Happy Halloween

So in the spirit of the SPOOKY season.. I figured I would post my favorite scary movie list! Seriously, I LOVE this time of year.. horror fest, ghouls, goblins, black lights, costumes, cemeteries, ghosts and other spooky things... can we say LOVE IT?

So today at work, I watched the movie, The Strangers...much better then I thought it was going to be. I know I will be locking the doors at home for a few days. Topped with the dream I had the other night that someone was in our house... So let me start with some oldies but goodies, yes the originals.

1: Psycho
2. Swamp Thing
3. Amityville Horror
4. The Fly
5. Friday the 13th
6. Creepshow
7. Scream
8. The Thing
9. The Exorcist
10. Nightmare on Elm Street
11. Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2
12. Texas Chain Saw Massacre
13. Halloween
14. The Shining
15. Open Water
16. Arachnophobia - I still can not watch this whole movie!
17. The Innocents
18. Salem's Lot
19. The Changeling
20. Poltergeist

I know there are just 20 here and there are a ton more.. I love Stephen King, The Ruins is a good scary movie, The Strangers... I really did not get into the Saw series.. thought they were really just gore and well.. the plot was king of lacking..just my opinion...

So what are your favorite scary flicks?

Lightening

I have never gotten lightening, I always do try when there is a storm.. but have never really succeeded.. anyway I was looking around on Northeastfoto.com this morning, and stumbled across this thread about lightening.. there is some technical how to's in here as well..

Lightening

How I got this look...

So I was asked to how I got to this look...
First off this is Apache... everyone meet Apache :) I took this yesterday afternoon while we were grazing together. So anyway, I took this originally in color. I did the rest in CS3. Here are the steps:
1. Resize to 800w
2. Rotate photo
3. Clean up photo with the clone stamp (hey I was at the beach.. she needed to be cleaned - yes I had some spots)
4. Image>Adjustments>Auto Levels
5. Image>Adjustments>Contrast/Brightness - I just played with these until I thought it was good.
6. Used the blur tool around the edges...size 200
7. Used the burn tool around the very outside
8. Outlined the edges with a black line
9. Filled the corners in with the burn tool
10. Layer>Flatten Image
11. Image>Mode>Grayscale
12. Apple Key + A to select the whole image
13. Apple Key + C to copy
14. Apple Key + N to make a new image
15. Then I go to the color palette and choose a beige color, then use the paint bucket tool to put the color into the new blank image.
16. Apple Key + A to select the beige color image
17. Apple Key + C to copy it to the grayscale image
18. Layers palette and play with the controls to see what looks the best. With this I made sure I changed the Opacity and Fill
19. Layer>Flatten Image once you got it where you want it
20. Apple Key + M to adjust the curves
21. Image>Adjustment>Contrast/Brightness - adjust till it looks good
22. Save

So I went from this:

To this:

If you have any questions... please feel free to ask!

Lighting

Now I have not really played around with lighting (other then the natural light when I shoot outdoors and the occasional family photo inside) So I thought I would look around this morning for some tips and tricks.

To get this effect: Spiderman
"There are probably several ways to duplicate it, but one light with barn doors on each side of the subject set about one stop more output that a high main light. This gives the blown highlights on the sides of the face. Placing the main light high in a small soft box gives the under the chin shadow. A background light completes the effect, possiblt gelled and shining on a dark background." by Ronk at this forum And the plastic effect is done in photoshop.

Studio Lighting has a great tutorial on lighting, and its in video format!

DYIPhotography as well has some great tips and tricks, and even how to make your own lighting.

I think this is one of the hardest things for me to grasp, and why you ask.. probably because I normally do not shoot in a studio. Guess I have to start... I would love to learn the art of lighting and being able to do studio work. I mean I do understand outdoors lighting and such.. don't get me wrong.

Understanding Photography Lighting is a great article to read.

Synthetic Lighting

Travel Channel/Inca Stones and more

So last night I was hooked on the Travel Channel. They aired shows on the Nasca Lines, the Inca Stones and even ufo's. Now I have always wanted to go to Peru, now I really want to go to Peru!

The Nasca Lines (Peru), some people believe that they were built as a map to show where the water was in the desert. Here are a few links to take a peek at:

http://www.go2peru.com/gal_nazca01.htm

http://www.crystalinks.com/nazca.html

Inca Stones (Peru). These are amazing, they tell the history of what happened, perhaps in the world. How the dinosaurs disappeared, where Atlantis is, that there was another whole continent! Some stones even tell of how to do medical procedures. AMAMZING.

http://www.crystalinks.com/nazca.html

http://www.labyrinthina.com/ica.htm

http://paranormal.about.com/cs/ancientanomalies/a/aa041904.htm

I am not going to even attempt to go on the ufo's show... but I want to say this, and it is my opinion only. Also, I have no proof. But it would be crazy for us to believe that we are the only civilization out there... if not in this universe but in any others.

So that's my pre-morning/coffee blog for this Saturday! Have a great Saturday!

xoKris

Shooting at Night

While surfing this afternoon I found this site by Troy Pavia. He steps out what exactly he does when he shoots at night... I love it.. and its easy to read...even better! His web site Lost America at Night is amazing!

So I figured I would put a schedule for the moon here as well... I think I might try this, although there are not many places around here that do not have man made light... will have to look.. do you have any ideas?

Moon Schedule

Here is another site with some easy points of reference and tutorials about shooting at night. HERE

This next site goes into the custom settings and how to turn on or off the noise reduction, which in turn you have no more hot spots at night YAY! But I will post it here just in case:

"

option 4 - Long Exposure Noise Reduction

As explained in the camera manual, there is risk of noise being introduced if shutter speeds lower than 1/2 sec is used. This setting can eliminate that.

default : OFF,
my preference : OFF.

With this setting ON, the D100 will automatically reduce the noise levels during long exposures, when there is more risk of noise on the image. The noise reduction processing only kicks in with exposures of 1/2 sec or slower.

With Long Exposure Noise Reduction set to ON, the camera will appear to reduce the buffer space, but this doesn’t actually have that much effect if you’re shooting in JPG format, but reducing the buffer space from 4 NEF files to 3 NEF files is a significant reduction. I mostly shoot in NEF format, therefore I keep this setting to OFF for most of my photography, unless specifically needed.

The buffer space counter in the camera says that the buffer is reduced from 4 to 2 NEF files, and from 6 to 3 Lrg JPG files .. so it would seem as if the camera wouldn’t be able to keep up with a fast shooting pace. But in real terms, if the shutter speed is faster than 1/2 second, then most of the buffer space is available since there is no noise reduction processing taking place. The buffer space is then close to what the camera would have had available compared to if the Long Exposure Noise Reduction was set to OFF. (eg, 3 NEFs can be recorded despite the camera saying there is only enough buffer space for 2 files … compared to there being buffer space for 4 NEFs when this custom setting is OFF.)

With faster shutter speeds and shooting in JPG format, having this setting ON or OFF will have very little effect, and may be kept ON for all practical purposes .. unless you need that extra bit of NEF buffer space."

Hot Spots and Night Photography

On the Northeast Foto forum, TomNanos posted this about Hot Spots....Its somewhere to begin in researching this. So thank you Tom!

"
Bayer filter. Depending on which pixel is hot, and how hot it is, that will determine the color of it. Here's a better explination of the Bayer mosaic, which basically is a grid of red, green & blue pixels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter

Where it falls in the mosaic will determine the filter color, and thus the color on the picture.

Long exposure noise reduction will get rid of them in-camera, and Lightroom will usually also automatically map them out (if you shoot RAW), although I haven't tested this in v2.0 and with my 40D (I know 1.x did it with RAWs from my 20D).

-Tom"

Here is the direct link: http://www.northeastfoto.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12348