Hover over the photo to see what it looked like straight from the camera.

An enormous leek from the farmers market

The Setup

Setup photo for 'Just a Leek'

The two vertical pieces of foam core were originally the presentation board I used in my water droplet photos. I needed it for other things, so I cut it up, leaving me without any pristine condition boards for backgrounds. So, the white and black boards you see here were purchased from Staples the same day, just for this photo. Obviously I’ll keep using them for other photos in the future.

At first I was only going to buy the black board, but because I wasn’t sure if it would be big enough I went ahead and got the giant white board as well (they did not have a giant black board). It ended up being really nice, because it helped me frame the shot as I stood over it. Rather than guess if I was directly above my subject, I just paid attention to the edges of the black board and made sure they lined up. I knew I would crop afterwards.

I had to play around with the positioning of the flash, in order to get even (ish) lighting across the leek. I used a thick piece of velcro (for flash accessories) and loosely put it on the very end of the flash to act as a very short snoot. Otherwise, some of the directly light from the flash was hitting the leek and causing sharp shadows that I didn’t want.

Finally, the Gorillapod just happened to be the most handy thing within reach to hold up the white board acting as a reflector.

My friend @vivekster was nice enough to tweet @uclanewsroom the fact that I finished four years, and our staff/faculty news site (@uclatoday) did a story on @jawsnap, who is me! Twitter FTW!

Here the link – After Hours: a photo a day for 1,462 days

Oh, and although it’s true that I’m not in it for the money, I sure don’t mind making money from it. Please note that nearly all of my photos have a “Buy” button near the top. You can get all sorts of sizes, including ginormous, or contact me for special gifts like cards or calendars

Here's to Four Years - a panoramic crop of my final daily photo for Phase I

I started my One/Day Project on leap day (February 29th) in 2008, so I’m calling the period between leap days Phase I. Hopefully I’ll make it to Phase II. Check back in about four years for that. Better yet, follow along! Year 5 is already a week in.

Daily Diary

Although I’m pretty cautious on personal details, this project is basically a diary by nature. Looking back over a single year is fun, but going back all four years is really crazy. Four years is a long time. We got married, bought a condo and changed jobs. We visited 15 states and 4 countries. We explored 10 National Parks. I say “we” because my wife was with me through all of this. I’m grateful to have her support; I know I can be annoying by taking photos all the time.

States: Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa,
Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada,
North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Washington

Countries: United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, Mozambique

National Parks: I'll let you figure those out.

I don’t want to get too philosophical, but being able to look back on every single day of your life for that long brings up some interesting thoughts. When I look back on some of the earlier photos, the photo itself brings back strong memories, but everything else about that day is a little fuzzy. It’s like the photo is imprinting itself on my memory, even though the image itself might not be reflective of anything significant. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, though, because I doubt I’d remember certain things if I didn’t have these photos to look through. That’s why I always link back to the previous years’ photo.

One thing I notice when looking back is how the project has really been a success. I did challenge myself and I have grown as a photographer. My photos are clearly much better than when I started, and that makes me feel quite accomplished.

Charts

Because digital photography is immediate, accessible, and shareable – daily photo projects are possible. With film, slow computers and poor internet, they would not be. You know what else is possible in this great age we live in? Quantifying your life.

Here are some charts showing which cameras I used to take the photos in the One/Day Project.

Here’s the other 3 years, for comparison!

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Next up is a chart for Phase I – all four years – a total of 1462 photos.

Compact cameras include a Canon S95 and SD400. iPhone models include the 3G, 3GS, 4, and 4S.

Clearly I favor the D80, or my ‘big camera’ as it is often referred to. I had my Nikon D80 for nearly a year before I started the One/Day Project, and the fact that it’s lasted this long really speaks to the quality of the equipment. It’s taken some abuse, but it keeps on clicking.

Year 4 Favorites

As in previous years, I picked my top 20 favorites to show you here:

What’s Next?

Year 5 is next. In fact, Year 5 is now – I’m already a week into it as I write this. In other words, I’m continuing the One/Day Project. I find it fulfilling and it’s a pretty ingrained habit; I don’t see any reason to stop.

More people? Sure, I think I’d like to take more photos of people. That’s why I took the Environmental Portraiture class that I just finished. It was a great experience and I learned a ton. I’ll probably try to do more photo shoots, and maybe join some more classes and such.

Getting a new camera is pretty high on my list. My Nikon D80 has be awesome, but it’s really showing its age. In particular, it has terrible high-ISO performance. It’s not something I noticed early on, but now it’s really starting to bug me. The closest replacement to it is the D7000, but that’s already 1.5 years old. I’ll wait for the next thing, and probably get it.

I’d love to make some more money off of this. I have some products I plan to sell on Etsy. I was thinking of making a calendar for the holidays. Maybe even product a book about my 4-year journey. I got all sorts of ideas, but will people actually buy any of them? Who knows. If you know, please tell me.

Alrighty Then

That’s all I got, folks! Thanks for your support! Thanks for checking out my photos!

Tell your friends, buy some prints or digital downloads, and give lots of thumbs ups

Hover over the photo to see what it looked like straight from the camera.

My final daily photo for Year 4 at a Santa Monica beach

Technical Stuff

Camera: Nikon D80

Lens: 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR at 18mm

Exposure settings: ISO 200, f/9, 1/40s

Cropped dimensions: 3387 x 2267 pixels

Other stuff: ND grad filter, -2/3 EV

How it Happened

I had the idea for this a while ago, but wanted to wait so I could make it my final photo for Year 4. My wife picked me up from work and we headed straight to the beach, so I had to have everything ready. In addition to camera gear, I packed the two wine glasses, mixed some red colored water (I wasn’t going to waste real wine),  a hat and windbreaker, and two tripods. We paid $4 to park next to the beach so we didn’t have to walk very far to the waters edge. It was forecast to rain, but thankfully it didn’t, and the clouds were great. It was, however, very cold and windy.

After sinking into the sand... (photo by Ann)

We found a relatively flat spot where the waves slowly receded, leaving the glassy look on the wet sand that I was after. I picked a spot where the waves occasionally reached (but not every time) and stuck the wine glasses in the sand. I was planning on having to adjust them, but the initial placement turned out to be what I wanted. The glasses sank farther and farther into the sand as the waves passed.

You other brothers can't deny. (photo by Ann)

To get the composition, I had to get dirty. My elbows and knees spent a lot of time in the sand, and I got soaked by several waves. It was very awkward to sit up after being in this position. In addition to taking this flattering photo of me, my wife was able to help me out with towels so at least my hands could stay sand-free. She also fetched me a microfiber cloth so I could clean off the front of the ND grad, as it got a lot of ocean spray. I’m not sure I would have done this if she hadn’t been there to help.

Back at the computer, I sifted through many similar photos, but the ones with good reflections and without overexposed clouds quickly stood out. The photo above had the best reflections and nice colors overall. The SOOC shot seemed a bit dull so I did bump the saturation a little, but mostly I just hit auto adjust and then did minor adjustments from there.

Overall, I got wetter and dirtier than I have for just about any other photo I’ve taken. As cold as it was, I should have worn shorts. It was really nice that my wife was there to help. Stopping by Yummy Cupcakes in downtown Santa Monica was nice, too.

Be sure to follow along during Year 5.

Yep, I pretty much just laid down in it...

Hover over the photo to see what it looked like straight from the camera.

Daily photo for 1/22/12 - Venice Pier at Dusk

Tech Info

Tripod, Nikon D80, 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 at 18mm, ND grad filter, f/22, ISO 100, 6 second exposure

Things That Made it Happen

Timing - Although I arrived before sunset, I waited for a while afterwards to get these colors. The sun set at 5:15; this shot was taken about 5:30.

Super-helpful Setup Photo

Positioning - The highly reflective surface of the sand is thanks to the flatness of the beach at that point – after the water recedes it stays very wet, as opposed to sinking into the sand (I know, a very scientific explanation). When I arrived, I moved around to get the best view of the pier while still having the reflections take up the entire field of view.

Misc. Camera/Lens Settings – Turn VR (aka IS) off. Turn auto-ISO off. Use 5-second self-timer to minimize vibration. Set focus, turn AF off.

Aperture - I used f/22 to get maximum depth of field, and to use long shutter speeds. Towards the end I was up to 10 seconds, so I probably could have backed off to f/16 and bought myself a few seconds with no easily noticeable difference. Oh well.

Filter - Once the sun set, the beach became very dark compared to the sky. I used a graduated neutral density filter to darken the sky, or lower the dynamic range. It was a little nerve-wracking to put the filter on and off while the tripod was in the ocean, but I was careful. Very careful.

Tripod in the Water

Get Dirty – I don’t even know why I wore jeans. I rolled them up to just below my knees and they still got soaked and sandy. I paid close attention to make sure the camera didn’t get splashed, but otherwise I just marched right into the water and stuck the tripod in the wet sand.

Take Lots of Shots – Although I could see them coming, I never knew what any particular wave would do. Maybe every 5 minutes or so there would be a gap where no waves rolled in for about 20 seconds or so. Many of the shots I took were rejected because there was too much going on with the waves in the foreground, but I’m glad I had them to compare.

Wait - Birds would have left dark smudges and planes would have left blinking lights. I prefer to just let them pass by instead of ‘fixing’ it in Photoshop.

Lightroom - Turn on automatic lens correction. Use slider to eliminate chromatic aberration. Crop to straighten horizon. Increase brightness, vibrance and saturation just a bit. Clean up dust spots that became visible with f/22.

Photoshop - Paint out two dust spots that Lightroom couldn’t handle.

So, yeah, that’s pretty much everything I did to create the photo. Questions? Leave a comment!

At first glance, the Photosynth panoramas look weird and terrible. Keep in mind, though, that they are full 360° in all directions and when you constrain it to be a 2D rectangle, things get a little squished. Click the ‘interactive’ link below each image to see it how it was intended. The Dante’s View Photosynth turned out particularly well, in my humble opinion.

The AutoStitch panoramas are much prettier, but of course lack the interactivity and imersiveness (?) of the Photosynths. AutoStitch can handle multiple rows of photos, but in all the cases below I just did a single row. It’s interesting to see what textures and scenes each app could handle gracefully.

Photosynth

Zabriskie Point [interactive]

Dante’s View [interactive]

Racetrack Playa [interactive]

Grandstand [interactive]

Devil’s Golf Course [interactive]

Badwater Basin [interactive]

Eagle Borax Works [interactive]

Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes [interactive]

AutoStitch

Father Crowley Vista

Dante’s View

Racetrack Playa

Badwater Basin

Eagle Borax Works

If you want to see other sizes (including the original) of any of these, here’s the gallery on SmugMug – Death Valley iPhoneography. It’s your reward for making it to the bottom.

Hover over the photo to see what it looked like straight from the camera.

Daily photo for 11/4/11 - Pleasure Pier

Inspiration

It rained today, and post-storm photos tend to be quite lovely. For me, the logical thing to do was head down to the beach near the Santa Monica Pier around sunset. I’ve done that many times before, but I can’t say that it ever gets old.

On Location

I didn’t have too much time before sunset, so I had to choose a location ahead of time. I decided getting the pier in silhouette with the sunset in the background was my best bet, so I parked and headed to the South side of the pier with my tripod and camera in a backpack. Here’s a panorama I took while the sun was still up. Since it’s multiple photos stitched together, the waves are all off.

Panorama taken with Pano (iPhone app)

I moved the camera around a few times, but generally stayed in this area while I waited for the sun to set. I had hoped for a more dramatic sunset, but it just didn’t work out that way. So instead, I hung around and waited for the sky to darken and match the level of light coming from the pier. Even after sunset the sky is pretty bright and can easily get blown out.

Raindrops on the front of the lens

That’s when it started to rain. I had a bandana that I put over the camera to protect it, but it was hard to take photos without drops of rain getting directly on the lens filter. In the end, I was wiping the front of the lens with a tissue while hovering over it wearing a rain jacket. I kept hovering over it while I took the shot, trying not to be in the way. It was awkward, I got very wet, and I was the only person out on the beach as far as I could see.

Editing

Here are the main things I did in Lightroom to clean up the photograph:

• Crop to get rid of my jacket that showed up in the upper right
• Enable lens correction to fix the distortion of my lens
• Remove water and dust spots
• Adjust white balance to add a little more yellow and magenta
• Raise exposure and black levels to add contrast
• Lower the clarity slightly to make it smoother

Thanks for reading! Want to buy the photo? Of course you do. OK, even if you don’t check it out on in the One/Day Project, Year 4 gallery!

Minimum polarization...

Maximum polarization!

I mean, wow. Right?

I wanted to share a couple of first impressions. First, there’s a light loss of about 2 stops. That’s like shooting at 1/60 instead of 1/250 or f/5.6 instead of f/2.8. Or just setting your camera to -2 EV. In a more practical sense, it means you might need to use a tripod when you wouldn’t normally have to, like after sunrise or before sunset.

The second and more complicated thing is that the polarizing effect is maximized by shooting perpendicular to your light source and subject. For this shot, I was standing in between the tree and the sun and shooting straight up, so the effect is incredibly pronounced. If I had shot a tree across the street then I would have been pointing in the same direction as the light and the effect would not be nearly as noticeable.

And of course, you have to rotate the filter to adjust the amount of the effect as well. That’s just how it works.

One last thing – I mentioned that I got a 77mm filter, which is kind of big. In fact, I don’t even own a lens that fits 77mm filters, so I had to get a step-down filter ring. The reason for that is because I only wanted to buy one high-quality filter and then cheap ($10-20) step-down rings so I could potentially put it on any of my lenses. The alternative is buying a filter for every single lens, which sounds kind of stupid in comparison.

I’ll plan on putting up plentiful polarized pics pronto. Stay tuned and check the daily photo, yo.

Yes, I made this image in MS Paint.

My Methods

For the tech specs below, I included my numbers from last year’s post and added the ones for the 4S. Most of the numbers came from directly observing the EXIF data off of the photos, which included shots of the sun (for max shutter speed, etc) and a dark closet (for highest ISO, etc).

For the real-world comparison photos, I carried both the iPhone 4S and 4 around at the same time for about six days and took a wide variety of photos, trying to match the composition on each phone. Most are from the UCLA campus. I fully expected to get some weird looks, but the fact that the camera launches so much faster in iOS 5 means I was usually done with both phones in a matter of seconds.

Tech Specs

The max shutter speed didn’t come up in the EXIF, which I assume is just a bug. The most obvious features are the higher resolution and wider aperture. Less obvious is image stabilization and a larger sensor.

How do I know the sensor is bigger? Well, the EXIF data says the focal length is 4.28 mm on the iPhone 4S, versus 3.85 mm on the iPhone 4. In my comparisons, I discovered that the field of view was identical in both models. If the sensor size in the iPhone 4S was the same as the iPhone 4, a longer focal length would result in a zoomed-in photo when compared side-by-side. That’s not the case, which means the sensor must be bigger to compensate for the longer focal length.

Ok, time to look at examples.

All photos below and in the full comparison gallery are straight form the camera – no cropping or editing of any kind. Except for the 100% crops below, obviously. I chose to display photos here that best highlighted the points I was trying to make, but have a look through all of them to see what you think – iPhone 4/4S Comparison Gallery

Detail

With the additional megapixels and bigger sensor, fine details are much better.

Royce Hall, iPhone 4S	Royce Hall, iPhone 4
Tree detail at 100%, iPhone 4S	Tree detail at 100%, iPhone 4

It’s not as if you can see individual pine needles or anything, but it’s pretty close. The photo on the right is more of a dark blob, while the iPhone 4S shows texture in the needles and definition in the branches.

Hollywood/Highland, iPhone 4S	Hollywood/Highland, iPhone 4
Bird figure detail at 100%, iPhone 4S	Bird figure detail at 100%, iPhone 4

While this was shot in bright sunlight, the iPhone 4 image looks much noisier and is pretty flat. The iPhone 4S has nice clean, contrasting lines.

Color

Color is something you adjust to, like when you get sunglasses that have a yellow tint. After a short time you just don’t notice, but then when you try on a different pair with a different color tint, it’s dramatic. At first I felt like the iPhone 4S color was way too yellow, but now I feel like it’s simply more accurate. The iPhone 4′s color is too saturated – too blue and too magenta.

Flame Grapes, iPhone 4S

Flame Grapes, iPhone 4

Royce Hall Entry, iPhone 4S

Royce Hall Entry, iPhone 4

In both examples, it’s pretty obvious that the iPhone 4 takes some very reddish photos. I’m still thinking that that the iPhone 4S is a bit too yellow, but it’s definitely more accurate to what my eye sees than the iPhone 4.

Dynamic Range, Contrast

For a camera, dynamic range is the brightest light and the darkest shadow that it can capture at once. Anything brigher is a blown-out highlight. Anything darker is black.

As you can see, the iPhone 4S has a much better range than the 4 – a lot of the iPhone 4 photos have darker shadows and blown out highlights. In other words, they’re more contrasty. Higher contrast does tend to make the colors pop, but it’s not as natural-looking. I appreciate this, because you can always edit the photo to add contrast – virtually every camera app and photo-editing program does this – but there is no substitute for a quality original photo with the details preserved.

"Victory" (1950), iPhone 4S

"Victory" (1950), iPhone 4

Parking Garage, iPhone 4S

Parking Garage, iPhone 4

Low Light

The new phone performs amazingly well in low light. It’s almost as if there’s image stabilization, but Apple only advertised that as a feature for video. Regardless, I’ve gotten some amazing results considering the less-than-ideal lighting situations.

Both pairs of photos below were shot at the same shutter speed – 1/15 for the drinking fountain and 1/30 for the loading dock. The iPhone 4S pictures are tack sharp. The iPhone 4 pictures are terrible.

Drinking Fountain, iPhone 4S

Drinking Fountain, iPhone 4

Loading Dock, iPhone 4S

Loading Dock, iPhone 4

Be sure to check them out at the original size in the gallery if you want to really see the details – iPhone 4/4S Comparison Gallery

Long Live the Future of Camera Phones

Like I said, this makes me excited for the future. Sure, it’s no match for my Canon S95, but I’d say it matches the quality of my old Canon SD400, which was my old compact before I got the S95.

One area where Apple could really spice things up is to allow manually control of the camera for things like long exposures. There are apps that claim to do things like that, but they’re all software-based – affecting the photo after it’s already been captured. If Apple allowed the user more control over the camera then they would really be giving point-and-shoots a run for their money.

What do you think? Do you agree with my fantastic observations? Leave a comment!

Cheers.

Oh yeah, it's got the GBs

Although I never considered myself one of ‘those people’, I got my hands on the new iPhone 4S the day it came out – Friday, October 14th. There was no line late in the day at the AT&T store, but still a bit of a party atmosphere. We were served popcorn and cotton candy while a DJ spun off to the side. What a strange phenomenon.

Initial Thoughts

Having owned the iPhone 4, the successor is a bit underwhelming. It’s awesome, for sure, but the differences are subtle compared to the huge leap between the 3GS and the 4. But hey, that’s why it’s called the iPhone 4S – the fact that it’s just an upgraded version is right there in the product name.

Rule of Thirds Grid

The camera is higher resolution (8 vs 5 megapixels), but the quality difference wasn’t very noticeable. The images are still pretty noisy, although the low light performance did seem quite a bit better. I will do some side-by-side comparisons with the iPhone 4. Stay tuned for that.

I haven’t had a chance to use it with a group of people, but the face detection feature is still nice for one person – if a face is detected a green square shows up briefly, separate from the blue focusing square. I’m not really much of a video person, so I didn’t try out the new 1080p recording ability.

Lock Screen Camera Access

My favorite new feature is not unique to the iPhone 4S but rather a part of iOS 5, which was released the Wednesday before the 4S came out. If your phone is in standby and you double-tap the home button, you get a camera button on the screen that takes you straight to the app – it’s wonderful. Before multitasking in iOS 4, I had the phone programmed to bring up the camera app whenever I double-tapped the home button and I was really sad when they took that ability away. Now it’s back, and better.

Another new iOS 5 feature is being able to press the up-volume button to take the photo. I’ve been using it, but not too often. Depending on how I’m holding the phone, it’s usually easier for me to press the button on the screen. I wouldn’t have guessed that – I thought I’d always use the volume button now that it’s an option.

Finally, in addition to turning HDR on and off, you now have the choice of a rule of thirds grid, which I’ve now left turned on all the time. Again, it’s part of iOS 5 and not unique to the iPhone 4S.

22 Photos from the First Weekend

Here are 22 of my favorite photos from the weekend. All are straight from the camera – no cropping or editing of any kind. If you’re so inclined, see them at full resolution here.