Lookout!.........Park.

Yeah, there really is a park in Grand Rapids called Lookout Park. It's on the east side of the Grand River and overlooks the northern part of the city. I figured it would be a cool place to try getting some sunset pictures over Grand Rapids. As with most of my ideas it sounded way cooler than it ended up. Today was a beautiful, sunny day, but of course as soon as the sun started to set there was a bunch of clouds all in the way.

Taking pictures outside may be my favorite, but it isn't always the nicest. Since the sun and clouds weren't cooperating with me I didn't end up taking many sunset pictures, and the few I took weren't that excellent. I tried some tone mapping on them to spice them up a bit. I also used the scene dial on the camera and selected the sunset option because it adjusts the temperature of the white balance to pick up the red tones of the sunset.

Not exactly the most impressive image, but whatever. My tone mapping made it slightly grungy, but hey, it's a picture of city, cities are grungy.

This image I did lots of playing around with. A lot of my tone mapping just made this image look a lot like the previous one so I decided to try something different. I set it to black and white and the city turned out pretty cool, but there is a lot sky in the image and that was pretty boring. I decided to crank up the saturation highlights and it ended up showing color from the sunset so I rolled with it. So again with the sun and clouds being jerks my sunset images turned out kinda blah, but getting good shots in nature where I can't control much takes patience, it just means I get to try again someday.

52 Week Challenge: Week 3?

Well, I'm already one or two weeks behind on my challenge and needless to say I hate it. I liked the idea of giving myself a project to keep me taking pictures, but self-portraits are not really my thing. I don't like having to use my tripod, set the self timer and then try to come up with some pose that doesn't make me look any more lame than I already am. I don't consider myself the most interesting subject and I feel very awkward when people notice me trying to take pictures of myself. So, who knows if this challenge will last, at the very least I doubt it will end up being self-portraits, I will probably change it into something I find more interesting.

But this week while at the park I decided to set the camera on the bench and shoot it up.

I tone mapped both images, one in color and the other in black and white. I can't decide which one I like more. Of course I love black and white, but for some reason I enjoy the color one a lot too. Probably because the bench is red and, well, I like red. The depth of field is smaller and the camera mostly picked up detail on the bench and left my boyfriend and I out of focus, which is basically opposite of how portraits should be done, but who said I follow the rules? So yeah, by the way, that's my boyfriend Lee. He likes to wear his hood at all times when he's wearing a hooded sweatshirt, I don't get it.

And here is yet another attempt at a self-portrait. After my first, and best, attempt for a self-portrait above I went back to trying to get sunset pictures over the city I decided to take another self-portrait and of course forgot to zoom back out. The excellent result of my forgetfulness is this nice faceless shot of my butt. I am just a professional at self-portraits minus my face.

When I was getting ready to take my self-portraits I took some test shots on the bench to make sure it was a good place to set the camera and not cut anything off. Except for that one time where I forgot to zoom back out and cut off my head... But anyways, thanks for the help Mr. Bench, you were a star.

Link to the set of images from today: Lookout Park

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