Shaine Mata Blog

The sun hit some beer bottles as it was setting. The light was just perfect for a photo. 

My son assisted me in experimenting with two flashes. He held the external flash and I used the on-camera flash. The problem I have is that I bought a Cowboy Studio NPT-04 set. I thought that I could fire the remote flash through the trigger; but, it didn't work out. My camera doesn't have a sync cable port; I can only fire the external flash manually.  This can be problematic because I would have to lower the shutter speed to give me enough time to fire the remote. I'd have to make the flashes stop the motion.  Knowing this, I underexposed my camera by 2 stops. On full power, my flash gives me 3 stops up or down. Since the external flash would fire at full power, underexposing compensated. I underexposed by lowering the ISO to 100 and closing the aperture to the max, f8. My shutter speed started at .3 seconds and moved to .4 seconds. I was able to see the camera flash fire and also fire the external flash manually. Not ideal; but, it worked...sometimes.  For t...

"Taller" is the Spanish word for workshop, or in this case, a mechanic shop. It is pronounced "tayer", stressing the second syllable and rolling the r at the end.  This property near downtown has a small flat tire repair shop in the front, which charges $5 to fix a flat. In the rear, here in this photo, is the mechanic shop. 

This tree grew next to a warehouse that burned down earlier this year. I do not know if the tree died as a result of the fire, or if it was dead prior to the fire. The remains of the warehouse have been torn down and taken away, leaving the concrete foundation and this dead tree. It really catches your attention when you pass the vacant lot with a huge dead tree in the center.

This is the same image in black and white, and in color. I could not decide which would be better. I want the monkey bars to be the focus, which the color image does with the yellow. But, I find that the monochrome draws more attention to the shapes of the same rings.

I was walking by and saw these shopping carts. As you can see, it's only a handful of carts; but, they were grouped just so. It caught my eye. The parking lot looks empty; but, there were plenty of cars parked, just not on this side. I took the photo in color with the intent of going black and white. I've discovered that it is better to tweak the image in color for saturation, contrast, highlights, darks, etc... and then turn it into monochrome. Otherwise, the camera will capture a rather even greyscale when set on monochrome.

You learn about photography with doing. Hands on training is probably the best way to figure it all out. I've been happy with my point and shoot camera, a Canon SX40 HS. The camera has aperture priority mode, shutter speed priority mode, manual mode, program mode, and some other auto features on it. I can control the flash power, have TTL metering, and many of the features that a full DSLR camera would have. There are some limitations to the camera that make sense for a consumer product. Even though the camera has a Digic 5 processor, it doesn't use it as fully as the DSLR cameras. One limitation, for example, is a top ISO speed of 3200 when you set it manually. However, the camera cheats at times. The photo above, for example, has an ISO of 4000. And, when set to low-light mode, it goes up to ISO 6400. That's one of my realizations. Up until now, I was comfortable hanging out in the 200 to 400 ISO range, not realizing how higher ranges would help me increase shu...

It would be eerie to visit a park without children if you didn't know that temperatures are near 100F close to noon time. I walked by this park on the way home from picking up some photo prints. I spent some time trying different shots.

More flowers I took these flowers in the midday sun using a flash. I expected things to be a bit more washed out; but, the camera adjusted for the extra light. So, the flowers are bright; but, the background looks darker here than it actually was. I think I'm starting to understand how shutter speed and aperture work together. This was at f8.0, 1/250s, and ISO 160. The Canon SX40 HS has a maximum aperture of f8. I normally shoot at 2.8 for DoF, except I was zoomed in here. For proper exposure, the camera increased the shutter speed to 1/250 as it could not close the aperture anymore. In another picture, I was physically closer to the subject rather than zoomed in. The result, in the midday sun, was a blurry washed out background. The camera adjusted for the additional flash brightness through shutter speed; but, the aperture was wide open, allowing a whole lot of ambient light into the shot. So, it now makes sense. Shutter speed=flash exposure. Aperture=ambient light ...

OK, this is slightly deceptively titled. In this photo I learned that if there is wind and your subject is moving around, grab it and hold it still for the shot. It was windy and the branch with these flowers was waving around everywhere. I had to grab it and shoot for my camera to focus long enough to take the shot. 

Some decorative grass. The background is crap; but, I was mainly interested in the idea. I think if I'd put the taller grass to one side, it may have looked better. What do you think?  A little rule of thirds? I took this at almost mid day sun with the flash on to eliminate shadows on the grass. 

I captured this scruffy little bird while waiting for a meeting. It was resting on the tip of what looks like an agave. I don't know enough birds to tell you what kind of bird this is. But, with the whitish feathers, it looks a bit unkempt compared to other birds in darker colors. Thus, "Scruffy Bird".  This was near the water fountain at Palms Crossing in McAllen, Texas. It was very slow to get near enough to the bird without spooking it. Once the flash started going off, it turned around and did a few poses. I'll post more later. 

My daughter left this stack of blocks. It seemed the perfect subject for a photo. Her mom is grateful that they aren't on the floor where we can step on them.  It is always fun to try to think about what she was imagining when she built the stack. How did the aquarium rail car fit into the equation?

This vine is growing on the fence at home. As I was walking out the door, the lighting on it caught my eye. I'll be trying shots at different times with different lighting.

A couple of palm trees at a nearby park. One has been dead for some time. The other palm is close to reaching the same height as the old, dead one.

A backlit bougainvillia leaf. I had seen a demonstration on how you get more texture from a backlit leaf than from a frontlit one. In the video, the photographer used a remotely fired flash. I can't do that without buying a hot shoe cable or a Pocket Wizard set. That is, of course, unless I use the sun as my backlight.

What I do is intrusive. I'll get up in your business and take your picture. I'll record video. I'll talk about something we did together. I'll blog about it. A lot of it has to do with my inability to let go and be part of the moment. I prefer to watch and enjoy experiences apart from melee. I have personality quirks that I don't care to fix, being happy the way God made me. One of the things I realized early on when I started writing a journal, then started blogging, and then podcasting, and so forth, was that I am making history. My wife studied History in college, and she's good at it. The most valuable thing she knows how to do is Historiography. She knows where to look for information. But, the thing is, what she loves to do depends largely on what I do, which is to record things. Many of you are accidentally contributing to history via social media. However, most of what people post online has little value to Historians. I mean that your smart-ass ...

I took this a few days ago when I climbed on the roof. The way the sunlight lit up the tall tree on the right got my attention. I couldn't find a way to capture it properly on the camera. What I've done here is focus most of the tree and blur the area around to make the tree stand out. It kind of does what I was seeing, though not completely. Perhaps I could have used light to make the parts of the tree that were in shadow stand out more.