This is a picture I took of the Gila Valley LDS Temple on a recent trip to Arizona.  It’s my first display of architectural photography and I immediately see some of the challenges.

For one, the wide angle I used on the lens makes it so that the lines aren’t going upward in a perfectly straight line.  That makes sense considering our eyes see much the same thing, but internally I think we have a tendency to “straighten” out the lines when we look at it.

It was a good time for a photo with the sun literally right behind the steeple.  It gives it that otherwordly glow that a temple should have.

The jpg compression really did a number on this one.  It looks much better in its RAW format.

I finally made time to venture outdoors to see what I could do with my camera.  I saw some squirrels and birds that I would have loved to photograph, but I don’t yet have a telephoto lens so that will have to wait for another day.

In retrospect I think I could have made this photo look even better with my 35mm lens at f/1.8.  That would have focused more tightly on the flower.  As it stands, I used the 18-55mm kits lens at 55mm.

I wasn’t able to get the camera to focus well enough when I was super close so I actually cropped this down from a larger image where the flower took up less of the frame.  It’s the first image where I feel like the jpg compression took something from the photo.

I think some post processing could have also helped with the overexposure on the right.  But maybe that’s part of its allure?

After reading all of the reviews about the 35mm f/1.8 lens I had to buy one.  This is my first picture on the blog from it. It can be set to a much wider aperture than the kit lens which allows me to get some better blurring.  As you can see, I was able to focus very specifically on Forge’s paw.

I used the SB400 flash to bounce of the ceiling and did a small amount of post processing to the RAW file using Nikon’s software.  This isn’t quite the same as ‘photoshopping’ it.

The RAW files store all of the information the camera captured at the time of the photo so the values I tweaked were things I *could* have done with my camera… if I knew what I was doing.

Havok’s never been to Texas, but I’m sure he’d love it.

I took this photo with the 18-55mm kit lens and the SB400 flash bouncing off of the ceiling.  I like this photo because the color composition really jumped out at me.  With the red bag, purple blanket, and orange cat it just made for an eclectic mix of color.

It’s also the first photo I’m putting on the blog that doesn’t rely on depth of field.  The entire frame is [mostly] in focus and I think that’s a skill I need to master as well — especially indoors where wider apertures are necessary for light.

This photo isn’t really that great.  I chose to put it on the blog anyway, though, since the whole point is to document my learning experience.

This book is special to me because it was given to me as I graduated high school by a very dear teacher who was one of the most influential teachers I’ve ever had.  I loved reading Le Morte D’Arthur in her class.

She wrote inside the front cover, “To Josh Barnett (a curious mixture of computer tech and medievalism), When computer programming makes you feel something is missing in your life, open these pages.”

I like this photo for its focus on the title while blurring the rest of the cover, but the background is a little too saturated.  I don’t know how to fix that while taking the picture, but perhaps there is a way in post processing that I need to learn.