Day 47: Near/High

Hey everyone. I'm tired and crabby so this is going to be short. I took a photo in my room today and then I took some from the top of the parking garage on campus.

This is a close-up shot of a Superman Matchbox (Hot Wheels?) van that Reggie gave me. I kind of like how this came out. It's different.

1/50 sec. exposure at F/5.6. ISO 200.
Click image for larger version.

The next two photos were taken, as I said, from the top floor of the parking garage. For the first shot, I set up my camera on the tripod and set a long exposure. I wish I had brought my shutter release because I kept get camera shake from doing it manually.

I finally got one to come out pretty sharp. Finally. It took quite some time because each of these were 20-30 second exposures, and then my camera takes a second, equivalent, black shot to compensate for long exposure noise. Essentially each photo I took took a minute to actually process. I took about 10 or 12.

20 sec. exposure at F/13. ISO 200.
Click image for larger version.

As this shot was processing, I walked to another edge of the garage to see what else I could photograph. I ended up seeing a Stop sign below me, but what really drew me to the sign was the fact that, even though I was looking down on it, it looked like the sign was angled up and facing me head on. Some strange optical illusion happening. And then as I was taking shots of this, I noticed the long shadow being cast of the sign and post so I tried to include that as best I could. I tweaked some things with this photo in Aperture. It was very yellow because of all the surrounding street lights. So I turned the White Balance all the way down as far as it would go. Then I turned the yellow's Saturation all the way to really bring out that yellow curb at the bottom. Finally, I turned up the red's Saturation just a bit to heighten the red in the sign, but just slightly.

1 sec. exposure at F/5.6. ISO 800.
Click image for larger version.

So that's it for today. I guess it wasn't as short as I thought it was going to be. I really need to get my contacts out. Sorry, I know that's random, but they're making me sleepy. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing as I should get to bed soon. Working tomorrow so probably blah photos, but it's also supposed to be near 60 degrees so maybe I'll be able to get out after work. We'll see. Hope you enjoyed the photos today. I'll be posting something in the next few days detailing February's contest (I may do it slightly differently this month). Byeeeeeee.