Landscape lighting

Tried to take some shots of my landscape lighting at night with the digital SLR and the tripod. The shots below were taken with no flash.

Man, I wish I knew how to do this photography stuff! I'm sure a professional photographer could've gotten a much nicer-looking shot than what I did. This one seems too dark in the dark spots and too bright in the bright spots:

On this one, the camera somehow found way more light than was even there in real life! Amazing! And yet, not the look I was going for:

I thought maybe Photoshop could help me tweak them to make them look more like real life, but alas I don't really know what I'm doing in that realm either. :)

Dim light shots

Well, I got myself a tripod so I could test out some of the non-flash or low-light capabilities of my camera. And Kwali as always was ready to help out. He’s such a good model! :-) He sat almost perfectly still while I took a no-flash shot with the lights on:

As well as one with the lights off:

I think the lights-off one looks a little more artistic with the light coming in from the other room. Way to go Kwali! :-)

btw – I also took an outdoor shot. Every year I have this one rose bush that blooms, but usually only stays alive for about a week before falling over dead (is that my fault???) So I try to take pictures of it before that dreadful day:

Here’s the same pic, zoomed in – I love megapixels! :-)

New camera

A co-worker convinced me to buy a new camera. Now that I’ve got it, I guess digital photography will be my new hobby. In particular, I’m developing a weird obsession for taking extremely close-up pictures (I think they call this macro photography):

And of course Kwali has graciously volunteered to model for me. I’ve already taken about 200 useless pictures of him just this weekend alone! As you can see he’s very patient with me. :-)