The Wedding of the King and Queen of the World

So two of my very good friends got married last weekend.

They are basically the two coolest people in the world, and their wedding was pretty awesome. I think it was probably only my third wedding that I have ever been to.

Anyways, while they did have a professional photographer there, they asked everyone to take pictures with their personal cameras and email them to them afterwards, so it's fortunate that I brought my D7000 (plus my two prime lenses) with me to the reception. I unfortunately only brought my 35mm lens to the actual ceremony. Oh well, it's fine. I took way more pictures during the reception.

Here are a few pictures from the ceremony:

 Fun random collage of pictures, here.

 







I took quite a few more pictures at the reception, though. The Professional Photographer left about halfway through, but there were still some things that were fairly significant that they should have gotten.

Here's a few (or more than a few) shots from the reception:

 Cutting the Cake                                                       First Dance

 Father Daughter dance and Mother Son dance

Artsy shot

 I am very proud of these few shots, while they were dancing.

 The last picture before they headed out.

I had an awesome time, and I figured out a lot about my photography style, too.

Congratulation to Blake and Amy!

Kevin

Independence Day

Well it is that time of year again. The Time when Americans get all hot under the collar with patriotism and they have to cool themselves off by firing off inordinate amounts of highly combustible rockets into the night sky! Fireworks!

So yesterday I went up to St. Joe to chill with a friend and watch their fireworks show (since I'm sure it was more interesting than staying here in Valparaiso). It was my first real attempt at doing some serious shooting of fireworks (I had years and years ago with my little point and shoot at the time, but that doesn't count). There isn't really much to be said about the composition of each photo, and the Exif data is basically the same for theme all (I did switch from f/16 to f/18 about halfway through, though). 

It was a good exercise in really learning more about low-light photography (which I already talked about in my previous blog post about the moon), and how the aperture really does affect it. I was shooting on the Bulb setting on my D7000, as well, and I could also tell how long I left the shutter open really affected the shots. 

One thing that should be said is that there was a pretty good wind coming in from the Lake (Lake Michigan) so that affected it quite a bit.

I'll start with the pictures of single fireworks that I somehow managed to get:

   

For some reason the blog format won;t let me put small pictures in the middle here, too, even though there is obviously enough space for them. I even tried manipulating down in the html, but to no avail. Maybe I just need to make my template wider. Probably.

Anyways, it was a really nice night right by the lake. It was probably 103F or so at my house, so I decided that I had to get out of there, at least for a little while. So we drove up to Michigan and chilled with my friend Steve. Here is his personal website: http://stevekbooth.com/

He took some great photos too, with his Canon 1D Mark 4. You can see some of them under his "Blog" tab, then follow the link to his flickr account.

I really like this one on the Right ->

IT looks like some sort of fire palm tree

This one on the right, again, is two of those starbursts that I like. I think it might have been when I was stopped down to f/20 or so, as its a bit darker

And now for some Finale pictures:

The finale was a bit bright for the cameras, though, especially because of the massive amounts of smoke in front of the fireworks.

This one was the very last one that I took, right as the finale ended

->

These next few are my personal favorites of the ones that I took (therefore they shall be in larger format than the tiny pictures above)

 I really really like the blue explosion in there, it is almost perfect. When I saw this one on my camera I was like "Aww, I wish I could have gotten that all by itself, because that's awesome"

 I really like the big spark trails in this one coming out from the almost perfectly formed fireworks. Lovely.

 Oh! I spoke too soon! I did get a nearly perfect shot of a single firework!

And this one is just a good combination of everything.

I had a really enjoyable time yesterday taking pictures (even though I did get home at like midnight and didn't fall asleep until 2am and I had work at 7am this morning). I am pretty proud of the pictures that I got, too.

And that's all for now. I have a Manfrotto Tripod Coming tomorrow, so I'll let you all know how that works out for me (maybe include a quick thing about it in my Lowepro Flipside 400AW review that I plan to do this weekend).

Catch you on the Flipside,

Kevin

TV: Chopped

Movie: Ted

Game: Rayman Forever

Music: All.I.Can. Soundtrack

Food: um, I'll let you know once I make it.

Night Photos!

Went out with my new lens and took some photos of the full moon, since this is the first time that I have owned such a long lens for a full moon. I also went out on a 6.5 mile long bike ride today, sort of got lost in Valparaiso for a bit, just wandering the streets on my bike. So that was fun. I was wearing my new Lowepro Flipside 400AW camera bag just to test it out. It was remarkably comfortable, even riding pretty quickly on a bike with my large Opteka Monopod strapped to the side. I'll probably do a review for both of those at some point. That and I'll eventually do an in depth review of the good aspects and bad aspects of my 80-200mm f/2.8D, too.

So I took all of these photos with my 80-200mm at about 200mm, with f/11 and 1/250 shutter speed and ISO 200

Then, since it is the 3rd of July, some people started shooting off fireworks near where I was, so I just swung my big lens over on them and kept shooting, though I slowed the shutter speed down quite a bit.

Best two. So yeah. Tomorrow is the 4th of July, and Valparaiso has a pretty good fireworks display for such a small town. So tonight was sort of practice for tomorrow. I also did some location scouting while out on my bike ride (before I got lost, though).

That's all for tonight, as its almost 12:30 am. I'm getting tired...

So Preow

Kevin

TV: Chopped

Movie: Ted

Music: Techno Stuff

Game: Minecraft for a bit

Food: I'm hungry... I really shouldn't watch the Food network at night...

Beach Service

I went out again today to take pictures with my great new lens. Very enjoyable experience, especially having the fixed aperture, so that I can get shots with a pretty nice Bokeh even when I am all the way zoomed in.

So today I went up to the Indiana Lakeshore state park on Lake Michigan. It was a really nice day so there were a TON of people there, but I think I was still able to get some good shots:

 I love that I could get Chicago pretty clearly even at this distance. Also Jet Skis.

 Tons of people at the beach, so I'll just leave these pictures below without too much description

 Little pictures. I think that they came out pretty good, though.

 Sand Volleyball.

 Stairs going up to an observation point. I took this shot from my hip without the viewfinder. I think it turned out all right.


 And last but not least, two pictures of an extremely photogenic Seagull!

 I like this one above, since the seagull is in near-perfect focus, but you can still see people behind it and the sand in front of it.

 And lastly, very colorful flight.

Also I find it ironic that even though I went to take pictures of Chicago, the two best pictures I got were of a bird... heh.

All in all, I am supremely pleased with my new Lens, and definitely think that it was a very good purchase.

That's all for now. I'll have some Lego pictures up sometime later today or tomorrow, as I spent about 3 hours yesterday building something.

Pip pip, cheerio!

Kevin


TV: Smash
Movie: Nada
Game: Minecraft, Sins of a Solar Empire
Music: The Lumineers
Food: Garlic Chicken (which I am going to make tonight).