Day 50: Going Up?

Happy 50th Day-aversary! I was thinking back earlier today, and I honestly didn't think I would have ever kept it up this long. Looking at some of those early posts, I was really struggling to find a good rhythm with this thing. Luckily for you all I've found one. A rhythm that is.

I took some photos at work today, but they were pretty lame. Photos of the ceiling lights through a mirror. Photos of stool legs. Yeah. Like I said. Pretty lame. I was going to walk around town and see what I could get but needed to dump some of my stuff off in my car that I didn't feel like lugging around with me. Then I remembered the spooky staircase behind the Book Nook!

1/40 sec. exposure at F/3.5 ISO 800.
Click image for larger version.

This is a photo I've wanted to take for a while now but always forget about. I didn't do anything to this one in Aperture to let you see what it looked like before any tweaking. For a couple of the others that I took I messed with them in Aperture (I'll share those below). This one is just to give you an idea of how creepy the stair case is. Also all of these photos are taken from the bottom looking up (though some look like they could go either way).

1/15 sec. exposure at F/3.5. ISO 800.
Click image for larger version.

As I said, I messed with this one in Aperture. I turned the White Balance temperature up a bit and turned the shadows up significantly. This made the darkness at the top more precise as opposed to taking up a majority of the upper part of the stairs. It gives the stairs more depth, and in my opinion, the darkness is more ominous when it's more confined like that. There's a little bit of noise in the darkness, but again, I think that adds to the mood of the photo even more.

For this next one, I shot vertically instead of horizontally. In Aperture, I turned up the shadows a bit again (though less than in the above image) and I moved the Curves black point slider over. This made it significantly darker than the other images. The whole right side is almost completely blackened with just a tiny amount of the railing showing through. I don't know which one of these is my favorite. I think it's cool that I can take almost the same image and make them look that much different.

1/30 sec. exposure at F/3.5. ISO 400.
Click image for larger version.

That's fifty days worth of photos people. Do you understand the wealth of knowledge that you've gotten from me? By knowledge, of course, I mean entertainment at my expense, but still. It's something. Make sure you check out the February contest and start posting comments to get entered! Hasta luego.