So I thought I would take a post to explain how to get some different looks with one camera and a single lens, and if their is interest maybe in a later post go into how to change up a look with different lenses.

When you are taking pictures with a digital SLR there are really 3 main things to focus on to alter the look of your shots.

ISO – this is the speed in which your film (make believe film in the case of digital cameras) is going to expose. For example a good shot taken at a 200 iso will look completely blown out at 1000 iso, if all you change is the iso speed. Knowing this one would assume you want to shoot at a very high iso so that you get crisp unblurred shots. While you will get faster shots at a higher ISO, you also get alot more noise as you increase the iso.


The first shot was taken at an ISO of 1000 and the second shot was taken at an ISO of 6400. Although I was able to use a much faster shutter speed for the second shot, the quality of the photo is noticeably grainy.

Shutter Speed – This is how fast the mirror in your camera opens. The faster the shutter speed the more crisp your shot will be. The only real thing this will do to the look of your picture will determine if it is under or over exposed. The shutter speed does nothing to the quality of the picture, it will always have the same grain. Also a slow shutter speed will blur your subject if you or it is moving


This is the most common thing people know to change. The slower the shutter speed the brighter the photo. These photos show shutter speeds of 1/4000, 1/1250, 1/320, and 1/125 from left to right.

Aperture – This is the third and final major variable for shooting images, and in many ways adds the most options to the look of the photo. The aperture is the opening in the lens, it determines how much light is let into the camera. Varying the amount of light let into the camera also has a direct effect on how the image looks as well though. For example on my 35mm lens if I set the aprature to f1.8, which means the lens is letting as much light in as it can, the foreground and background are going to be much more out of focus, this is refereed to as “depth of field” or DOF. But if I take the same shot with the apeture closed to f20, much more of the scene will stay in focus. here is a quick example.

both of these are taken with the exact same lens (35mm f/1.8), I just changed the aperture to decrease my DOF on the second image.
The first image was taken at 1/2500 f/1.8 and an ISO of 1000
The second image was taken at 1/50 f/16 and an ISO of 1000
You notice that I had to change the shutter speed as well, but this change was done only to compensate for the loss of light because of my higher aperture (smaller hole in the lens).

I think this is a good amount of info to start with, and it covers the basics. I would write more, but I do not get many visitors to the site. However if you do come across this and find it helpful and want me to elaborate, or add more info, comment or write me and let me know.

The plug-in can be found here if you are interested in grabbing it for your own site.

But, when it comes to designing my site, that is a whole other story. I am sick of  IE6 being a hinderance on code and formatting when it comes to my own site. I do not think I will become so drastic as to block IE6 users from seeing my site (yet), but I am not going to spend the extra time to make it work either. I am taking astand against a craptastic browser. It does not work for me so why should I work for it. In the future if I do implement changes on my site that make it completely brocken on IE6 I may take the step of blocking IE6 users.

I know I have many IE6 visitors to my page but honestly it is time for you to upgrade. Here is a few links for you to follow to the browsers you need.
Internet Explorer 8
Firefox
Google Chrome
Safari

I also have decided that I am going to start posting on the blog again here as well. Many of my personal posts I have been doing at nitforpat.com, but I would like to start posting again here because I do come across many different design related articles, projects, and pieces that I would like to catalog on the site. I have noticed on my analitics that I have been getting quite a few more visitors to the site than usual, so it is my hope I can keep the content fresh and give visitors a reason to keep coming back.

Every so often I will come across a piece of work that blows my mind, rarely does this happen with student work. Reza Dolatabadi took two years to painstakingly create over 4000 painted images and then animated them to produce this short film. The running scene is fantastically done, and the splatters and texture really bring it to life.

Although I originally thought these were hand painted pieces, in reading the comments on the viemo post, I discovered that they were all digitally created. He also created the pieces over 3d rendered scenes. While this may take away from the finished piece for some people, in a project of this scope you need a blueprint to work around in my opinion. I feel like if he did not go this route; colors, perspectives, and styles would become a mush that did not work in the way the artist intended.

At any rate check out the video it is a very inspiring piece of work.

Khoda from Reza Dolatabadi

I am a fan of vector art and illustrator work. As a graphic artist now, sadly I have all but left my paint brush and pencils in favor of Illustrator. I have become much more aware of line and color work, gone are the days where I can use a brush and smudge colors and strokes all over a canvas to cover up my lack of talent. Recently I read a post on vectortuts.com.

The work displayed on the post ranged on work i found amazing, to work I found sub par for a professional illustrator.

It did make me consider the medium a bit more though, and I felt pretty inspired by some of the website examples they presented.

I would love to see a fall back to more illustrator work. I have always thought it shared a commonality with turn of the age graphic design. From the woodcut signs of the middle ages to the propaganda posters of the world wars. The feeling you get from an illustrated piece is like a characteur of life rather than something mundane we see everyday of our lives. Check out the vectortuts.com post here.

Yes I know as if anyone needed another eason to hear this song, but I think this monochromatic (mostly) ditty is fantastically done.

Since starting his growing Giant art campaign Fairey has said the experiment behind his explosive phenomenon is targeted to expose the “conspicuously consumptive” nature of our culture, the eagerness to buy in that results from image repetition.

This same thought crossed my mind when Fairey did a political poster for obama. Though with Obama my mind was quickly changed. Obviously Obama is the canidate Fairey identified with and to show his support he created a poster for his campaign.

Nothing in this train of thought says that Fairey is mindlessly following anything, or that he is attempting to have us mindlessly vote for Obama. In this same veign if Fairey happens to be a huge fan of Dexter (like me) why should he not create a poster for his favorite show. I am sure Fairey has done posters for bands before why is this not considered selling out. Even with this thought process the dexter poster does not sit well with me in terms of Fairey’s art. I finally came to the conclusion that Dexter being a telivision show is used to sell advertising and by Fairey supporting the show he is supporting the cause of advertising which he speaks against in many ways. I do not hold this against him, hell I am a graphic designer, I am a slave to advertising every day of my life, but I just saw this artistic outing as very odd coming from someone like Fairey. I think I will just take the rest of the day and admire my new Dexter poster and think about things.

I am always looking for different ways to customize my dektop, I am a bit of a neard that way I suppose. Recently Martin Lexow put out this packk of icons he calls “blobs” and I really enjoy the look of them on my dock. He has also included templates to make your own blob icons. I am also using a dock from kano89 from MacThemes that compliments Martin’s icons very well, it can be found here.

I am not a smoker but I do like Zippos and close to 4 or five years ago I visited a venue in downtown Nashville called Buffalo Billiards. Outside the venue were a bunch of 20 somethings with clipboards. They all worked for Philip Morris and were handing out zippos to anyone that said they were a smoker and would take their survey. So of course I got in line answered a few questions, and got my new zippo brand lighter. One of the questions on the survey was “when is your birthday?”, and now every year on July 16th I receive a present from Marlboro (among the countless coupons discounting cigarette prices throughout the year). In the past years I have received cookbooks, wallet bottle openers, and other quirky items. This year I got two over sized chrome dice and instructions on how to gamble with my friends (maybe over beer and cigarettes).

The design of the packaging is always eye catching and the fonts and colors are always very consistent, but I can not help but think every time I get one of these gifts “Is the CEO of philip morris the devil”. Why only push products like beer and cigarettes and stand behind them so strongly. I find it strange, and I guess their only motivation is money and not the livers and lungs of their customers, but something about it always does strike me as odd.