Fairhaven Environmental Photography

This sunset at Marine Park was so beautiful! I love how the setting sun is casting rays into the clouds and how it falls to define the layers of trees and mountains on the horizon, and I think it translates fairly well for the assignment. I used the photo app on iPhone to translate this one to black and white, tweaking settings like saturation, contrast, sharpness, gradient, and finally putting it through the monocolor filter once I was satisfied with the exaggerations I made with the color version.  Originally, I picked a sunset photo that was mostly water, but then I decided that the composition was unbalanced. This choice is much more visually stimulating with the clouds and the 50/50 split between the water and the rest of the scene.     ISO500  //  120mm  //  f13  //  1/1000s  Alas, I couldn't pick just one photo, because I really liked how this other one came out! I still haven't gotten the hang of getting things in focus cons...

  While the photo itself is very much not of the highest quality I feel a need to have this as my submission to the wildlife blog assignment. I don’t know what my shutter speed, ISO or any specific details of the settings on my blurry broken iPhone camera so unfortunately, I cannot tell any details regarding that. While I could have taken a picture of a duck, deer or some other creature that I see everyday walking through campus this felt so unique and lucky that I had to rush to get a picture of it. After getting food with my friend at Fairhaven dining hall I walked back to my dorm and right as I got to the entrance an owl of some sort (unsure of the species but fairly large) flew right over my head and then perched over on a nearby tree. I was able to capture these two very blurry at best photos of the owl before my phone had died. After a crowd of 5 Ish people gathered to see it, the owl flew right at us and right over my head again past my dorm. With the photo being incredibly ...

  Photo 1 - Dark Side of the Pond: Shutterspeed - 1/160, ISO - 3200, f/5.6 Photo 2 - Meeting a Friend: Shutterspeed - 1/200, ISO - 3200, f/5.6 Photo 3 - Coming Home: Shutterspeed - 1/200, ISO - 400, f/8 Photo 4 - Rising by Sunset: Shutterspeed - 1/200, ISO - 400, f/8 The most prominent issue I faced while trying to take these photos was being able to take a picture where the animal was clearly the subject of the image while being in focus. The next time I go out to take pictures with wild animals as the subject, I will definitely rent a zoom lens from ATUS. I’ve taken a lot of pictures of birds from a distance over the past few weeks, but they are either too far away with nothing else interesting in the background, or they aren’t the primary focus of the image. The photos I chose were when I had the best opportunities to get as close as possible to Mallard’s specifically, but unfortunately even those ones don’t have the Mallard’s as the primary focus. I still like the photos I chos...

                                                     When so a bird                                             flock of swans(seagulls)                                                                a day         The first photo was taken at a beach in Bellingham. I had a few things on my sensor, so I had to work around that when I was taking this photo. If I could, in a perfect scenario, I would have made the shutter speed longer and changed the white point to make the photo look less gloomy. The second photo was taken when our class was going in the caravan, and we c...

  These photos from our birding trip are a momentous accomplishment for me; I am so, so proud of them! That big lens did me very well. Not to be vain, but I truly have few critiques. These are some of the loveliest photos I've captured. I found consistent settings that worked really well, and high shutter speed is the key. The framing of my three swans and the common golden eyes are my favorite. This was the first time I've done much cropping on my photos. What a difference it makes! I could have played with multi-shot mode more, and wish I got more brightness on the owls face in the shot where it is resting.  We had such good luck birding and I have fallen in love with photographing them!! I will be venturing to do this on my own time a lot more. 

    I spent a lot of time at a river with my friend in high school. I look back on that time and think very fondly of it. We would walk around the banks, throw and hit rocks; eat, swim, and run by it we practically lived there. Sometimes I would stare at the water and admire how the water never stopped or got trapped, it just went on. The river was with me for a long time and I’m glad I’m able to keep a part of it with me. To me water is a way of life a teacher and a friend.

  Random Encounter She's a Little Shy Herding Snakes (for a good photo) Snake Pretzel He Posed for Me!

  Calamansi Ube Dalandan in morning's radiance Canon EOS M50m2 | ISO 1600 | f6.3 | 1/500s Calamansi Ube Dalandan, an allergy's nightmare Canon EOS M50m2 | ISO 2500 | f6.3 | 1/500s Calamansi Ube Dalandan sitting politely Canon EOS M50m2 | ISO 6400 | f6.3 | 1/500s Calamansi Ube Dalandan, my dear friend's American Blue Shorthair cat, prances around her Southeast Portland home with a cascading name often shortened affectionately to Cud. I was lucky to visit Cud recently, but in her vocal and skittish nature, she did not feel quite as lucky to have guests.  Cud speaks a language none of us can understand, and she's apprehensive to my bonding gestures, so trying to get her to be still and well-lit was a challenge. My friends and I coaxed her next to a window and into the sun, and I was able to capture some acceptable photos, even without a telephoto lens! I am proudest of the first photo in which you can see a brightly-lit green eye, but I could have reduced the ISO a bit. Th...

    Female Mallard Portrait, f/4.5, 1/400 sec, ISO-800 These ducks must have thought I had food on me. I own a 50 mm fixed lens and I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to get close enough to get good photos of animals, but that's less of a problem when they're less than 3 feet away from me. I like the composition of this photo, the quality of the light is nice, and you can see her eye despite it being in the shadow of her face. My main problem with this is that there is no movement or action. It very much feels like you're staring down a motionless duck that doesn't do anything.        Male Mallard Portrait, f/4.5, 1/4000 sec, ISO-800  I'm less proud of this photo. My entire photoshoot, I had my viewfinder calibrated wrong so most of my images ended up being out of focus. Many of the photos that I originally thought were out of focus ended up being the few that were actually usable. This image, once again has nice light quality and colors. But this ...

Goldeneye Aloft  || f/4.5 || 1/640s || ISO 400 || 135mm   Shrieking of the Marsh  || ISO 200 [only the ISO is in the metadata for this shot for some reason]   Solitary Flight   || f/5.6 || 1/320s || ISO 100 || 135mm      Sunset on the Flats  || f/4.5|| 1/640s || ISO 100 || 135mm   Wingspan  || f/4.5 || 1/640s || ISO 800 || 135mm  

                                                                                              Ready to Pounce SS: 1/100s, aperture f2.8 , and ISO 1300 Blank Stare SS: 1/100s, aperture f2.8 , and ISO 1600 Playing Games    SS: 1/100s, aperture f2.4 , and ISO 1300 Unfortunately in the moment, the most accessible animals were my neighbors cats. One of them, (chip), (photographed twice), was more photogenic and open to being photographed.. It took me many tries to get (charlie), (only photographed once) to both sit still and look at the camera. I was then attacked by her shortly after. In terms of what I feel I could do better with these--There is a constant shadow of my camera in all of the pictures I took...

  Warming up My Queen Blink, and you'll miss it  Between the three of these photos, I felt that I had more trouble with the first one. Since the star of the photo is very small, I really had to mess with my focus setting and lighting so I could capture him at his best. Trying to focus enough to show the speck of red on its chest was hard, especially with the lighting. Because it was an overcast day, I had to lower the ISO and shutter speed enough so that the star could still stick out. I think out of the three, my best was the second photo. I titled it my queen because she is my queen. My Cat Lucy is the star of photo two. The lighting was perfect, and the focus on her fur brings out the colorful details and peachy tones of her tabby pattern. Although she was moving, I feel that I was still able to snap a few shots that made her look elegant. She is a senior cat, so my job is to always make her look elegant and treat her like the queen she is. In the third pic, the title "Blin...

"The Beast" Iso 40, F 1.6 "The Tiny Lurker" Iso 64, F 1.6 "100 Legs"      Iso 50, F 1.6 My first and favorite picture “The Beast,” is a picture of my cat Zora. I wish there were less shadows on her, as it would make her pop a little more in the sun. I also think that the removal of the leash would make the photo a little cleaner, but she would go chasing after some animal. It was also hard to get her to pose and look at the camera, but I also think that it is interesting to have her looking at something off screen. My second photo, “The Tiny Lurker” was an underside picture of a spider sitting in a box outside. I wish the background was less distracting and so is all of the little leaves and needles stuck within the web. Also centering of the spider against a clean background would give a really cool silhouette. The last photo I have is “100 Legs”, which is a picture of a centipede I saw crawling around earlier today. It was rather fast, which paired with ...

  Dos Amigos shutter speed: 1/40 aperture: 4.0 Tres Amigos  shutter speed: 1/40 aperture: 4.0 Muchos Amigos shutter speed: 1/40 aperture: 4.0 Amigo shutter speed: 1/40 aperture: 4.0 These photos were all taken on our Thursday field trip to the Skagit river mouth. The car I was in went to the wrong place at first, and on our way to meet up with the rest of class we drove past a field of Snow Geese- the source of all these photos. For all of the flying photos I should have made my shutter speed faster to capture the movement in more detail. I like the layering that is happening in most of these photos, with the clouds, mountains, trees, birds, and the field. The last photo needs better focus on the flying goose so it is more clear to the viewer what the subject of the photo is, since the background is all out of focus. I think the brightness of the lighting in the first photo is nice; it was not recreated when I pointed the camera a slightly different direction to capture Muchos...

I'm not sure if my photos are coming out blurry because of my lenses having fuzz inside them, my manual capture settings, the camera's resolution settings, if the bluetooth transfer to iPhone cuts the image quality, or what. Perhaps it is a compounding situation, but they all look so clear on the camera's LCD!  I like the composition of each of these, though I think the lighting could be brighter in the corvid and water shots. I haven't messed with ISO manually for any of my shots, nor have I used any of the recommended settings from the book for aperture priority (though I think that was specific to landscape photos). Another thing I could try would be burst shots. I haven't done that for any amount of time on purpose yet.  I love that you can see a slight reflection of the blue sky in the shot of the heron, as well as 3-4 different species of birds all in the same shot. I also really loved that Yoshi came and looked at me when I was taking the photo of the sun shi...