Thinking Outside of the Box – M.T Hoffman

Ever since I was a young kid I always loved photography. I would constantly borrow my mom’s 35 mm camera and
take numerous photos of animals, bugs and nonsense. Even as a child, I enjoyed taking photos of the random things
that I would come across.

When it comes to taking arbitrary pictures not much has changed since then. If there’s one thing that photography
has taught me is that beauty in this world can be found anywhere if you look hard enough – and by playing around
with the various settings your camera has to offer, searching for that beauty can be a fun experience.

Macro Photography
An ongoing theme that I have with my photography is with macro photography. I’ve always been fascinated with
the beauty of getting up close and personal with a subject and seeing such enticing details come to life.

Although I have yet to utilize a macro-lens, I’m still able to capture some beautiful images with my camera’s macro
settings.

Bugs are usually one of my major subjects when taking a macro photo. I usually try and take as many photos as
possible, since the subject may have sporadic movements. The minutiae of a subject as trivial as a fly can be easily
seen with the assistance of a good camera and a good focus.

For me, flowers are another common subject. Unlike insects, flowers can be easily photographed from a very close
distance without the possibility of the subject flying off. I usually utilize natural sunlight to achieve the brightest
pictures possible.

Different Exposure Times
I often try and shoot with different exposure times in order to get a nice variety of photos. A longer exposure time
can create softer, blurred looking images whereas a shorter exposure time can produce a sharper image.

This was one of the first photos I took when fiddling around with different exposure times. I was able to capture a
red, yellow and green traffic light.

For photos of the fire pit (Playing with fire) I used a few different exposure times – 4 seconds (shown here), 10 seconds, 30 seconds
and 35 seconds. Personally, I think fire is one amazing subject to photograph when testing out the exposure settings.

This photo was taken on a car ride – there were a ton of different lights to the side of me, so I took a quick photo
of what I was looking at; the settings were at 3.2 second exposure – such a small window of light created this
interesting abstract photo.

I’ve also seen beautiful abstract photos of the sky. When leaving the exposure open for longer than 30 seconds long,
the photo is able to capture the earth’s rotation which creates a stunning abstract photo.

Photo creativity can be discovered numerous of ways – by simply thinking outside the box.

M. T. Hoffman

About Ruan Smit

Ruan Smit started Pixelsmithstudios with the vision of bringing all the most dedicated designers to his blog. The idea behind this project is to create a new design orientated environment of sharing, learning and expertise development.

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