07-27-2014, 12:27 AM
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If I may ask, B-hole, what geographical area are you from? I was extremely into photography (and still consider myself a huge fan), but being from Illinois there simply isn't a ton of places to go that are nearby if you want to get into landscape photography. I bought a Nikon D5100 a couple of years ago, took it everywhere for the first year I had it, then it's been sort of packed away in a closet ever since. Midwestern life doesn't really offer a lot of different scenery and it feels like you've sort of hit a creative dead end after a short time.
Cool that from first impression you're a gear head! I'm not so much into track racing as much as I am into 60's and 70's era muscle/classic cars. I'd rather put money into an original Mopar than a modern luxury sports car. I did cave, however, and bought my 2010 Challenger SRT8 when there were no 1970-1972 Challengers in my area after a year or more of looking (I did come close to buying an original 1970 GTO [my 2nd favorite car] but couldn't pull the trigger). Which track do you race at? A good friend of mine raced his Mustang at the track near Fort Atkinson, WI I believe it was (NASCAR does a road race there each season). It's on my bucket list.
The other thing you and I share is a complete dislike of Three. Kudos!
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I'm from Indiana. Of course it's always great to travel to places where the landscape is beautiful. HERE'S a shot I got in Santorini, Greece. Here's THIS one from the square in Brussels, Belgium and HERE'S one from atop the London Eye. But, my god, you could point the camera anywhere in these locations and get a good shot.. So what to do when not traveling? Indiana (and Illinois) aren't exactly landscape heaven. However, there are more photo opportunities than you might imagine. That D5100 you have has a lot of ability. In full manual mode, you can control shutter speed, aperture and ISO. This means you can do night shots, long exposures, very short exposures and macro stuff as well. I'll give you a few examples of stuff that I took in my own back yard. I put up a hummingbird feeder (suction cupped to a window) and then I sat inside the window one day and took about 300 shots and i got THIS one. (That's with a D300 and a 18-200mm DX lens with shutter speed at 1/250th of a second). HERE'S one of an owl that lives in the woods behind my house. HERE's the same owl in the summer time. i took both of these photos through the window of my kitchen nook without ever leaving the house. Speaking of the nook, HERE is a picture of it using a technique called HDR (high dynamic range). You take several shots with slightly different exposures and them combine them into one image with great exposure everywhere in the image.(Notice that the room is nicely exposed at the same time that the light from the windows is streaming in. My wife plants perennials in our front yard and I notice that tons of bugs are attracted to them. HERE is a macro shot of a bee on a cone flower. (This one used the new D800 and a 200mm f/4 Micro lens with a ring flash.) So now, those were all taken without ever leaving my house. HERE'S a shot i took at the fourth of July fireworks display here in Indianapolis. We were invited to our friend's 8th story apartment downtown to wath the fireworks (which are shot off the top of the Regent's building), so I took my camera and a tripod and experimented with 8 second shutter speeds. It was a blast, and I got a few nice ones. Another fun (but very challenging) thing to try to photograph is bands. HERE and HERE are a couple of shots I took at the Bob Schneider show at the Rathskeller here in Indy on Wednesday night of this week. Rock shows are hard, there's low light and lots of motion so you need high shutter speeds to stop the action and avoid blur so you'd like to leave the aperture open wide to let more light in, but then your depth of field goes so low that it's hard to have the whole thing in focus. But still great fun and enjoyable. Lastly, HERE is a shot I took on my 37 minute commute to work. (My office is west of Indianapolis out in the country. This shot is not one of my favorites ever but I show it to make a point. I have my camera with me all the time. I constantly take pictures. For every good shot I get, I take 100 bad ones. That is one of the main pieces of advice I'd give you; take shitloads of photos. A few other random thoughts: Go on Youtube and type, "photography tutorial" and start surfing the massive quantity of free education that is there. The videos will inspire you to try all kinds of different things. Another thought: Absolutely go get yourself a copy of Lightroom and Photoshop and start learning these two pieces of software. Much of what comes directly off your camera REQUIRES post shooting editing. In this day and age, you NEVER see a professionally taken photograph that hasn't had post work done. You have to do it. Lastly, print some of your best shots out on BIG paper and frame it. Costco will print a 16x20 inch great print for 9 bucks. Do it. Having your best work on display in yhour house is inspiring and makes you want to take even better shots. Sorry this went on so long, I got carried away. Anyway, good luck.