Good pictures are hard to come by. You could take roll after roll after roll and there would be no good pictures, especially if you are going for artistic picture. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and there might be two or three good ones to a roll or a batch of pictures you’ve taken. I’ve taken hundreds of pictures in my life time this past year. Out of the hundreds of pictures, I think there are about 10 at most that turned out great. Here are few of them.

Serious (August 2002)

Lonely Blue (July 2003)

The Conversation (October 2002)

Grant it that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; these are pleasing to me. I like them. They are some of my bests. Many will probably look at these and think, “Hey, no big deal.” But to me, they are. Like I’ve said before, I don’t like to waste film, but I’ve wasted many in my life time.

A little info about each picture.

Serious:
This was taken in Fresno in August 2002. It is a picture of my cousins Kent (center) and Michael (right). I didn’t really plan this picture. I just took it in an effort to waste film so I can go ahead and get the roll developed. Surprisingly most good pictures come out that way.

Lonely Blue:
Well, the flower was blue when I took it. Just a tad blue. It was taken last weekend up in the Santa Monica Mountains. The picture was scanned from the original slide and then color corrected in photoshop. There wasn’t much doctoring to this picture, I swear. I just brought the green out a little bit more to look like the slide.

Why was it on a slide instead of a print? It was part of the roll that I used when I did my photography homework. I took about 16 pictures that dealt with “action” pictures for my homework and then decided to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway at a friends suggestion hoping to find a nice quiet place to pretty pictures of the ocean. Kevin said it is a great and beautiful ride. He never told me about the traffic. I would have to say that if the traffic wasn’t so bad, the drive would have been great. So I never really found a good place to take pictures of the ocean. I got some pictures, but they don’t scan well, and they really don’t look pretty.

So I drove up the PCH for about two and a half hours and I decided to turn back. I turned off a road and wanted to see where it lead. I drove up to the Santa Monica Mountains. There were some hiking trails. I didn’t go too far. I had sandals on, and besides there was a sign that said it was “mountain lion country.” So I decided to stay close to my car. There was a little garden that belong to a residence. I snapped the picture.

The Conversation
Or Ketchup Having Conversation with Glass as Stephanie so aptly named. It was taken from her digital camera last October. We were at lunch at a restaurant. It was Danielle’s last day and Stephanie, Monica and I decided to take her out. The girls were talking about something, and I was busy playing with the camera. Guys and electronic toys. They go hand in hand. The picture turned out as I saw it. I’m glad. This was my computer wall paper for a while. It’s interesting.

Well they are interesting and good looking to me. I’m just a amateur, that is why I’m taking a photography class. And besides, like I said, most good pictures by amateurs are taken by luck anyway. It just so happens you are at a certain place where the conditions just happen to be perfect to take a great photo.

Here is a photo taken by my friend Ella Spink.

July 2002

I didn’t give it a title, because it is not my picture. It was taken over the July 4th weekend of last year up in Tacoma, Washington. We were at the Glass Museum the day before it opened to the public. It was sunset. We were walking up the stairs and saw this beautiful sky. Great time to take a picture, and she did. She’s the one who got me into photography. Now, I am sure that the sky wasn’t that blue when the picture was taken. She must have been using a filter or a slow film to get the blue that color. Ms. Spink, do you remember if you were using a filter or what speed film you were using? This picture was scanned from a print.

Now, let me talk about the print itself. The print is just magnificent. The richness in color and just the absolute look of the print is better than any type of print I’ve ever seen. The print are very professional looking. She got it developed at Kits Camera. I would have to say they beat any drug store or Costco developing any day. I’m trying to find a cheap place that develops print that way. I found a place but it costs about $13.00 to develop a roll. It might be worth it. There are some other places around that have a color lab, but I don’t know the prices.

I plan on doing a hiking trip by myself one of these weekends. I plan on taking a couple of rolls of pictures to try out my new lenses and also it gets me out of the house. I’ll probably take my film there to develop. Hopefully they come out good.

Now the first day of photography class, my professor says that most pictures turn out ugly because it matters where you develop your film. These drug store places aren’t that great. Take them to a place with a color processing lab. Your pictures will turn out 80% better. Also it matters about the type of film you use. So far in class, we’ve been using Fuji brand.

Now, I got a new scanner. I bought a new scanner fundamentally for this reason. To scan pictures. This scanner has the ability to scan slides and negatives. That is the main reason why I bought a scanner in the first place, to scan the negatives. It is much better to scan from a negative than print.

Most film scanners are expensive, a couple hundred dollars. My scanner, the CANOSCAN D125OU2F is a flat bed scanner with a slide and film adapter. For some negatives and slides it works well without any color correction. But for most of the time, there needs to be some minor corrections. I bought it from ebay for $69.95. Of course, I did research before I bought the scanner. Most professionals gave it a great review for scanning film and slides, but a bad review for scanning anything else. So I got hooked and bought it.

The following pictures were scanned from the negatives without color corrections.

Water Fight (July 2003)

Sparks (July 2003)

Reaching for Water (October 2002)

Water Fight
This was taken on July 4th, 2003 after the bbq in Fresno. The kids, Amy and Kent, were having a little water fight in their mini pool.

Sparks
This is one of the firework photographs that I took of the really really boring fireworks show at my cousins’ backyard. The photo turned out great, but the fireworks sucked.

Reaching for Water
This was taken during my trip up to Washington for my grandmother’s memorial. I wasn’t ready for the picture, but it appears that the little ones were. I was busy reaching for a bottle of water.

This next picture of family was scanned from the color negatives with minor color corrections.

Cousins (October 2002)
Top: Van (or Eric) Bottom (Left to Right): Maggie, Dat, Me, Hien, and Loretta

Cousins (Print October 2002)

Cousins
This was taken at my grandmother’s memorial dinner. This was taken before the dinner. Maggie, Dat and Loretta are siblings and they are my second cousins. Van is an only child and is my second cousin and the siblings first cousin. Hien is my brother.

When originally scanned, the picture came out really really dark. I’ve lightened it up and corrected the coloring. There is a greenish/yellowish tint on the print of the picture because of the fluorescent lighting in the restaurant. Fluorescent lighting makes your picture greenish. I’ve color corrected the greenish tint and the underexposure of the scanning to make the picture better.

The bottom picture is a scan of the print. You can see that it is really dark and a greenish tint everywhere. The difference between the negative and the print is like night and day. There is also a sharper picture from the negative along with vibrant colors.

Now Ms. Spink, besides sharing pictures with everyone, I also did this to show you how the scanner worked. How do you like them? After a couple of days of working with the scanner, I believe this to be a great investment for me. Especially at such a low price.

Now, the pictures I’ve posted up. Some may not be here for much longer. As I take more and more pictures, I’m bound to get some I would like to share or some that will help illustrate my entries. I only have a limited amount of space (2mb) on AOL. So as I get more pictures, I would have to delete some of these pictures from the server. Until I find a place where I could upload more, some will have to go. Enjoy them while you can.