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Recently I took my wife for the little photo shoot in the park.  I used my 55-200 Nikon lens combined with my two sb900 and sb800 flashes.  If you look carefully around you will always find something to shoot or something that can be used as a nice background.  My processing was as usual but this time I decided to use some creative coloring, to show the nice contrast and beautiful colors of my wife’s cloths.  Below some of my favorite photos.

B.

When it comes to photographing Autumn you don’t have to go too far away.  Just leave the house and look outside.  So many leaves, so many different colors.  It is simply gorgeous.  Below the area around my house and the beauty of  Autumn.

B.

This year I had an opportunity to run part of the Chicago marathon with my friend to support him.  I joined him at mile 16 and completed the rest.  To my surprise I was kicked out just before the finish line.  I guest I did not pay, so I was not allowed to get into to the finish line “Beer Area”.  Nevertheless the sadness I experience,  I run around extra 1.5M to get to the finish line to congratulate my friend.  Unfortunately,  I could not find him, but while I was running to meet him, I discovered nice area that was wort taking some pictures.  So, I called my wife and told her about my plan where we would take some photos.  Nothing special,  but another experience and lessons learned.  Below, few of my favorites shoots.

B.

This time i was able to get hands with the Nikon 10.5mm Fish Eye lens.  I visited the Planetarium area and took some shoots.  I loved the lens.  It covers so much area.  The rest is up to your creativity.  Once you get an idea with nice vision you can shoot and enjoy the space covered by the lens.  The lens is on my “to have” list.  Below my favorite funny shoot of myself.  Lets call it “Joy”.

B.

So I bought Tamron 28.0-75.0 mm f/2.8 hoping to serve it as a Nikon 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8 equivalent.  There is a huge price difference between the two, so I decided to give it a try and I pulled the trigger on the Tamron lens.  I took some photos in the morning to capture the beauty of Chicago Lake Front and the areas surrounding it.  It turns out that the lens is not that bad, but I was not convinced to keep it.  I made my choice based on the fact that I could get same or maybe even better quality photos by the use of my 3 Nikon lenses I own.  (18-55MM, 50MM and 50-200MM)  With Tamron I had access to nice 28-75mm range which I could only accomplish by switching two of my above lenses, but I did not feel like it was such a big deal.  I just was not getting superior image quality (in my opinion), so I decided to return the lens and stick to what I have so far.  Below are few shoots from the Tamron lens.

B.

Few days ago my friend and I set for the experiment to go to Chicago downtown at night to shoot some night shoots.  The plan was simple.  While we were driving one of us picks a spot with some possibility of a nice shoot and the driving person drops off the shooter and leaves him for 15 minutes at the spot.  Later we switch and the game continues until we don’t want to do it anymore.  With my cheap lenses on my d90, I set my camera between 8-10sec exposure and aperture of between F16-20 and I put it on the tripod and started to shoot with the remote.  Why 8-10sec?  I noticed that this was the best and long enough time to expose nicely and create some nice light lines.  I shoot many frames, but did not like too many of them.  Below are 5 of my favorite shoots.

I though that photographing the Chicago skyline from the Planetarium side would be an interesting assignment.  I set my camera to iso 200, f10 and 8seconds exposure.  I set the auto-focus manually.  It looks clear in the viewfinder, but I am not happy with the sharpness of my favorite photograph. (attached below)  In my opinion it looks little fuzzy.  I also tried to shoot few exposures with auto-focus, but I got similar results, so it must be the quality of the lens I used.  I shoot with cheap Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II lens at 22 focal length on the tripod.

So, I thought this would be an easy task.  Put the camera on the tripod, set the shutter speed to 4-8sec, ISO 200 and whatever aperture is required.  I knew that the important part was to frame the fireworks together with the skyline.  So, here I am at Chicago at the north beach getting ready for the fireworks.  My camera is on the tripod facing south and looking at the Navy Pier and the Chicago skyline and waiting for the action.  In my mind I imagined huge fireworks next to the huge buildings.  Wrong!!!  I picked the bad spot.  The skyline was much closer then the fireworks which made the fireworks to look very small compared to the buildings.  I was supposed to be at the other side where the fireworks would be in front of the skyline, but I was not.  Lesson learned.  Mind plays tricks on you sometimes. Below are few shots of the fireworks and the Chicago skyline.

Lock your focal length at 200mm and shoot.  You cannot zoom in or zoom out.  All you have is 200mm.  It is a great way to learn to feel your lenses.  Below few experimental shoots.

Long time ago my father bought me a 70-200mm lens and I never had a chance to play with it.   So I put it to the test.  On camera flash, my d90 man and the lens.  I was curious about the compression I would get in the background with higher zoom values.  I noticed that the background looks really nice when compressed and it is a different feel then my 50mm lens.  I like it and I will have to use it more often.  Below are few of my favorites shoots.