DCXM on Demand

I am a gamer chick, I work hard for the things I have and I love to play videogames. By day I am a photographer but by night... I play COD, Borderlands, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Gears of War, and Halo. This blog may display some photography but it will primary be about my gaming experiences.

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Friendships

How do you keep them? Friendships? I define a friend as someone who is willing to do the same thing you would do for them unconditionally, without paying them back, without making things “even” and you live in consistant harmony of eachother’s kindness, loyalty and love.

You know, I am really enjoying school this quarter regardless of the trials of snow, school closures and lack of equipment. I…

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  I went shooting to find a waterfall in Winter time. Needless to say, I didn’t find it. Instead, I found a small town with, “small town charm” and clearly they didn’t care what people thought of them for it. I parked my car along side the street – it took a few tries considering I didn’t properly parallel park. I cheated with the, pull-in nose first then try and straighten out. It worked out okay, I got the car in and we all had plenty of room (thank goodness for small little sedans). I turned off the car, loaded my Yashica-Mat EM with film and while doing so, I explained to my friend what I was doing. “See when the arrows line up, then the back is ready to close and we can wind the film to the start.” Putting the camera strap over my head, I grabbed my Pentax K20D as a safety net. The Yashica-Mat EM, does have a built in light meter however, I was a little rusty with the use of it – I needed the Pentax just to double check.

I walked around the car, tossed the spare set of keys to my friend (just in case I lose my keys or lock them in the car, we have a spare on us) and I see this amazing scene. I am here in this town to find something, anything to shoot for my homework assignments. I have to use my film camera to take 120mm images, take digital photos for a photo series, and in addition to that – I must be inspired by a photographer from before the 1940s and emulate their work. (These are just the things that are due this next week!) I have taken only a few shots so far today and I had been driving for over two hours and here before me was this serendipitous find. An image that I knew I had to take. The Sun was high in the sky – about noon – the crisp, cool winter mountain air and these stairs… My goodness, these stairs. I fired off a few shots with my Pentax, my friend turned around to look at what I was shooting. I had no idea what this building was or why it has a staircase rising up, what seemed to be the back of the building, and a bucket – an old wooden bucket – sitting there perfectly placed. This was the most beautiful thing I had seen all day and that is saying something considering I just came down from the mountain tops covered with snow. My friend asked me why I took a photo of this, what assignment would I use this for. I told him, this one is for me, (“The Simplest Thing”) this one is because I wanted to take it, it is a beautiful scene. He smiled and agreed at the beauty. We then continued our walk down Main Street and took in the “small town charm”.

    The Simplest Things I went shooting to find a waterfall in Winter time. Needless to say, I didn't find it.

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I Hate Snow

I seriously do, I HATE SNOW! You know it is one thing to live here in Denver, Colorado, in the city and have snow and then have the Rocky Mountains and them have snow. Incase you were wondering, Denver is not a mountain town, it is on the brink of the prairie just miles from the start of Tornado Alley. But let us get back to the subject at hand here – I HATE SNOW! The weather at the beginning of…

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Goodness... I just want to write

Goodness… I just want to write

Goodness… I just want to write,

I, being a girl, have many thoughts. Most of them are emotion but sometimes, sometimes they are actually insightful and intellectual – this is not one of those times. I am scared. I want to be something in the grand scheme of things however, I’m not anything, not yet. I’m not a professional photographer (even though I pretend to be), I’m not in any kind of…

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Quarter 3; Weeks 2, 3 & 4

Quarter 3; Weeks 2, 3 & 4

Well, these past few weeks of quarter 3, have been mostly lectures, nothing terribly exciting – getting used to equipment, learning how it works and why things are done certain ways, the technical ways of things. Photo History is mostly four hours of my teacher talking. We occasionally have discussions but because there is so much material, it is usually Finketalking. There are only about nine of…

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Third Quarter Week 1

Third Quarter Week 1

This week is the first week for the third quarter at Art Institute in Denver. My classes are Photo History 1, Dark Room Lab Techniques and Digital Printing Lab. I am excited for the classes this quarter, I have changed my diploma from Associates to a Bachelor’s degree in Photography. I should have taken Photo History 1 in the first quarter but oh well. As the quarters have progressed, I have…

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Principles of Photography Week 11

Principles of Photography Week 11

This is the final week of class. We have been given two weeks to work on our final projects – subject: SIN. Yeah, I chose urban. We started with a list of topics and it was narrowed down to, SIN. Personally as A Believer, I’m not a fan of the topic but this was for school so I did what I was told and I came up with a concept for SIN.

There had to be four to six images in the final collection for…

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I hope you guys enjoyed the street photography, I had a ton of fun working with it and going out making the images –you know minus the whole first day at the bus depot. The photos received a really nice response from my teacher, however, the class did not get to see them. We ran out of time for looking at them during critique oh well. I got an A on the assignment anyway!

We skipped week eight and went into week nine because this was a self portrait photo week. We had to crate a self portrait of our physical being and then we had to create one without us in it – the essence of ourselves.

I had no idea what I wanted to do for myself. I kind of had an idea of what I wanted for my essence photo, something to do with cutting out letters from a magazine to do a ransom for myself, for my potential or something like that.

What really happened with my self portrait. Sigh. I wrote three words that I felt that described me — Scared, Strong, Small. I then asked my friend Vic to come up with three words that he felt that described me – Loud, Bubbly, Happy. It was a strange thing to hear. He had this external view of what he felt was the best way to describe me and I had this scared frail trio of words that I felt described me. It was inside vs. outside. How I felt vs. how I was portrayed. I learned a lot about me, I show off happiness but I don’t always feel it, I’m scared sometimes, a lot of times. I feel like I lack a presence but somehow I am viewed as Loud. I feel strong in my beliefs and mind set but sometimes I appear silly and Bubbly and maybe not taken as serious as I would like to be sometimes but still Happy and Loud at the same time.

With that being said. I created a self portrait image to reflect me with both sets of words. I came up with the idea, hours before class. I set up my studio equipment in my old bedroom with the amazing green walls. The flash could not be used so the lights were simply used as lamps to light up my face and the wall behind me. I wanted simple and little distraction. No makeup, hair wet and down from recently taking a shower, I didn’t want anything cosmetic or fake, I just wanted me. Then I wanted to depict the Loud, Bubbly, Happy side of me. When I first got my lights, I started playing with them. I wanted to do action shots of me moving my hair around, moving my face and taking a slightly longer exposure while moving. And then it hit me! I could do a photo with one side of the image as my raw face, no emotion no happiness, makeup, hair fixed, nothing and then split it down the center and have the fun movement side on the other. I took a ton of shots. I used my wireless IR remote to help me take the shots. The camera was set to auto focus and I sat inches away from the lens and shot for about an hour.

When I got to school, I still had time to edit the images. My teacher said it was fine to put two photos together to make one image, so I did. I wont bore you with the details but below are my two images. The ransom letter like one wasn’t my favorite but I think it got the point across. But the self portrait. Yeah. My teacher said I knocked it out of the park.

  Principles Of Photography Week 9 I hope you guys enjoyed the street photography, I had a ton of fun working with it and going out making the images --you know minus the whole first day at the bus depot.

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This week we watched mostly videos of photographers who do different types of photography. Some of them repeats some of them were new but most of them were street shooters. This weeks homework, take 100 photos and submit two of the best photos you’ve created.

I chose to miss the Taste of Colorado event this Labor Day weekend for two reasons. One, I didn’t want to get the same photos of drunk people that my classmates would get and two, I like money – I worked. My main thing however, I wanted to get something different, something special. I wanted to take pictures of people getting on and off the buses downtown. Let’s take a moment for a story. Please, get your refreshments, use the restroom… I ‘ll be here waiting until you are ready to hear/read my story.

Ready? I decided I wanted to go to Union Station to take photos of people at 4pm-6pm coming out of the underground bus station. I wanted to try my hand at long exposures and not have the street photo be so much about the people, but more of the essence of the people, the people would not be in focus, only their surroundings would be but still see the “ghosts” of the individuals and what they were doing. Kind of like this photo just below.

Alexey Titarenko

To be fair, I already know that that I can’t take photos on private property. I must be on public property to help avoid confrontation with, security guards and police officers (something I have far to much experience with as it is – stories for another time). Knowing this, I figured doing photos at the RTD station would be fine since it is public transportation, tax-payer dollars, and all that.

Well, I get there, I pay my dollar for the meter parking and grab my tripod and camera and walk around – at this point I haven’t been to this place since they remolded it so I wanted to look around at the new stuff. I walk downstairs and I have not taken a single picture, I have my camera and a tripod, nothing else with me other than my phone and identification.

I am walking downstairs and I feel like I am at the airport with all the digital signs and florescent lights and televisions with bus schedules listed. A ticket counter and seating next to doors with large white numbers above them. I poke my head out one of the doors and the bus whirls by, a sign saying, “Please Wait Inside Until the Bus Stops”. I close the door and continue looking around. The area seems to be pretty long and I walk past the ticket counters and decide, I don’t want to be down here, the light kind of sucks, I’d rather be outside. I turn around and head back to the escalators and I notice a security guard walking towards me. I smile and say, “Hello!” and he smiles and says hello back. At this point I was half expecting him to stop me and ask me what I was doing but instead he kept walking. I think I scared him with my nice up beat, “Hello!” and eye contact. I still had yet to lift my camera to my face and shoot anything – nothing would turn out down here without using a tripod and it just wasn’t what I was looking for.

I went back up the escalators and outside, I decide to take photos of the light rail, people waiting for the train, waiting for it to take them to an unknown destination. I walk up to the handicap platform, pass two workers who were in uniform and set up my tripod. It was getting dark outside and I wanted to capture the movement of the people getting on the light rail with a long exposure. HOWEVER! This guy walks up to me and says, ” You cannot take pictures here, it is private property, you need a permit to photograph here.” Confused? I was too, this is a public transportation depot owned by the taxpayers of the city and neighboring communities.

The two guys I had passed to get to where I was, were shocked and stunned that I had set up directly behind them without their knowing. I asked the guard, “Isn’t RTD owned and paid for by the tax payers?” He said no, it was a private company.

“That is why it is called, ‘Public Transportation’, right? Who do I need to talk to in order to get this permit?” I questioned.

“It is a company, a large one down off (insert street names), it is big like Xcel Energy.” He tells me.

“That is all good an well but what is the name of the company? Is it RTD?” I asked. The guy didn’t know he just started saying, “It is just a big privately owned company” again. I got irritated and decided to leave, I was mad I had wasted a whole dollar for parking just to get kicked out of a public area.

A few nights later, my friend Vic and I went back downtown, this time not to the main hub for RTD’s light rail but to a large station that is more popularly used off of Colfax. We went there and there were plenty of people at dusk. The night was just right, people stopping at the bus stop and people stopping at the light rail. It was perfect! Not a single person seemed to mind that I was taking pictures with my camera on a tripod.

Vic and I saw some interesting things, as most people do when they are in a densely populated area with public transportation–people dressed nicely, teenagers, people on skate boards, drunkards, people arguing, people being board and others just simply waiting for their bus. It was a great night and I got the photos I wanted. I wanted to capture the essence of people coming and going not so much the people but more of what they were doing.

The following photos are probably some of my favorites to date that I have created for school. Mine definitely were not like everyone else in the class, they were different, and well enjoyed. The first two are the ones I submitted for a grade, the rest were other favorites of mine.

      Principles of Photography Week 7 This week we watched mostly videos of photographers who do different types of photography. Some of them repeats some of them were new but most of them were street shooters.

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I know what you are thinking, what happened to week 5?! Week 5, it was a week off so we could study for our mid-term – no photo for that week. However, the photos for the Alphabet Assignment, I got 107%. YAY! For week 6 we had to take photos in a new way. Pick a starting point and walk 100 steps or ten blocks and take 100 photos and make the most amazing photos ever. We could only pick one photo for this assignment as our best. Me being the over achiever that I am, did the assignment twice. I went to the park with my niece and my grandma and low and behold, there were a ton of Mini Coopers there. Perfect! I found a spot and hoped it was 100 steps and found myself after counting several times, to the spot I wanted, haha. The pictures were alright, a little fuzzy on the ones I wanted to use most but that was my fault for not looking through the view finder. Rookie mistake. The second set of photos, I walked over to a picnic table and just sat there watching. The river was next to the picnic area so I watched people jump into the water and play and have fun. I grabbed my 200mm lens and went to town. My niece then come see me at the picnic area and I photographed her while she played with leaves and ate her peanut-butter and jelly sandwich.

After looking at the photos in class, I definitely fail at taking photos of cars, haha. I mean they weren’t terrible but they weren’t fantastic either. My strongest photos were the candid shots of my niece and of the people playing at the river. I initially submitted the car photo first – I had not even looked at the photos of the people or my niece yet – and realized that I should have looked at both sets first before I submitted my photo. I told Mr. Finke, in a note in my folder that I had done the assignment twice and realized I need to stick to watching people rather than taking photos of cars. When we got back to class the following week, Mr. Finke decided to show my photo first, I didn’t know which set of photos, if not both, he had chosen. He went with my people photos and my second set of photos. The class looked through my contact sheet, nothing too exciting I guess. My classmates shouted out their favorites and we looked at the images larger and no one picked the one I had chosen. They did pick the runner up however. Mr. Finke then showed the class my pick, the huge full wall projection of my picture. As soon as it was loaded there were instant, “Whoa!” “Wow!” “Beautiful!” remarks amongst the class. One guy even got out of his seat to get a better look at the image. I was grinning with excitement. I had definitely picked the right image. Final grade 97%

          And this one is the one that I chose for the assignment

  Principles of Photography Week 6 I know what you are thinking, what happened to week 5?! Week 5, it was a week off so we could study for our mid-term - no photo for that week.

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The results from last weeks assignment with the Hi-Key and Low-Key, etc. was not as good as the others. I got a 48/60 because I didn’t have the correct ISO. I totally forgot to change it back to 200 after taking my friend’s baby photos… WHOOPS! I also lost points for my Low-Key. I didn’t do it down a full stop. I don’t know what I was thinking but I guess that is what I get for being rushed. I finished the project the day before class because I complicated the project so much. Oh well, lesson learned. My teacher said I get one assignment I can do again, it will probably be this one.

This next assignment was photographing the alphabet in the world; upper and lower case gets you extra credit. I did all the upper and lower case letters. I had excess photos but I didn’t find the letters until I saw them in light room on a few of them. We were supposed to only select our five favorites. I’ll get the contact sheet in here too so you can see all 52 images. I went all over for this assignment, I went to the botanic gardens in Denver, I went to a coffee shop, the park, downtown, and used even my backyard. I used everything! After a let down on the last project I knew I needed to get the extra credit. The point of this assignment was to show we understood depth of field and how to isolate information in our image while making it pleasing to the eye. I hope you enjoy!

  Principles of Photography Week 4 The results from last weeks assignment with the Hi-Key and Low-Key, etc. was not as good as the others.

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Okay, this is a small entry just because I don’t want to include my Color Theory info anymore. There is just too much going on with school and work and at this point I feel it is more distracting to include it than to not. The focus is photography and going to school, if I feel it is relevant at this point I’ll include it but for now, the subject is omitted.

Week three was technical, continuing along the lines of bracketing as well Hi-Key and Low-Key. What are Hi-Key and Low-Key? Hi-Key is when the information within the photo is predominantly light, when the histogram’s info is more to the right. To have a correct exposure, one has to take an over exposed photo. The rule to this is expose it one to two stops over. Low-Key it is the opposite. Low-Key is where the information within the photograph is predominately dark in value. To expose this correctly, under expose the photo one to two stops.

The next thing we learned was panning. Panning – moving the camera while shooting with a slower shutter to make the object moving stay in focus while the background blurs. It’s pretty fun to pan but it is a hard skill to learn.

Back-lighting - this is where the information within the image has a brighter background than the subject in the foreground. To fix this, much like the Hi-Key remedy, over expose the image by one to two stops to correct for a dark subject.

People in motion was the next item. Having blur, then a little less blur, then freeze someone in place. This is accomplished with the shutter and a tripod. Shooting with a slower shutter shows motion, as the shutter speed gets fast the more of the object is frozen in place.

Water in motion - We had to do the same thing with people as we did with water. Slower shutter speeds makes the water look smooth and as the shutter gets faster, it freezes the splashes and ripples for their true value.

The submissions I used are at the bottom of the post. For some reason I found this week’s assignment more difficult. I think it was because I was over thinking my subjects. When I just found “something” light in value and dark in value, it was easier. I had a tendency to try and create a scene and it just wasn’t working for me. When I just walked around and found these items, it was a lot more simple, I was definitely making it harder for no reason. Lesson learned, simple is sometimes way better.

The results for the bracketing assignment my teacher gave me one word for feedback: “PERFECT!” 100% A on that one. Awesome!

Sorry if this post seems a little rushed, I have a lot of work to do in a limited time frame this weekend so I hope this message finds you all well! Comments and questions are always welcomed!

Principles of Photography Week 3 Okay, this is a small entry just because I don't want to include my Color Theory info anymore.

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Inbetween Learning I Often Wonder

My teachers, they show me wonderful things by different artists. I think to myself, “How the heck did they come up with that idea?” the second thought is, “Why can’t I think up something creative enough like that?” “Will I ever have something unique and distinctly my own?” For now, I see small bits of me trying to come out, they have not fully made themselves visible to me yet. I do know I show…

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Sometimes all you need is an iPhone.

Sometimes all you need is an iPhone. Sometimes all you need is an iPhone.

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School is going well, I’m still all giddy, today is week two of Principles of Photography and we are still going over the shutter speeds, aperture and ISO. Can I just tell you, I have the darnedest time remembering how to spell, “aperture” I always add an A or put the E in the wrong space. ANYWAY!

In class we talked about bracketing, depth of field, and histograms. I don’t know about you but I’ve not used these things in a while. I guess, I’ve had a huge hiatus from my photography. It has been about a year prior to a month a go. I know what these things are but I needed someone to remind me and point them back out and why these tools are valuable to me.

Bracketing, I learned this to make HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos. I don’t typically use it but I understand why it is used. People want to get a deeper range of colors in their photos, something a D-SLR cannot achieve like film can. Colors are richer and have more range of a single color from “Shades” to “Tints”. (See what I did there, used Color Theory to benefit my understanding in photography… Huh? Huh? No? Okay then…) There is also another reason for bracketing. To find the right exposure. What is bracketing exactly? Bracketing is taking a photo under exposed to a degree a single time or multiple times and then over exposing the same scene once or more, to get the perfect exposure. Since camera sensors use a gray scale set to middle gray or 18% gray, we have to compensate sometimes with the exposure to get the correct exposure despite what the light meter is telling us.

Depth of field – this one I learned from my friend Dehk. I remember we were on the computer sending instant messages back over MSN Messenger (at the time) and he was teaching me, telling me what depth of field was. I don’t particularly remember the exact words he used but I remember sitting at the computer with him giving me examples of it. I was always getting the F-32 mixed up for F-8. Maybe we were talking about portraits. I think that had to have been it. When working with depth of field, there are several factors to it. First thing first, the distance away from the object. Next, it is the lens. And finally the aperture. These three things make some amazing photos and having a shallow depth of field can create quite an impact with photos vs. ones that are all in focus. But then again, it really all depends on what the information the photographer is trying to portray. When we are an F-Stop or Aperture of 2.0, this is a shallow depth of field. The chances of everything being in focus is slim to none. Depending on what lens you are using, you will definitely need a tripod. A lot of photos in National Geographic that are photos of bugs or flowers typically are portrayed with a shallow depth of field where the aperture is set higher (F 2.0) but the focal point is narrow. Now histograms. What is a Histogram? Histograms are little graphs that can be viewed on the back of a D-SLR camera or in a computer program like, Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One, etc. The vertical axis is the amount of color data in a photo and it’s intensity, and the horizontal axis is the range of color between black (left) to white (right).  I have taken some screen shots of Lightroom to show the Histograms for the photos below. The following photos I had to keep the histogram the same, for the most part using the same exposure with a combination of different F-stops and shutter speeds while staying at ISO 200. You will be able to see the changes I made on the original image and in the Lightroom histograms. Histograms stayed the same mostly, there was a little fluctuation because of the people walking by and the color information they added to the histogram. When you get to the first row second image, you see a gentleman walking with a white shirt. The histogram changes from the first image to add a higher peak on the very right side to show there is more white in the image. When looking at the third image in the row, the peaks in the blues and blacks have higher peaks because of the lady with the blue and black outfit on.

To understand more on histograms, I will direct you to the website my instructor gave us: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml

That is what we learned in class for this week. I did learn how I did on my Scavenger Hunt assignment. The grade was 92/100 points and the comments were as follows-

Evaluation re: student’s demonstrated mastery of all visual aspects of the project including: Quantity and Quality of Visual Experimentation; Complexity and Sophistication of chosen Subject Mater and Approach to it; Image Composition, Structure and Visual Movement throughout the Frame; Conceptual Quality, Demonstrated Visual Literacy & Use of Technical Attributes for Photographic Language.

Visual Accomplishments: I respond strongest to the hands and shelter images but I feel the shelter image is by far the strongest of the two. The hands images uses space, DOF, and color to your advantage. Positioning the information in the upper third makes the image visually pleasing to the eye. However, it doesn’t really compare to the shelter image in my opinion. While in the strictest sense of the word it is a shelter, it doesn’t feel like a shelter or maybe it’s a shelter for some monster or madman, who else would live in a place like that? there is a creepiness about this image that even someone who was scared and probably wouldn’t run to a place like this.

Not really sure why I missed four points on the last bit- Visual Accomplishments- the other four points were removed because one photo had an ISO of 100 instead of 200. Whoops! Anyway, the week was amazing, I hope you guys enjoyed this long entry, thanks for sticking with me! I leave you with the two photos my classmates liked the best when we did critiques.

As always; please leave your thoughts or questions in the comments! Thanks for reading!

This week in Principles of Photography and Digital Lab Techniques, Bracketing, DOF, & Histograms! Scav. Hunt Results! School is going well, I’m still all giddy, today is week two of Principles of Photography and we are still going over the shutter speeds, aperture and ISO.

[dehk1]

Tahquamenon Falls, Michigan

Read the full blog post here with more photos.

[dehk1]

Tahquamenon Falls, Michigan

Read the full blog post here with more photos.