chris barr

Photo/Dev/Design

2015 Photo Project – December In Review

Well, this wraps up my 2015 photo project! If you’re just now seeing this, you can read up on my 2015 goals here, but I’ll write another blog post on my 2015 goals as a whole later.  For now, here are my last installment of photos for the project.

Some friends of ours asked me to take a family portrait of them to use for Christmas cards and whatnot, so I was happy to do it.  Before everyone got there I was able to snap a few candid photos of their kids running around. After everyone showed up, the real photo I came to take was much easier now that someone could hold these kids!

The day before Christmas Eve, we got a tremendous amount of rain and there was a good bit of flooding as well. My wife and I walked over to the park to see the flooding, and the lake that is normally there was now much higher than usual, covering the base of nearly all the trees. That combined with the dense fog and the sun setting made for a really spooky & surreal looking environment. I rushed home to get my camera in hopes that I could capture this before the sun set. I got some great photos that documented what it looked like that day, but in editing them there was only really one photo that I really loved the way it looked in the end.


Photo #35 – 12/08/2015
Camera: Canon 7D w/ Canon 50mm 1.8 Lens
Settings: 1/400 seconds @ f/2.8, ISO 200, no flash


Photo #36 – 12/08/2015
Camera: Canon 7D w/ Canon 50mm 1.8 Lens
Settings: 1/200 seconds @ f/2.8, ISO 100, no flash


Photo #37 – 12/24/2015
Camera: Canon 7D w/ Canon 16-28mm 2.8L Lens
Settings: 1/80 seconds @ f/4.0, ISO 200, no flash

2015 Photo Project – November In Review

Recently a hobby of mine has been to find & collect older cameras at thrift stores. Out of the time these cameras are so old that they either no longer work, or they take a type of film that is now impossible to find or get developed. However, a few months ago I was able to find an Olympus OM-2n camera that takes your standard 35mm film that you can still get developed just about anywhere.

I wasn’t even sure that this camera would even work, and if it did it might have light leaks, so I just got a roll of Kodak Ultramar 400 from CVS to try it out. If the photos don’t turn out, no big deal. I went out on Saturday and just walked around taking still life photos. Once I got my 24 shots I went to drop it back off at CVS to be developed.

A few weeks later I got my print and a CD with the digital copies as well. The prints turned out much better than I had expected, but the CD turned out to be someone else’s photos of their grandpa, and some deer they shot… ok then. Luckily I have a scanner! I picked my favorites and scanned them in, then did some minor corrections in LightRoom to remove dust and color correct since my scanner isn’t the best.

So all in all, I’m happier than I expected with these photos, however the quality here isn’t stellar since they were taken on cheap film, developed at CVS, and then scanned in by me. But then again, I probably haven’t shot on film in over a decade, so it was a fun experiment for this month!

Below are my favorites.


November – Photo #30
Camera: Olympus OM-2n w/ 50mm f/1.4 lens & Kodak Ultramax 400 film


November – Photo #31
Camera: Olympus OM-2n w/ 50mm f/1.4 lens & Kodak Ultramax 400 film


November – Photo #32
Camera: Olympus OM-2n w/ 50mm f/1.4 lens & Kodak Ultramax 400 film


November – Photo #33
Camera: Olympus OM-2n w/ 50mm f/1.4 lens & Kodak Ultramax 400 film


November – Photo #34
Camera: Olympus OM-2n w/ 50mm f/1.4 lens & Kodak Ultramax 400 film

2015 Photo Project – October In Review

Running short on time and ideas for photos in October, one morning I was up and noticed a gorgeous sunrise, so I grabbed my camera and walked around the train tracks near my house. I got a few shots I was happy with, and I think this one came out the best.


October – Photo #29 – 10/24/2015
Camera: Canon 7D w/ Canon 16-28mm 2.8L Lens
Settings: 1/200 seconds @ f/3.5, ISO 200, no flash

2015 Photo Project – September In Review

My friend Andy and I have been wanting to get together and take some photos for a while, so at the beginning on September we finally did it. We both go to the same CrossFit gym, so we set up some equipment and just took practice shots of each other. Since there were only the two of us back there, I was only able to get photos of Andy, and he was only able to get photos of me. There was a lot of experimentation with lighting and angles, but we were both really happy with what we were able to capture. These are my two favorite shots from that day.


September – Photo #26 – 09/02/2015
Camera: Canon 5D Mark II (Andy’s) w/ Canon 16-28mm 2.8L Lens
Settings: 1/125 seconds @ f/4.5, ISO 500, 2 off camera flashes


September – Photo #27 – 09/02/2015
Camera: Canon 7D w/ Canon 50mm 1.8 Lens
Settings: 1/125 seconds @ f/5, ISO 100, 1 off camera flash

2015 Photo Project – August In Review

In July my wife and I were able to take a much needed vacation for our first anniversary, and we decided to go to Colorado for a little over a week. It was absolutely incredible! Colorado probably has the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen, and we did a lot of hiking where we were able to enjoy it. So far, most of these are some of my favorite images I’ve captured this year so far in this photo project.


August – Photo #23 – 08/29/2015
Camera: Canon 7D w/ Canon 16-28mm 2.8L Lens
Settings: 30 seconds @ f/16, ISO 100, no flash


August – Photo #24 – 08/29/2015
Camera: Canon 7D w/ Canon 16-28mm 2.8L Lens
Settings: 30 seconds @ f/16, ISO 100, no flash


August – Photo #25 – 08/29/2015
Camera: Canon 7D w/ Canon 16-28mm 2.8L Lens
Settings: 30 seconds @ f/16, ISO 100, no flash

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