k6ka's blog about anything!

Oh look, I let this blog sit stagnant for a long while. Hmm. That can't be good. I definitely have a lot of catching up to do to get up to speed. During this time I've continued to be active on Flickr and Instagram , but especially on DeviantArt , and over the summer I've improved a lot with my photography. I purchased a new long lense and have been using my DSLR more and more, and although I didn't have nearly as much time as I would've liked to use it during the summer, I've been out taking much better photographs than the year before. I'm quite happy with the progress I've made this year and would like to continue with this amazing hobby in 2020. I don't know where to begin, so I'll probably start where I last left off: a photograph of a tulip in my backyard. This was one of the first times I actually shot in RAW, and while I still largely used JPEG during the year, RAW files are definitely a much better investment if the goal is to get g...

I wouldn't ever tell you if I ever got lost. I'm sometimes too proud of my geography skills to admit when I don't know where I'm going. 99% of the time I have the right sense of direction and find myself at the other end, sometimes even ahead of schedule. But this  time, you could probably say that I was a little bit lost, but not "lost" lost. My archaeology class was meeting up at Fort York that afternoon. Getting to the location via public transit was a breeze and I knew the route even though I had never actually taken it before. As soon as I stepped off the streetcar, though, that was when the head scratching began. The place clearly changed a lot since the last time I had been there, and on those times I had come in a car or a bus with my parents or my (elementary) school. On top of that, a howling gale was whipping at me so hard that I was being blown to the side and could barely keep my head up to see where I was going. There was a long, brown buil...

For Android users interested in using their smartphones for photography, I highly recommend getting the  OpenCamera  app. It really is one of the better camera apps out there that's for people serious about photography and contains quite a lot of handy features, although its functionality may be limited depending on the device you have and how stingy the manufacturer was at limiting third-party camera apps. One of the neatest features I recently discovered on the app is an Automatic Exposure Bracketing mode. OpenCamera has an HDR mode too that does the same thing but processes the images for you on the spot. For a long time, this was fine for me, since I wasn't really good at image editing, but now that I have PhotoDirector 5 and its amazing Bracket HDR feature (that's pretty darn simple to use!) I appreciated having this feature right on my phone when my Nikon D60 lacked it. The Exposure Bracketing option in the OpenCamera app. For those who aren't so familiar w...

HDR, or high-dynamic range, is a way of making photos look brighter and more realistic by combining different exposures together to make a picture that would look more like what a human eye would see. The exposure  of the photo is how much light reaches the image sensor of the camera to produce an image. Lowering the exposure results in less  light reaching the sensor, and as such will produce a darker image. Raising the exposure results in more  light reaching the sensor, and will produce a brighter image. Most cameras these days automatically adjust the exposure settings based on what you point them at. If you point the camera at a bright object, it will lower the exposure setting so that the image doesn't become too bright. If you point the camera at a dark object, it will increase the exposure setting so more light can reach the sensor so it can create an image of that object. Putting that jargon aside, let's say you wanted to photograph a street with a bright, ov...