Fun With a Fisheye | Part 2

If you missed my other two posts about shooting with a Fisheye Lens, they can be found here and here.

Day 3...

I didn't have a lot of time to shoot this day, so I headed out to our backyard to try to get a few fun photos of Zoe & Lexi. It turned out to be a lot harder than I had imagined!

One of the nice things about the lens was that it did make it easier to get a photo of the two of them together. They didn't have to be sitting very close to each other for the lens to make it look like they were pretty close...

I took this one to give a better perspective of just how far away the lens makes things look. My arm is obviously not that long!...

The dogs didn't really like having the camera so close to them.  If Lexi had turned her head just an inch or two her nose would have hit the camera lens (which happened more than once!), and it kind of freaked her out a little...

Loved this one!  I thought it was fun how curved it made the dogs legs and bodies look...

Day 4...

All of these photos were taken in and around downtown Phoenix.

I meant to try to take more photos like this one, looking up at the tall buildings but I actually forgot until I was on my way back home!...

Kevin went with me for my morning of shooting, and let me take a few crazy photos of him.  This one was my fav...

I'm a sucker for palm trees!  I love this one, but wish it was a true circle image...

These next two were taken from the top of a parking garage.  Between the two photos I shifted the position of the camera a little bit and you can really see how much more the buildings curve the higher in the frame they are...

This one is my all time favorite photo that I took during the week!  It looks like something out of a movie with the ominous clouds looking like they are circling over the city...

These next few photos were taken through the windows of one of the taller buildings downtown, so please excuse the reflections in the photos!  I didn't have a filter for the lens since it wasn't mine.

I was really having fun using the larger buildings as curving frames for some of the smaller buildings out in the distance...

I really liked how much of the landscape you could see in this next one...

Love this one!  Fun, right?...

So, which one do you like best?

By the third and fourth day, I started to feel like I was figuring the lens out a bit and was able to branch out a little bit and try a few more fun things.  I'll be back again soon with Part 3, so check back to see what else I captured during my week with the Fisheye!

Michele Whitacre is a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding area. Visit Michele's website at michelewhitacrephotography.com. Become a fan of Michele's work on Facebook. Follow Michele's updates on Twitter.

Fun With a Fisheye | Part 1

If you missed my original post about shooting with a Fisheye Lens, you can find it here.

The first evening that I used the Fisheye Lens, I just walked around my neighborhood taking photos of random things that I came across.  I was mostly trying to get a feel for the lens and see how it worked.

Day 1...

This photo was taken with me laying with my feet next to the trunk of the tree (I deliberately left them in the photo for a little perspective, and you can see them in the bottom right corner ).  The tree was near the top of a small hill, so I am laying a bit upside down with my head lower than my feet.  If you look at the top left of the photo, you can see the cars that are on the road behind me...

Here is the same photo, but I have inverted it, to give a different view. In this one the street and cars are easier to see...

The instant I saw that photo, and realized just how much of the scene around me the Fisheye Lens could capture, I was in love! I felt like a kid in a candy store - eyes wide open, staring at all the possibilities in front of me!

This next photo was probably more fun to shoot than it is too view. What I really should have done was tried recording a video through the lens to see how it looked. Watching the cars zoom up and down the curves felt like I was watching a kid playing with toy cars on a race track...

Day 2...

All of the following photos were taken just a few miles from our neighborhood.  I have no idea what the buildings used to be, but I'm a sucker for old, falling apart, graffiti covered dwellings!

This next photo really shows how much the lens curves things, as the two railroad tracks are parallel to each other in reality...

I hadn't quite learned my lesson about getting close enough with this next image.  I was close enough to that wood pile on the right side that I could easily touch it, and it still looks a million miles away!  I was checking out how the horizon curved through the lens when I moved it away from the horizontal...

I had read that Fisheye Lens often have a lot of chromatic aberration, and you can really see it in this photo...

One of the practical uses I can see for a Fisheye Lens it to be able to photograph inside of doorways and capture the whole room inside.  I never could have gotten the following two shots without it.  This photo is taken looking through the door way that is visible in the photo above...

This is another view into the small building taken looking through the doorway that is visible on the left side of the above image...

I then moved on to another nearby building.  Those grey metal beams in the foreground of the photo aren't curved in reality!...

This photo is taken looking straight at the wall that is on the left side on the above photo.  I love how it curves everything and makes it look like it is bulging out straight at you!...

For this final image of the day, I zoomed in a little bit to use the lens more as a wide angle and minimize the barrel effect.  On my camera body, this would be a nice feature of the lens but on a full frame camera this photo would have still been quite distorted (and all of the above photos would have been true circle images instead of just the edges having the black rim like they do)....

So, which one is your favorite?  My two favs are the first and the last ones.

I really enjoyed my first two days of shooting with the lens, and felt like I really learned a lot about what I was able to do with it!  But, there are lots more photos coming up, so stay tuned for more fun Fisheye pictures in Part 2!

Michele Whitacre is a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding area. Visit Michele's website at michelewhitacrephotography.com. Become a fan of Michele's work on Facebook. Follow Michele's updates on Twitter.

BBL 2011-2012 | Rent a Fisheye Lens

#11 RENT A FISHEYE LENS AND EXPERIMENT WITH IT

Why did I include this on my Bucket List?

I included this because I thought it would be great to experiment with a new and different realm of photography. Every time I have seen a photo taken with a Fisheye Lens, I've always thought to myself that the images look like so much fun to create. I really wanted to test my limits and see what I could do with one.

Was the experience what I had hoped it would be?

Using a Fisheye Len was everything I was hoping it would be and so much more! It was such a great learning experience and really got me thinking outside of my comfort zone. Shooting with this lens was so different from shooting with the lenses that I am used to using, and I had to look at everything in a different way. It brought an excitement to shooting that I haven't felt since the first time I picked up my camera. Did I end up with any show stopping images? Nope. Did I have A TON of fun playing around with this lens for the past week? You bet I did!

The details...

I'm going to spare you the lesson on Fisheye Lens, but I will say that if you ever consider renting or purchasing one, make sure you do your research and know exactly what you are getting! I was surprised by how much there was to learn while I was trying to decide which lens to rent.

I settled on the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye. I don't shoot with a full frame camera body, so most of the other options weren't going to provide that typical fisheye distortion look. That's all well and good if you're wanting just a wide angle lens, but I wanted to have myself a little fun seeing just how much I could distort reality! And distort I did!

It took me a while to get the hang of using the lens. Everything I read about shooting with a Fisheye said that you have to get close to your subject, and that everything would look farther away than in real life. They weren't kidding! One of the photos I tried taking was of a flag off in the distance framed by trees on both sides of it. It truly would have been a gorgeous shot with a zoom lens. I took it with the Fisheye, got home and put in on the computer, and I would have needed a magnifying glass to even see the flag!

After the first couple of times using the lens, I finally started to figure out what it could and couldn't do, and that's when the fun began! My goal for my week was to spend as much time with the lens as possible, and see how many different things I could come up with to photograph, while applying the fun barrel effect that Fisheyes are known for.

I will be sharing a series of posts with my Fisheye photos over the next week or so, but for now I'm going to leave you with this:

It's a series of photos I took of myself while hand holding the camera. It was kinda fun to see the different ways I could distort my face! This was my second time shooting with the camera, so I hadn't quite learned yet how close I needed to get for maximum distortion. If you've never seen photos taken with a Fisheye lens before, take a close look at each of the images and see how things are distorted. Check out how the headboard on the bed, and the whole room in general are curved. Check out how long my arms look, and how small and far away my body looks. Check out how HUGE my forehead and nose look in some of the photos, and how about those glasses?? I purposely wore them, instead of my contacts, because I thought it would add even more fun to the photos.

I hope you'll come back later this week to see more photos from my Fisheye Lens Experiment!

P.S. What do you think? Should this count as my September Self-Portrait? :)

Do you want to see my entire 2011-2012 Bucket List? You can find it here.

Michele Whitacre is a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding area. Visit Michele's website at michelewhitacrephotography.com. Become a fan of Michele's work on Facebook. Follow Michele's updates on Twitter.

Birthday Bucket List | 2011-2012 Edition

To quote the great Ferris Bueller (what can I say? I'm an 80s kid), "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Life does move pretty fast these days, and it seems to be moving faster with each passing year!  In an attempt to slow down and make time to have a little fun, I've started keeping what I call my Birthday Bucket List.  Basically, it is a list of new things I want to do before my next birthday.

When I first started doing this, the number of things that I wanted to do in the coming year was the same as the age I would be turning on my next birthday, but as the years started adding up I found that I just couldn't keep up.  So, instead I've narrowed the list down to 12 things, with the goal of attempting to mark one off my list each month.  (But don't hold me to that!)

So, here is my 2011-2012 Birthday Bucket List:

1. Plant a palm tree... CHECKED + BLOGGED!

2. Make pasta from scratch... CHECKED + BLOGGED!

3. Find a new music artist/band that I love... CHECKED + BLOGGED!

4. Take a vow of silence for 24 hours... CHECKED + BLOGGED!

5. Fast for 24 hours... CHECKED + BLOGGED!

6. Cruise around the Hawaiian Islands... CHECKED + BLOGGED!

7. Try to surf... CHECKED + BLOGGED!

8. Try a new sport or form of exercise... CHECKED + BLOGGED!

9. Take a photo a day for a 30 days... CHECKED + BLOGGED!

10. Take a photoshop class... CHECKED + BLOGGED!

11. Rent a Fisheye lens and experiment with it... CHECKED + BLOGGED!

12. Rent a Macro lens and experiment with it... CHECKED + BLOGGED!

As I complete the items, I will mark them off the list and write a blog post about the experience.  I'm really looking forward to the coming year, and getting to learn, see, and do some exciting new things!

Michele Whitacre is a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding area. Visit Michele's website at michelewhitacrephotography.com. Become a fan of Michele's work on Facebook. Follow Michele's updates on Twitter.

Self-Portrait | August 2011

Is August seriously almost over? As I was typing in the date above, it took everything I had not to type in July. Where oh where has this summer gone?

As I mentioned, I'm going to be making some changes to the blog in the coming weeks, and one of those changes is to include a monthly self-portrait.

Why a self-portrait?

Lots of reasons!

For one, I thought it was high time I stepped out from behind the camera and showed my face on the blog. As I was doing some recent edits, I realized just how few photos there are of me and I thought it was about time to change that.

For two, I wanted to do a better job of documenting my own life in photos. It's about time that I start practicing what I preach!

For three, I'm really not a big fan of using a tripod. I tend to find it frustrating and I usually avoid it when at all possible - even resorting to hand holding the camera for slow shutter speeds that really would do much better on a tripod. The best way to overcoming something is to do it, right? And it's pretty much impossible to take a self-portrait without a tripod.

For four, I wanted the challenge, and the life lesson.  I think that taking a self-portrait is much more difficult than taking a portrait of someone else. We are always so much more critical of ourselves than of others, and taking your own photo is a double whammy. Not only can I criticize myself in the photo, but my photography is also up for critique.  In recent weeks, I've started on a path toward greater acceptance of who I am.  I'm concentrating on trying to realize that I am enough, instead of always zeroing in on my perceived short comings.  I'll probably share more on that eventually, but for now... my desire for greater self-acceptance is also fueling my desire to take my own portrait every month.

August's self-portrait was taken with me sitting in the chair in the living room of our rental house in Phoenix. I seem to have adopted this as "my place" in the house, and I almost always sit there any time I am in the living room. I opted to photograph myself sitting in this chair, with my computer on my lap, because when I look back over the month of August it is nothing but a blur of day after day spent working on my computer as I updated my website and blog.

As I was brainstorming for this month's self-portrait, I had an idea of how I was going to take this photograph. On a whim, I decided to reposition the camera and I ended up liking the composition of the image much better than in my original idea. I have a feeling that taking my portrait every month is going to be a wonderful learning experience. Trying to imagine what a shot is going to look like with a person in it is very different from actually seeing it with the person already there!

Michele Whitacre is a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding area. Visit Michele's website at michelewhitacrephotography.com. Become a fan of Michele's work on Facebook. Follow Michele's updates on Twitter.