EvanAgee.com » Photography

Photography: Mitchell Agee

Evan — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:05:34 +0000

My brother Mitch. I’ve REALLY been getting back into photography lately and trying out some high-end lenses. Wow… what a difference!

Taken with the Canon T2i and the Canon 16-35mm F2.8L USM

Aperture 3 places feature video tour

Evan — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:20:22 +0000

One of the awesome new features in Aperture 3 is the addition of the “Places” feature from iPhoto. It has been improved and is truly a great new way to explore your photos. For larger video, go here.

Initial Green Screen Test

Evan — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:56:33 +0000

I’m really getting into video production these days. It’s something I’ve had an interest in throughout the years but never more than now. Perhaps it’s the availability of incredibly high-quality HD camcorders for under $1000, or perhaps it’s because I’m starting to do some video production work for my day job, either way I’m having the time of my life and loving every second.

Just recently I acquired a few pieces of video-related gear including Final Cut Studio 2.0, a 2 piece soft box lighting kit, backdrop support as well as black, white and green muslin backdrops and a high quality lapel mic. It’s basically a movie studio on a budget and though I’m still in the process of learning the ins and outs of the process I’ve finished my first green screen test and I’m happy with the results (don’t adjust your speakers, there is no audio).

It’s not perfect, there are a few little artifacts and lighting/reflection issues, but what’s cool is that I only spent about 10 minutes setting up this shot. I didn’t iron the green screen and it wasn’t lit perfectly, but still you can begin to see the potential of this simple setup. Below is a photo of the setup I’m using. In case you’re interested, here are links to the eBay auctions where I purchased the gear.

Some updates to the photography section

Evan — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:50:01 +0000

I’ve been tearing into the Flickr API over the last few days and I’m really excited about the possibilities! If you take a look at the photography section you’ll see some of the fruits of my labor. It doesn’t seem like a major deal to the non-developers our there but it’s actually very exciting to me! I’m able to post my photos on Flickr as I’m used to doing but also have those same photos available here on this website for visitors.

Take a look at the photography section!

I’m considering adding even more features so you don’t have to visit Flickr in order to view details/comments for a photo but I’m not sure whether or not it’s worth it since Flickr has so many great community building tools built right in. But, at least for now you can browse through my photos quickly and easily without leaving this site.

If you’d got any ideas or requests of things you’d like to see integrated feel free to pass them along as a comment and I’ll see what I can do. Does anyone mind having to go to Flickr get more information on a photo?

Photo project, your input needed!

Evan — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:24:50 +0000

I’m planning a photo project entitled Photo Tour of Wayne County. I’m hoping to get shots all over the area of places that sum up life in this area. The places can be landmarks, popular places or just special places that others should know about. Keep in mind that they don’t have to be entire buildings, they can be a small detail that exists in the area. Maybe a door that’s particularly interesting, a beautiful stained glass window at one of the local churches, or a secret location in the middle of the forest somewhere. I’d love your suggestions! Feel free to post a comment and I’ll add it to my list.

Nikon D40 – I got a new camera!

Evan — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:18:38 +0000

After a couple years of using my faithful Minolta Dimage Z1 I’ve just upgraded to a new camera! I ended up getting a Nikon D40 with the kit lens (18-55mm) and I’m already loving it! It’s a little hard to get used to a more professional camera that doesn’t try to hold your hand as much but I’m getting there. I also ordered the Nikon 55-200mm AF-S VR lens, so that should keep me busy for a while.

Keep an eye on Flickr for some photos from the new camera in the near future!

Flickr Stuff

Evan — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 04:22:03 +0000

As I wrote about recently I had some of my photos featured on Flickr’s Explore page. What does that mean? Well, there are millions of photos uploaded to Flickr every day and as those photos come in the Flickr staff watch for photos that they deem to be interesting. How interesting a photo is can be determined by many things but something tells me it’s mostly just whether or not the photo catches their eyes. Either way, they choose your photos and the result is that thousands of people are all of a sudden looking at your photos (in particular the one they chose as interesting).

The bad news is that other than a spike in the number of interaction you get from other users there’s no good way to tell which of your photos have been deemed interesting by the powers that be. Or at least I didn’t think there was… If you’d like to find out which of your photos have been featured on Flickr’s Explore page simple visit the page below and input your e-mail address or User ID for your Flickr account and you’ll be shown a list of your images that are/were featured on Explore as well as their current rank for that day.

Last Train to Richmond

Evan — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 15:44:13 +0000

Since I was a kid I’ve always been amazed by the Penn Station here in Richmond. It has always been a reminder of the stature Richmond once had in this country. I’ve always wondered what it looks like inside and how busy it must have been back when it was still in use. In high school I had dreams of renovating the building and turning it into an upscale restaurant with dim lighting and candle-lit tables. That’s why I was so excited when I found David Kohrman’s blog.

David is a photography student and “Urban Explorationist” who travels around taking pictures of old, decaying buildings. He was brought to my attention by a co-worker so I checked out his photos from his recent trip to Richmond to photograph the Pennsylvania Station. He took some amazing photos that reveal the beauty the station once had. Now it’s nothing more than a coffin despite the appearance on the outside.

I highly suggest you check out all of the photos he took, they’re amazing.

Photo tour of Wayne County Indiana

Evan — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 18:39:26 +0000

I’ve found a new love, and as many people who know me will tell you, it’s photography. The more comfortable I get with the basics of photography the more I love it.

I was thinking recently about some ideas for photography projects when I had an idea. I want to create an in-depth photo tour of Wayne County. There are some beautiful scenes in this area and I would like to share them with the world. I have to give some credit to Jane Holman with Waynet.org for starting the Wayne County, Indiana group on Flickr, which was part of my inspiration for starting the project.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been taking some time to go out and around Wayne County looking for areas that represent what makes Wayne County so great. Once I’ve had time to determine what locations I will be photographing I will go out and get some shots. I haven’t yet decided how I’m going to release the project, whether it will be online only, whether I will offer printed versions, or maybe even a calendar, but I’ll keep you potsed.

Exploring Indiana through photography

Evan — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 16:08:48 +0000

This weekend was one of the most memorable that I’ve had for quite some time. Friday evening Kristen and I went to see Richmond Civic Theatre’s production the Diary of Anne Frank, which was quite wonderful. The highlight of my weekend however took place most of the day on Saturday.

Kristen had been planning all week to take a trip to Muncie to do some clothes shopping with her birthday money. I myself however have long since become tired of trips to Muncie so I opted to stay here in Richmond while she and her mom went out to clothes shopping bliss. What was I going to do all day while she was gone? Take pictures. I called up Jamie (my brother-in-law) and we both went out into the country, cameras in tow. What ensued was a wonderful day of exploration and sight-seeing in some of the most beautiful country wilderness that I’ve ever seen.

Over the last year or so I’ve been trying to improve my photography skills. I’ve always enjoyed photography but I’ve never been that good at it despite several attempts. After Kristen and her parents got me a digital camera for Christmas last year I decided this was the time to get started learning. Since then I’ve been taking pictures like a mad man and looking through them and trying to figure out why I’m not achieving the results I was looking for when I took the photo. The result has been better photos straight from the camera vs. Photoshopping them to death to get the “look” I was going for in the first place. So, our trek around Indiana was the perfect oppourtunity for me to learn even more and flex my photographic muscle.

I got several photos that I was very happy with and many more that are okay but not really anything great. However, after doing some reading this appears to be common amongst even professional photographers. One of the biggest tips that I got from some photographers online was to take as many shots of a single subject as I could take and then, when I was sick of the target, take a few more. It makes sense now but before I had this green sense of pride that I needed to have the picture framed and setup correct on the first shot or else I was just hacking. This isn’t the case. Most photographers suggest for every 500 photos you take you might find 10 or 20 that you really like. The others are just filler. So that’s what I did. I took close to 700 pictures on Saturday and ended up with a handful that I am really proud of.

There were several things that happened while we were out that made the day special. We noticed a horse grazing in a pasture and decided to get out of the car and take some photos of it. Not long after, to our surprise, two more came right up to the fence. Needless to say we took more than enough photos of the two horses.

We were driving through the country down a winding road and at one point we came around a corner and saw one of the largest expanses of soybeans that I’ve ever seen and just on the other side of the field was a large forrest of brightly colored trees and a small white house nestled between the field and trees. We spend quite a bit of time photographing that scene. It’ll be hard to top it as far as scenery goes.

It was a glorious day. It’s very easy to get cought up in the stress of life and all of the things that you need to get done. Sometimes you need to take some time to notice and then enjoy the things that are around you.

Photo management and sharing

Evan — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 16:08:08 +0000

I’ve been getting into photography pretty heavily lately and one area of technology that I’ve been paying a lot of attention to lately is photo management and online photo sharing software.

Finding good photo management software

I’ve found that with all of the photos that I’m taking it’s no longer feasible to have a hierarchy of folders on my hard drive that I browse through by hand, so I started looking for photo management software. I didn’t have to look long before I found a perfect solution.

I had never heard mention of Picasa2 before it showed up in my search results for photo management software on Google. I followed the link and looked through the features waiting to see the price but one never showed up, that’s when I saw the "Free Download" link at the top of the page. It was free, and I was going to download it and try it out.

My first impression was that the software wasn’t what I needed. It was very slick, it scanned my entire computer for photos/graphics of various formats and then put them into Picasa2′s easy-to-use interface where I could then proceed to organize and edit all of my photos. But it seemed at first like a souped-up version of Windows Explorer because it was mostly a listing of the folders containing photos with thumbnail views, so I looked for other solutions.

The free version of Adobe Photoshop Album was my next tester. It had some nice features but lacked the smooth interface that Picasa2 had. I didn’t really like the way that it allowed you to organize photos, so I quickly abandoned it and went back to Picasa2, realizing that maybe it was better than I thought. I was right.

It’s difficult at first to take in all of the capabilities of Picasa2 because the software is a little different than anything I’m used to. For example, it has this notion of collection, labels and folders which is hard to figure out at first, but once I got the hang of it I was really impressed. Let’s say I have 4 different folders on my computer that contain pictures of cars. Each of the photos of cars needs to stay in with all of the photos that they were taken with but I want a way to see all of the photos of cars that I have on my computer. How do I do that? Simple, labels. I can select each of the photos with cars in the them and add a label of "cars" and it will automatically create a new "set" of images that have that label, allowing me to quickly view them all. This is just one example of the great things that Picasa2 can do.

One of the other REALLY strong features of Picasa2 is it’s editing capabilities. I’m a Photoshop user, and though there are many things that you can do with PS that you can’t do with Picasa2, Picasa2 does everything that the typical user would want to do. Picture a little too dark or light? No problem, Picasa2 has sliders that allow you to increase light or shadow. Need to adjust the colors in your image? Picasa2 can do that too. They’ve also got a great variety of effects that you can apply to your photo such as a black and white and sepia effect and even more helpful ones like glow and graduated tint. There are 12 effects in all and they are a great way to turn a so-so shot into a wonderful image. The best part of their editing tools is that they’re non-destructive which means that the edits can be changed or removed at any time, taking your photo back to its original state.

Some of the other cool features of Picasa2 are the ability to create slick slideshows, create gift CDs to give to family and friends and the ability to auto-generate a movie from a collection of pictures.

Sharing photos online

With my photo management software chosen and out of the way, I was ready to move on to my online photo sharing software.

I’ve had a photo gallery on my website for some time, but I’ve never been happy with the functionality. I want to be able to share photos with friends and family easily and not have to take up a great deal of space on my website. I didn’t do a lot of research before I received an invitation to join a Wayne County photo group on Flickr. I had heard mention of Flickr before, but didn’t think it was something I would be interested in. I took a look at the group I was invited to and decided to sign up for a free account so I could post my photos to this group. I was instantly amazed at the quality of their services.

Using all of the latest web technologies, Flickr has created a web-based interface that is very easy to use and doesn’t require a lot of clicking or waiting to get things done. The free account even allows you to store an unlimited number of photos (though you can only upload 20Mb worth per month).

One of the best features of Flickr is the community that it is built around. There are millions of people signed up and can look at all of their photos online. However, my favorite feature of Flickr are the groups, which allow you to connect with other people that enjoy taking photos of the same items you do. Do you enjoy taking landscape photos? Beautiful Scenery might be the group for you!

There are so many features that make Flickr great, but you have to try it for yourself to believe it. Why not, it’s free! I’m planning on getting a pro account (it’s only $25/year!!!) soon and moving all of my photos to Flickr and getting rid of my gallery software. I can hardly wait!

The Skaters

Evan — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 16:22:40 +0000

Last night I decided to take some photos over at the high school next to our house. After a little while I heard some boys skateboarding in another area near the high school so I went over and asked them if I could take some pictures while they were skateboarding. I needed something more interesting to photograph than the school building, and thankfully they said yes. They seemed very excited to have someone that was interested in their skateboarding. I guessed that they probably were used to being ignored or told to get off of the school property when they were skateboarding.

Most of my photos didn’t turn out to well because of the light, but I really love this one. One of the guys sat down to rest for a while and I snapped this photo.

Once they were done the other boy asked me if I would be willing to help him film a "sponsor me" video (whatever that is). I told him that I would and gave him our phone number and then he went home.