Party!

Yesterday we celebrated my Nephew's 1st birthday. I have a couple of shots to share with you. These were all taken either with on camera pop-up flash or hand held without flash at very slow shutter speeds.

I know Dave Hobby at the Strobist would be appalled at the lack of off camera lighting, but there were about 10 of us in a dark restaurant so I did what I could do.

I don't have any off camera equipment yet, but I do have a strobist 2 light kit I ordered from Midwest Photo Exchange that is supposed to arrive today - so hopefully in the future I can do better.

With Daddy.
With flash, 1/60 Second at f5.6, 400 ISO.

Hey that's my cake! With flash, F4.5, 1/60, ISO 400

With mom and dad!
ISO 400, 1/30 second at f3.5

Sites I Like: Ryan Brenizer

Blogger Ryan Brenizer has a nice photo blog going on Amazon. A couple of posts in particular caught my eye. They involve using photo stitching software to create pictures like that below - shallow depth of field with wide angle coverage. To my eye this picture below reminds me of tilt shift photography.

He also has some shots of people using the same technique.

Look at his entry Stitch yourself a thinner depth-of-field .




From his post "This is the Poulnabrone Dolmen in Ireland. It's a tomb, and large enough for men to fit comfortable inside. Normally to get a thin depth-of-field around something so large, you'd have to stand way back and use a super-telephoto lens, which wouldn't give you the perspective of the surrounding countryside. Is there a way, I asked myself, to use a telephoto lens on a large object and not have to stand far away? You bet there is: panorama stitching."

Ryan also has a video showing the process posted here under the title of Video: How to shoot a panorama quickly and easily Warning - the audio on his video post is horrendous, but you can see how he does this technique.