Dance Party

      About a week and a half ago, my friend Jake Pereria was generous enough to invite me to get my dance on at his younger brothers 16th birthday party on a cruise boat.  It just so happened to start at 8:00 P.M. (my hyper hour) therefore, it didn't take much to get me partying down on the dance floor.  I looked around me and soon realized I was surrounded by a bunch of sophmores.. which quickly diminished my natural 8:00 O'clock high.  No worries though, I was still having a blast... I just busted out my camera for awhile and snapped some shots of how much fun Levi and his friends had. 

     Ok, so this is probably one of the harder "action" things I shot.  It's not really a full out action activity, but everyone was still jumping around like a bunch of monkeys who accidentally snorted cocaine.  It took me awhile to figure out how I was going to shoot and once I thought I figured out the right shutter speed, flash, or ISO amount, it changed on me and I had too try something new.  Some of these pictures turned out a little better than others.  In my eyes, the photos I shot that night didn't turn out as well if there was no motion blur.  Motion blur was pretty necessary for the photos I wanted to create that night.  Therefore, for most the night, I left the shutter speed anywhere from 1 to 2.5 seconds open to create that motion blur and get some different, unique colors from all the lights bouncing around.  At first I had my ISO low, but quickly realized it was necessary to to have it at 800 or 1600 if I wanted to get a photo I could even see on the dark dance floor.  Like I said, the room was pretty dark so I kept my aperture as low as it could go, so around 4.6, 5.6.

     On the editing side of the pictures, on all of them I kept it pretty standard.  I kept the editing simple and didn't get to fancy in photoshop.  On most of them I just bumped the clarity up. And on some, I moved the contrast up.  I left the original colors the same on most of them, but for couple I made some of the yellow blur motion pop out a little more.. i believe I did that on photo # 1&5.  In these pictures I was trying to create an image that showed people having fun in a different way than just a standard, flash still picture with no life.  I wanted to add life and energy to these pictures and that is what I was trying to go for when shooting these. 

I like this photo because there was a bright light coming from the bathroom on the cruise boat which left a cool orange like burn down the middle of the picture.  The main focus, the girls dancing, aren't too blurry so that is nice also. 

This one of my friend Jake Tawves, is a great example of how you should party at a dance party.   The thing I like about this photo is that the kid at the bottom of the picture is pretty blurry and then his arms above his head are blown out, and pretty over exposed which I kind of like.  The reason I like that is because when I initially look at this photo, my eye gets drawn to the brightness of his arm which is right below Jake (the main focus of the picture).  Right after my eye sees the white, blown out arm, it moves up to Jake (the main focus), who is having a blast!

The same thing goes along with this photo,  my eye first goes to the bright orange motion blur and then it moves up where there is nothing else except blurry heads.  After that, I realize nothing is high up on the photo so my eye quickly moves down to a not perfectly focused Jake but focused (better than anything else in the picture) enough to be the main focus of the picture.  

I like this picture a lot, probably one of my favorite because the first thing my eye goes to is the main focus of the picture.  Danny is the main focus of the picture... he is in the middle of the dance floor and he is pretty much the only person lit up bright, with motion blur.  The people circled around him staring at him also adds to the picture showing the viewers that Danny is the main focus. 

This one is great and different from the rest because there isn't as much motion blur in this picture.  They are both very enthusiastic looking in this picture showing the true image of the energetic dance floor. 

This is Jake and Kate just having a lovely time.  I like this picture because almost everything around Jake and Kate is black except for the minimal motion blur centered around Jake and Kate.  With the surrounding black background it makes Jake and Kate pop out more, putting more of an emphasis on themselves.  

                                                    

I like how the orange motion blur almost creates a backwards half moon around the kids head and then his hand are in focus fairly well.  It circles the attention around the kid and his actions. And his facial expression is pretty priceless. 

I just wanted to desaturated these next photos because I didn't really like how the motion blur colors worked out.  Therefore, I figured I would see what they look like desaturated and in my eyes they turned out pretty cool looking.  If you look closely you can see where the motion blur was and by desaturating the pictures it creates a white foggy look around the picture making it a flawed which I like.  Depending how bright the motion blur was in certain pictures, with desaturating it, It would also blow out that area making way over exposed white which as cool film like affect or whatever you call that to the picture. 

This one I didn't exaggerate as much with the grain look.  I believe I kept the ISO at 400, it was dark out on the cruise so I didn't want to keep my ISO  to low or everything would of turned out black.  The desaturated look brings out the shiny silverware more than the rainbow colored M&Ms. 

I shot this at 1600 ISO, note  the grainy look.   I desaturated it all the way and turned the contrast all the way up.   I  brought the clarity down a little and made this image into an imperfect looking picture which I like.  Its different from the average picture that always looks perfect with the fancy silverware on the table

I got my inspiration from Sadii because she does a lot of motion blur and is very good at it. Check her stuff out, its the hottest stuff on the market. get it why its there

www.sadiiprospect.wordpress.com

Death & Life: Pretty much the same thing

     For some people the end comes sooner than others. When that time is and for what reasons someone's life has to end earlier than others are, I'm not one hundred percent sure of .  You'll have to decide for yourself and come to resolution of why death comes to some people earlier and not to others.
     It was the night of Halloween and to be completely honest I didn't want Halloween to end up simple and plain as usual. I wanted to spice it up, get a little risky, mess some stuff up.  It started out with a pretty standard Halloween night by hopping around from party to party, where there were just a bunch of BROs sitting around and drooling on themselves like and old lady in an assisted living home.  The sight was simple unpleasant, they were holding each other awkwardly and it was straight up disturbing. This house was deep in mysterious woods with no signs of life except for the slightly glowing party house.  Anyways, enough of the standard part of the night. My friends and I quickly realized how stupid that house was and left as fast as flies get on poop.  I was over the woods man.. lets role. We started driving out of the never ending, dark driveway when it happened. . . .
     As we were driving out, suddenly a white, grey, black blur rushed in front of our car making an unbelievable screeching noise.  Holding our heads, our ears in pain from the sound, we quickly slammed on the breaks and we were all thinking the same thing "What the **** was that."  Curiosity got the best of us and before you know it we were all exploring in that God forsaken forest.  The one mistake we all made, as a result of the shock of what suddenly just happened, we got separated from each other and all of us were individually walking around the woods like a chicken with its head cut off.  I became delirious and disoriented quickly, my head started to spin and before you know it I was puking my guts out from fear.  The noises kept getting louder and like a lost mouse running into a trap I stumbled into this old, run down barn.  The noise kept getting louder, louder, louder! Luckily I had my camera so I busted it out because I didn't want to miss what was about to happen.  Whatever this creature was I knew it moved fast, therefore, I left my shutter speed open for about 2.5 seconds at a time.  It was dark out with not much light so I wanted my ISO to be as sensitive as it could be to whatever light there was so I put it at 1600. Then I cranked my aperture as low as it could possible go.  I waited and all of a sudden Bam!.. it dashed in front of me knocking me over and that was the last thing I remembered.
     What my friends told me later is that I was just laying there passed out and they came in grabbed me and rushed me out of there quicker than you could say Billy Frick.  The only evidence I have left of that night is the picture below.  It's horrifying to say the least, ghost like scarecrow with a child begging for mercy from the demon possessed monster.  Other children were trapped as you can see in the background, no where to go, no one to look to for help. And in the bottom right corner of the picture there is the ghosts daughter ready as ever to go scare and feast on any human flesh in her path. That is the evidence I have of that unbelievable night, whether you choose to believe me or not.. is completely your choice. With all that said have a great night and sleep tight.

Now to describe what I had to do on the computer to reveal this disturbing picture.  I didn't have to do much. I bumped the clarity up. Turned the saturation down for this picture was much to gory for color. Thats pretty much it. I have other pictures I could of added to this post, but I realized this one picture was worthy enough to have its own blog.  I got my inspiration from a well known photography and artist Corey Smith. One of his sites of many is below: 

www.highpoweredstreetdrugs.com

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Trees are life

     Every once in awhile people take trees for granted. Let me tell you why that is a mistake, how stupid you are, and why your a loser. You are a bunch of selfish, non caring, satan lovers, dirt haters, earth haters, and tree haters.  Go jump out of an airplane with a parachute, take it off, free float and then try and get back to it before you plummet to your death. Your not going to make it back to your chute because your a tree hater.  And at the rate you are going, the trees won't be there to catch you because you hate air and trees. Since you hate trees, the air hates you and will have no mercy on you, therefore, you will surely die.

    

      Since we are clear on how important trees are, lets talk a little about what I did to these pictures. Ok, the first five photos I made more like a film look. This time I didn't shoot the first five in 1600 ISO. I shot with my ISO at 200. The better photos I had my shutter speed at 1/20 or 1/25. Whenever I slowed down the shutter speed a little more to brighten it up, they didn't turn out as well.  For example, the second one on second set of photos didn't turn out as good and I shot that at a slower shutter speed.  It was pretty dark so my aperture stayed pretty low the whole time.  It was just really dark out so when I bumped up the exposure quite a bit, in editing, it gave it that burned, noisy, film look.  Some of them looked a little better desaturated so I sent it black and white on a couple. I turned down the contrast a little on some of them also.

       

       

           

        

        

     These next six photos, I pretty much just left them about the same unless I desaturated them.  All these photos were shot of the same sunset, I just changed them quite a bit with the exposure, saturation, and clarity.

        

                                          

                                                          

www.sadiiprospect.wordpress.com