Fog

Winter brings fog, one of the most wonderful weather patterns for photography. I know I’ve said it before here on the blog, but I love fog!  Because you can only see what is right in front of you, there is a delicious sense of mystery, of things slowly revealed.

Fog forms when there is high humidity along with a temperature that is very close to the dew point, it is essentially a low lying clound. You can read more about the science of fog here. It will form readily near bodies of water, like lakes and rivers, and in cooler temperatures. That’s why you often find fog early in the morning, dissipating as the weather warms up.

I’ve had the good luck to live two places now where fog is common: Oregon and northern Italy. It forms frequently here at my house in Italy, since we are right near the large Parco di Monza through which the Lambro River runs. A large, natural open space is a great source of fog – temperatures are always cooler in the park and the moisture is abundant from the landscape.

How can you use fog as an element in your photography? Here are a few ideas…

Fog provides a great backdrop, to capture a single element. A distracting background can be completely hidden in the fog. I use this feature to capture silhouettes, like the lead-in image of the post and this image below. The detail is highlighted by the blank backdrop. I also converted both of these to black and white, to heighten the contrast. One thing to be careful of with fog is underexposure, because the light white background will dominate your camera’s meter readings. Play around with overexposing your images just a little bit to compensate.

As you move closer to a object, fog slowly reveals. Vary your distance to a subject to create a different effect and feel in your images. The two images below are of the same tree on the same day, but taken at different distances. The first one,  farther away from the camera, creates that sense of mystery I was talking about earlier.

For both of these images, I again converted to black and white to heighten the contrast. Fog desaturates colors and your images can look almost black and white straight out of the camera, but converting to black and white can keep the focus on the shapes and tones rather than what little color remains.
You can use fog to get a sense of depth in your photo. While photographers often manipulate the depth of field through aperture, you can also create depth using the atmosphere. Fog creates depth by successively lightening the objects in the background as you move away from the foreground. You can see this effect in the image of the trees below.
Light fog can give a subtle effect, as in the next example. Along with placement, focus and color, the sense of the largest tree as the focal point is enhanced by the fading trees behind.
Heavy fog can make depth obvious, even at short distances. This image of a tree shows the effect of a heavy fog, the back of the tree already fading significantly compared to the front.
All of these examples so far are from farther away, what happens when you get up close? You can see condensation on the surfaces. Get in close to see what I call “beads of fog” on the smaller objects around you.
I’ve talked about what is revealed as you move through the fog, but also consider what is revealed as the fog is lifting. This image, taken looking up through the fog, shows the blue sky peeking through as the fog is burned away by the sun.

In this image, you can see how interesting it can be to capture the sun through the fog. This was an unusual day, because the fog seemed to be disappearing from the bottom up rather than the top down.

Finally, don’t forget about capturing the world in fog at night. You know I love night! Fog seems to amplify the artificial lights of night, creating a warm glow that is unlike any other night effect. I did no color or exposure correction on these, I liked them as they came out of the camera.

I know many of us are anxiously awaiting summer for the warmth and light of the sun. Instead of focusing on what you don’t have right now, take a moment to celebrate fog, one of the delightful gifts of winter.

Today I am going to try something different! As a welcome to the participants in the Scavenger Hunt from Ashley Sisk’s Ramblings and Photos, I’m going to open the linky today and keep it open for two weeks. (If you are in a blog reader, come over to the blog to see the link tool.) I’ll still post the linky next Thursday for Share Your View as usual, if you want some time to capture the fog or look through your archive.

In addition, I’m going to give away a set of my Black and White postcards by random drawing to one person who links in a fog photo. I haven’t given away a set of these yet on my blog, and since this set includes the foggy tree image it is the perfect time to give these away.

Thanks for sticking with me! Good luck with your fog photos, I look forward to seeing what you capture. You can find the code to copy and paste the Exploring with a Camera button on your blog here.

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Share Your View: Linear Perspective

So, after last week’s Exploring with a Camera: Linear Perspective post, have you been seeing diminishing lines everywhere?  I have! As I was going through photos of our recent trip, this one from the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid caught my attention. Art museums are so wonderful for their lines and wide open spaces. Many museums do not allow photography, but I love it when they do. I have to laugh at the memory of taking this picture. As I was shooting it, a guy walked by and gave me the weirdest look. I could practically read his thoughts, “You are surrounded by all of this famous art and you are taking pictures of a hallway?” What he must not have realized, is that I’m creating my own art.

As I was editing this image, I found it interesting from a compositional perspective because it was not symmetric even though it initially appeared that way to me. There is a top to bottom symmetry in where the vanishing point is placed, but that is it. The walls in the foreground, the windows on the right wall, and even the track lighting on the ceiling create a little more visual interest than if it were perfect symmetry.

But enough about that, it’s time to Share Your View! Did you take any new shots using linear perspective this week? Did you find any in your archive you could share? There are so many different ways to use linear perspective, I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ve captured.

Link in below!

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Share Your View: Holiday Lights

What fun, holiday lights! This is the holiday streetcar in Milan, where for the price of a transit ticket you can take a ride and get your picture taken with Santa. What a fun holiday tradition, and such festive lights!

Now it’s time to Share Your View. Link in your recent or archive image of holiday lights below to share and then visit the other links to see what others have found. Share what you’ve learned in the process, and any tips or tricks you figured out – either in the comments here or on your blog, we would all love to learn from you too.

Link will stay open for 30 days, so feel free to come back any time you have a great capture of holiday lights. I can’t wait to see your view – thanks for participating!