Merry Christmas! It's Christmas eve here, so while waiting for the clock to strike 12, I thought I...

So I was bored one night and decided to hone my craft on night photography. I also want to practice taking pictures on night lights using a low shutter speed, and these are what I came up with. Also, I did some experiments on a DIY bokeh filter I found online.
I made several myself and they turned out to be fine. What I would do better, though, is probably use an x-acto knife to cut the shapes or buy punchers with different shapes. And probably purchase a prime lens with a lower aperture. I think the shape the bokeh would really be sharp and clear if I use a lens with a lower aperture. As you can probably guess, the lowest aperture my kit lens has is f/4.0, and that's probably not enough to nail that beautiful bokeh.
I did some research on different prime lenses, and I'm torn between a Canon and a Yongnou 50 mm f/1.8 lens. They say that the latter is cheaper and can still take quality images like its branded counterpart.
But what do you think? Should I go for the Canon or the cheap counterpart? I could really use some input.
So I was bored one night and decided to hone my craft on night photography. I also want to practice taking pi...
I just love purple. I don't know what this is called. I'm not even sure if it's a flower or a bush. But I still love t...
I love taking pictures using natural lighting. Although I know flash photography can also lend an artistic touch to a subject, I still prefer natural lights over flashes.
Of course, I'm open to learn flash photography in the future.
In the meantime, I'm learning how to work with ISO, white balances and apertures, and these are the results of what I've come up. I set my ISO to 200, my aperture to the lowest, which is f/4.0 on my lens (I'm using my camera's kit lens) and the white balance to sunny (I'm not sure if I should be using if I'm learning manual but what the heck), and these are the output.
The verdict? I really need to practice more. But what do you think? Any ideas that could help me take better shots? Let me know. I'd be glad to hear from them.
I love taking pictures using natural lighting. Although I know flash photography can also lend an ar...
I think I'm in love with RAW.
I've been reading some photography stuff online and I found that taking raw pictures is the way to go if you want really high-quality images. So when I went to SM City mall, I decided to take a bunch of pictures at the Christmas Village to practice close-up photography and to try taking pictures in raw.
Well, taking raw images takes some getting used to. For one, because raw images are huge, they can take up most of your memory card storage. Mine is 8gb but I can only take 190 photos with raw when I could take up to 800+ images with jpeg. Second, I had to get used to using Adobe Lightroom since Adobe Photoshop couldn't read raw images unless I have Camera Raw, which I don't.
I'm still learning how to use Lightroom but I can see why a lot of photographers prefer using it. Organizing is pretty awesome using it than Photoshop. Editing images is pretty easy, too.
The images above were processed using Lightroom, and I think they're pretty decent. They're more alive now than before. And since I all the image data are present in raw photos, I don't have to worry about losing quality even if I edit again and again. With Photoshop, the more you edit, the more you lose image data. That's why they call it destructive editing.
Anyway, if you want to learn more about raw, you can check out these sites: Digital-photography-school.com and Photographyconcentrate.com.
I think I'm in love with RAW. I've been reading some photograph...
I'm not sure what this flower is called. All I know that it looks lonely in our backyard. So I decided to take a picture of it ...
















































