Jer & Min Photography

As I’ve gone through my photographs of this weekend, I found my favorite which is of Brinci catching snow on her tongue.  What I really like about this photo is how seriously she is trying to catch snow flakes and that if you look closely, she has caught one on her tongue that hasn’t yet melted.   Click on the image to pull it up in flickr where there is a note showing her catching one.  From flickr, you can click on the “ALL SIZES” button above the image for larger image with more detail.

The Canon EF 50mm f/18 II lens is amazing.  It is a very fast prime lens that is capable of creating great photographs.  I’ve been shooting with nothing but this lens all weekend to get used to it and familiar with its strengths and weaknesses (as of this writing, the weakness column is pretty short).

Here are a couple of the strengths I’ve found so far:

1. f/1.8 – This is a great low-light lens.
2. Bokeh* – Part of having a huge aperture is the benefit of having a very shallow depth of focus.  When wide open, the bokeh is absolutely beautiful.
3. Sharpness* – I am very impressed with the sharpness of images created by this lens
4. Price – It is less than $100.  Enough said.

To demonstrate the Bokeh, Sharpness, and shallow depth of focus achievable by the f/1.8, I’ve included the following photograph.

For this photograph, I focused on Min’s eyelashes.  As you see the bokeh shown on Min’s lower portion of her face is very creamy and quite beautiful (it helps to have a beautiful subject).  To view the shallow depth of field and the sharpness of this image, I’ve cropped a subsection of this photograph below.

You’ll notice, the only portion of this shot that is in focus is part of the eye.  Bokeh begins around the far edge of her eyelashes.  Additionally, notice how sharp and defined the actual individual hairs are.  To see a larger image, click on the photo.

I’m really enjoying this lens, I’ll put each shot I take with it in a set on flickr as a mini-project.

* Things such as Bokeh and Sharpness I have no way of offically quantifying other than my impressions and opinions of them.

Toby in the snow!

So I’m currently in my 50mm weekend and I’m loving it.  It is taking a bit of getting used to as this is the first time I’ve shot with a fixed focal length for any period of time.  I wish I could go out and about a bit more with this lens this weekend, but it is really snowing hard which means time for portraits.

I’ve been evaluating Lightroom 2.0 (I’m definitely going to buy it) and I decided to do partial saturation today.  Here are the results:

I’ve contemplated what would be the first photograph I publish on our sight for sometime now.  I’ve posted photographs on my family website on many occasions with very little apprehension.  I believe I feel a bit nervous here because this is the first time I’m really announcing that I’m actually trying to make photographs instead of just taking snap shots.

This photograph was made during a recent family reunion in Star Valley WY.  We were up at a favorite get away for our family, Cottonwood Lake East of Smoot WY.  While there, I saw my daughter and my father by one another and asked them to pose.  I wish I had a better camera, more specifically, a better lens.  I took this rather close with a wide angle lens which of course exaggerated facial features in a very unflattering manner.  I did however, enjoy the subject and the contrast as I converted this to black and white.

EXIF: Sony DSC-W50, 1/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 80