Tyler’s graduation and photo mishaps
by Logan on May 17, 2010
This weekend was great. I watched my little bro Tyler graduate from Purdue (he’s a badass, I know). I spent time with my mom and dad. I played with my dad’s Big Boy Camera all weekend. I detailed my car for the first time in way too long.
Busy weekends are always the best.
This is the first in a series of posts about the weekend. Most of them will be photo heavy because I’ll also be working hard to get ready for the move to Austin.
It was my first day out with my Pops’ camera, so some of the shots didn’t turn out so well. I’ll let you judge for yourself. The camera fun started out the night before graduation in my parents’ basement. I got some decent shots despite the low light. Everything is shot with a Canon 20D and various lenses.
This is right next to a lamp in the basement. I had to edit the photo to get the colors right, originally it was all yellow because of the light.
Pops roasts his own coffee beans, and these are the fruits of his labor. This one has been edited some too. I love how the red counter comes up into the jar.
I shot this with a 60mm macro lens, not bad for the light conditions.
The rest of the photos come from the next day. I start off in the house beforehand, then the trip to West Lafayette via Logansport, and finally Tyler’s graduation.
I had to get a shot before I left. I didn't drink any coffee (no time) so a photo of some colorful coffee cups was the next best thing.
I shot this as we were driving through Logansport. There was a car show going on, and this was the only decent shot I got out of the whole thing. I love the look of the Buick Skylark (I can't believe I just said that about a Buick) and the guy opening the garage was perfect.
This is where my issues really start with the photos. I had my settings all goofy, so everything ended up coming out overexposed. I was able to pull some of it back, and I like the photo because it's with my mom.
Pops looks excited while we're waiting for the ceremony to start. Maybe it's because Tyler and I are finally college graduates?
Look at all the Purdue grads! The ones with the red on their hats graduated from the School of Technology, and the ones with the blue graduated from the School of Management. Unfortunately, we picked the wrong side because Tyler was wearing blue. He's in there somewhere, I'm sure.
OK, now this is where the photo issues really come up. I had everything set up for shooting inside the ceremony, where things were totally dark. Then we went outside to take pictures and I forgot to change everything to fit the lighting there. Needless to say, things didn’t turn out very well. Here’s the original photo of my parents and Tyler, followed by some editing where I tried to bring it back.
As you can see, everything is totally blown out in this photo. Whoops.
I did some editing to see if I could fix it and this is what I ended up with.
I still wasn't satisfied with how it looked. I decided to use an old trick: Make your bad photo look artsy and no one will know the difference. This is what I ended up with.
I learned an important lesson because of this photo: Don’t be overconfident and definitely have a backup system in place (a point-and-shoot, in this case) whenever possible.
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