Shooting Tight

This past weekend my fiance and a friend of ours and my sister all went shooting; I took my old Winchester Lever Action 30-30 to shoot and of course needed to clean it once we were finished.  This gave me inspiration to take a few tight shots during the process.  I think that the beauty of shooting tight showcases the little details that a larger, more general approach might overlook.  I love seeing the detail and narrowing the focus to something very specific in the shot, taking away a lot of the surrounding setting in order to direct attention to certain aspects of the overall story.  I was really excited to focus on the details since I'm very proud of this rifle and love showing it off (my Dad did all of the woodwork on the stock).  The lighting was from the porch light which is why there is more of an amber glow but honestly I think it works with the images and gives it an antiquated look that goes along well with the subject of the shots.

Kachina Doll

f/3.5  1/20  ISO6400

Saguaro and Mountains

f/3.5  1/20  ISO6400

Outers Cleaning Supplies

f/4  1/30  ISO6400

Solvents and Such

f/3.4  1/60  ISO6400

Flannel and Gun Oil

f/3.5  1/20  ISO6400

Almost Finished

f/3.4  1/20  ISO6400

An American Classic

f/3.5  1/15  ISO6400

Shooting Wide

For this assignment I wanted to try to capture the magic and art of coffee making that occurs in my house on a regular basis.  We take our coffee very seriously (we have an entire room dedicated to it), and its just a cool process; it was a little difficult to manage lighting in the room because of the huge windows that let in so much natural light so it took a while to get the pictures the way I wanted them.  Shooting wide I believe draws the eye to the main focal point that the photographer wants people to notice, whether it be little details within the picture or the overall general structure of the shot.  Hopefully I have somewhat of the right idea.  So here is the journey from deciding to make a cup of coffee to the divine finished product.

The Coffee Room

f/3.4  1/500  ISO5000

Choosing a Bean

f/3.4  1/320  ISO4000

Snipers Hide Blonde Roast

f/3.4  1/250  ISO4000

The Machine

f/3.4  1/400  ISO6400

Grinding Away

f/3.4  1/100  ISO6400

Ready for Brewing

f/3.4  1/160  ISO6400

Liquid Gold

f/3.4  1/200  ISO6400

Almost There

f/3.4  1/80  ISO4000

Elixir of Life

f/3.4  1/50  ISO4000

Bracketing

So I discovered upon exploring my camera settings that my f-stop only goes up to f/8 so that is the reason why my f-stop numbers are different.  I still tried to maintain the same idea with the 5 different settings, there's just not as much contrast as there would be if the f-stops on my camera went higher than f/8.

f/3.4  1/250  ISO200

f/4  1/250  ISO200

f/5.6  1/250  ISO200

f6.3  1/250  ISO200

f/8  1/250  ISO200

Adjusted Shutter Speeds

f/3.4  1/250  ISO200

f/4.0  1/320  ISO200

f/5.6  1/125  ISO200

f/6.3  1/100  ISO200

f/8  1/50  ISO200