Heba & Hazem's wedding

September 12th 2010 was my friend Heba's wedding. She trusted my photography talents enough and hired me as her wedding photographer, bless her soul! :) It was my very first wedding shooting alone and now, I have the confidence to take on small weddings on my own. Regardless of my success, I would still like to work with another professional photographer before becoming a wedding photographer expert. There is so much to learn and so little opportunities! :S

Here are some of my favorite shots. Enjoy.









Cheers,
Rina

Growing Cherry Trees!

Growing cherry trees is not has easy as it would seem. We have 3 cherry trees in our garden and making sure it is healthy has been our priority since the beginning of April.

The biggest predators of growing cherry trees in your garden are birds!!! Growing cherry trees will guarantee a huge bird population flocking to your garden. But if you want to eat the cherries you will have to guard your tree against the birds. I kid you not when I say that they can strip your tree in less than half an hour. That's what happened to 1 of our 3 trees.

We started protecting the trees by hanging bird repellents in the trees but it was no success! My dad passed 1 day in the garden chasing 'em birds away. He got annoyed and decided to buy a bb gun! Lol! Nah, just kidding. I just commented on facebook and one of my friends suggested hanging aluminum plates which by the way, worked like a charm! When I googled ways of getting rid of bird attacks on cherry trees, some people also suggested to hang CDs. They reflection would guaranty to scare birds. And once again, it did work. Netting also works but if birds get caught, it's could get ugly so careful!

Well, the cherries have been cook by mother nature and we've been eating them like birds since Monday! Hehehe. Today, I decided to take a few shots.

WB: Daylight Source of light: Daylight and built-in-flash.
Lens: EF-S18-55 mm f3.5/-5.6 IS

Cheers,
Rina ;)


Focal length: 20 mm
f/ 4.0 1/25 - Exposure mode: manual
WB: Daylight.

Focal length: 33 mm
f/ 7.1 1/60 - Exposure mode: manual
WB: Daylight.

Focal length: 33 mm
f/ 5.6 1/80 - Exposure mode: manual
WB: Daylight.

Tips for Candlelight photography.

Hi everyone! Today, I decided to shot with candles just to differ from using flash or tungsten. :) I also decided to share a few tips with you all.

Tip # 1: Turn off your flash.
If you want to get the warm glow of candles, you must switch your flash completely off.

Tip #2: Use a tripod

Shooting by candlelight means you’ll be shooting with little light which means you’ll almost certainly be shooting with slower shutter speeds. What is shutter speed you may ask? It is a term used to discuss exposure time, the effective length of time a camera's shutter is open for light to reach the image sensor. (Wiki definition.) The slower the shutter speed, the more blur on your image if you are not using a tripod or if you have shaky hands like me.

Tip #3: Use a fast lens.
If you’re shooting with a DSLR and have multiple lenses, choose the ‘fastest’. I love using my 50mm lenses (f/1.8). I rented it recently and now, I shall buy it! :D

Tip #4: White balance.
I set mine to tungsten but if you shoot in Raw, you have the possibility of changing the color balance manually to your taste post-production.

Tip #5: Other light sources

Sometimes using only candles won’t give you enough light. I used a flash light to light my perfume. It is not fully light and that was intentional. You can try using a lamp or another small source of light to increase your exposure. And to keep a warm lighting glow, you can try covering the light source with a red or orange material or even better, a gel.

Tip #5: ISO settings.
Be careful! You might considering shooting with an ISO setting of lower than 400. Otherwise, you will have noise in your image. I shot with ISO of 100.

What is ISO? In Digital Photography ISO measures the sensitivity of the image sensor. The same principles apply as in film photography – the lower the number the less sensitive your camera is to light and the finer the grain. Higher ISO settings are generally used in darker situations to get faster shutter speeds (for example an indoor sports event when you want to freeze the action in lower light) – however the cost is noisier shots. (http://digital-photography-school.com/iso-settings)

That's all the tricks I have. If you Google candlelight photography, you might find more useful tios, I AM sure. :)))

Don't feel shy to add more candles in your shot to get more lighting. Just make sure that your composition looks alright. If too much clutter, just cut them out of the shot. If it is really really dark, use an external flash only under the condition to add a gel corrector. You can make beautiful portraits with candlelight photography. Just make sure that the person doesn't move too much or have a background light. And if you don't have a DSLR, just go have fun with your snap

Enjoy the images and if you have any questions, feel free to comment.

Cheers,
Rina

Incense

It's quite amazing watching the smokes coming out of an incense. :D
I got inspired and took a few shots. Hope you like it.





Cheers,
Rina

Photoshop Filters!

After two days of rain, I finally stepped out in my garden to see my crops' growth progress. And like the French Quebecois say: Pas pire pan toute!

I decided to take some pictures and play with the different available filters in Photoshop and with B&W custom adjustment.

WB is daylight.
No use of the built-in-flash.
Lens used was: EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM - Telephoto Zoom Lens.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment.
Cheers,

Rina


Starting the second image: Sumi-e filter - Stamp filter - Black&White.

Ocean Ripple filter on second image.


Starting the second image: B&W - Sepia - Plastic smudge filter.

Starting the second image: B&W.

Blondie!

My little sis finally went to dye her white hair!!! :D
She has had white hair since she was 13. Well, now she's a blondie. Suits her good I think.

I was thinking about going blond myself but my first experience went sour and I told myself: never again! Perhaps, in the future I'll revisit the idea at another hair salon but for now, I will wait. My brother says that burgundy hair suits me well. I think I agree with him but until I have a full time job, I won't touch my hair. Dying hair is creating oneself needs. :P But then, shopping for your 15th pair of shoes is also creating unnecessary needs. He. He.

Cheers until next time,
Rina

Main light: 1 External Flash attached to camera.
Fill light: available light from the window.
Background is darkened with Photoshop CS4.

1/125 at 5.6 shutter speed.


Same lighting.
1/125 at 5.6 shutter speed.

Celine Dion perfum.

While cleaning my external hard drives, I found this old picture in my Applied Studio class folder. This was our final exam in our 3rd semester.

Only one source of light was used in this image. 1 flash head connected to a power pack. Look closely, you might see my lighting setup in the red Christmas ball. Anyhow, I entitled it as my picture #12 of 30 because I just edited it. :D

Hope you like it.


Cheers,
Rina

Trianon???

What the heck you might say. What are these red pills?

I had no idea until today: Trianon makes you go poopy! Lol.
They aren't mine if that's what you are wondering. I thought they make cool pictures because they are red and their texture is like jello. Ha! :)

I was looking for my acid reflux medicine when I subtled upon many expired medications so I decided to clean. More than half the crap went in the can because they were expired in 2008.

Our cough medicine was no longer liquid! Yak! So anyhow, enjoy the pics.

Cheers,
Rina




My acid reflux medicine. (Prevacid)

Alaf Harami: Pisenlits!

They're everywhere!!! Les crisses de pisenlits! Dandelions, that is!
My dad likes to call them alaf harami in persian which translates to bastard herbs. Lol!

Today, I've decided to help him in the garden. I kid you not when I say that 75% of the garden's surface is covered with these bastard herbs! Hehehe. After 45 minutes of retrieving dandelions, I had an hypoglycemia and my dad, the worrywart that he is, told me to go inside and lay down. After 4 hours, my dad was forced to stop his activities because it started to rain outside. While getting my sugar boost, I was inspired to take some pictures.

It's harder than it looks. You need to have some upper body strength. We bought the actual tool to remove these flowers but it's no good. It shreds your soil and ruins the grass. My dad and I both agreed that his method is way better. Plus, since we are removing these flowers from the root, we are guaranteed that they won't grow back.

Enjoy the pictures!





My dad's hands hard at work.




Gotcha! From the root!


Our garbage pile.

Cheers until next time,
Rina

Geranimo!

The sun is backkkkkkk! :D Which allowed me to take some nice pictures of my growing Geraniums which I like to call Geranimo! Lol.

Some pictures were taking inside while some were taking outside on my patio. Note that the images were taken at different time of the day.

The ones with the dark shadow? That's at 6 pm.
The ones with the blue background? 11 am - 12 pm.

Lighting was all natural at shutter sync speed. Aperture was 6.1 with ISO of 100.
WB was set to Flash. Details and definition have been enhanced with sharpen mask in Photoshop. No color enrichment with saturation this time. Those colors are naturel as we French people would say.











Cheers until next time,

Rina