Tag Archives: Photography - Page 4

London Shots, Part Deux

Posted by Steve on July 26, 2012 No comments

Slowly working my way through the shots I had planned to process. Here is the next batch!

While walking past Buckingham Palace, we didn’t plan on going in, but I would be remiss if I didn’t grab a shot of one of the guards.

From the London Eye, everything seems so small! I loved the skewed view of this shot, and the curve of the earth.

“As every school child knows, there have been ravens at the Tower of London since time immemorial, and if they ever leave, the monarchy and the tower itself will fall.”

While visiting the Prime Meridian, we got a great view of the city. You can see them building up te Horse Arena to be used for the Olympics.

Highgate Cemetery is separated into and East and West side. We opted for the East side and I am glad we did. It’s covered with overgrown graves and very ominous.

London Shots

Posted by Steve on July 17, 2012 No comments

As promised, here are a few of the good shots as I go through and process them.

Click to Embiggen

This panorama was shot from up on Parliament Hill in Hampstead Heath. We stopped off at the Southampton Arms pub and had a few GREAT pints of cider. Somehow we thought it would be a good idea to stagger through the park and hike all the way up to the top of the hill. I am really glad we did since I was able to take this shot. I used Photoshop CS5 to stitch the panorama together.

Click to Embiggen

Here is your standard picture of the Clock Tower. Apparently, Big Ben is the name of the bell inside the tower. We stopped along the bridge and I snapped this one pretty quick. I was happy with how it came out.

Click to Embiggen

Click to Embiggen

On the Thursday we were there, the building known as The Shard was having its opening ceremonies. Part of that was shooting off lasers across the city! I didn’t have much time to get to a closer location and thought that, through the London Eye would be a good shot. I set up for about an hour and got both of these shots. One is the lasers going off and the other is a Long Exposure of the Eye as it spun. The laser show started at 10:15pm and the Eye stops moving at 10:00pm

Click to Embiggen

Lastly (for now) is the London Underground. On the last day I realized I didn’t have any good shots of the Tube. I loved the blur on the train for this one, but had to do some cleaning up of some other parts of the shot. Lets just say someone gave a crack at photobombing.

I will try and have some more shots up soon.

We’re Back!

Posted by Steve on July 16, 2012 No comments

This was the start of our London Journey

Hey all!

We are now back from London! We had a total blast the whole time out there and I took a metric F-Ton of pictures! (They use the metric system over there.) Most of them are the touristy style pics, you know, because that’s what we were. I did manage to set up and take some good solid pictures that will require some post processing and tweaking. Those will be trickling out over the coming days. Sarah actually as a very good day by day accounting of our trip over on her website.

Sarah got a few snaps of me taking snaps

I did want to touch on a few things that really made the trip though. (from a Gadget/Tech/Game perspective, that is.) For my photography stuff I brought the whole backpack of gear, but rarely used all of it. For general city travels I used my messenger bag and typically just the camera and my 18-270mm lens. It was great for all around shooting. On a few days I brought my 35mm with me, but rarely needed to swap it out. I found that carrying around my full 15-20lb bag of gear would wear me out fast. Also, I am not ashamed to say that a lot of shots were done in AUTO. I was there as a tourist, I liked some of what I saw so I wanted a picture. These were for memories, not art. I know there are some photogs out there that claim they would never use the AUTO setting on their camera……they are full of crap. It’s there for a reason. To get the memory you want at a good quality.

Setting up for a shot of the London Eye

That said, I also set up a number of shots specifically to be processed and done in an artistic way. These were set in M and bracketed. The downside being that 1: I have a large number of photos to go through, and 2: Sometimes I would forget I was bracketed and ended up with some shots all over the place in exposure. (what, I was tired!) All of my Touristy shots are in my gallery on the site here. My Artistic shots will be trickling out as I work on them and probably uploaded to Flickr. Keep an eye out!

Actually, we had good Signal everywhere

We had a very fun experience with Cell phones while in the UK as well. My friend loaned me an old iPhone 3G for the trip and my wife as using her unlocked Motorola Razr Maxx. First thing at the airport I tried one of the kiosks to grab a sim that we could at least use to call our driver. It was an O2 card that was 10£. Sadly, I didn’t use it at all, it had no data and we found our driver before needing it. Next, while out we hit up a local shop that dealt in various phone stuff. I picked up a 3 sim that had the low end of texts and min, but unlimited data for 15£. Since we were only using data while here it would be perfect. It worked perfect in the old iPhone but in the wife’s Motorola it wouldn’t get any data. The guy said to go to the 3 store in westfields and they would fix it.

Had I realized (or not been tired from the plane) there was a mall right next to me, I would have just gone there. The 3 store was shit for help. Their on staff folks were clueless and their phone support couldn’t figure out the Android APN settings. We decided to hit the O2 store and got a sim that had 500mb data topped up to 1.5gb. The Guru was enamored with the Motorola and set up the APN very quickly. Everything worked great! Again, had I been more aware of my mental state, I would have just had them top up the card I bought at Heathrow.

As a side note, while out and about we noticed that O2 had better service with better coverage, but 3 had that unlimited data factor for cheap. The final score board was 1 O2 Sim from the airport never used. 10£ 1 3 Sim from random store, never used 15£ 1 3 Sim from random store, used in iPhone 15£ 1 O2 sim from O2 store, used in Motorola, 20£

Yeah, that’s a game.

From the gaming side of things, we had a great meetup with some of the RetroNickRadio fans out in the UK! You can find the details of that over at the RetroNick site. We were also clued in to a little hole in the all Arcade located right near the London Eye. I got very few pictures and didn’t have enough time to really explore, but it was a great find.

I know this post is starting to drag on so I will cut out here. Expect some more excerpts from the trip in the coming weeks!

Panning, Lessons from the fail book.

Posted by Steve on May 9, 2012 No comments

This last weekend I was out at a MINI event with lots of cars and driving and great outdoors. In talking with my friend Paul, we figured this would be the perfect chance to try a technique known as “Panning”. This is where you set your camera to a lower shutter speed (to keep it open longer) and you move the camera at the same speed as the target you are shooting. This gives the illusion of speed to the target. It’s great for shooting cars as they go past. The car stays in focus, but the background becomes a blur of speed.

This is NOT an easy trick to master.

Bad Bad Bad Bad

I decided to stop mid way on the Tail Of The Dragon to test out this technique. There were lots of photographers on the road so my setting up camp for 30-45min wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary. I understood the principle of the technique, now to just practice. Something I learned quickly was that location is a huge part of this. I set up near a turn, and not far off from the road. This was two-fold of a problem since most of the cars were coming towards me, instead of past me, and it was hard to see them coming. With the cars shortening the distance to me, I had to work on my focus as well as the panning. If I got the focus right, I may not have the whole subject in the frame. If I got the panning right, the subject would be out of focus.

All totaled, in 45 min of practice, I took around 100 shots.

Of those 100, I ended up with 4 that were close to what I wanted, and only 1 really good one.

Needless to say, this is something that I will be working on.

On the road again!

Posted by Steve on April 30, 2012 No comments

So I took a break from posting last week to stop and breath in between travels. I got back from Vegas and had some down time before my next trip. This week I will be making the trek down to Deals Gap North Carolina to participate in the MINI’s on the Dragon event. Each year the MINI groups descend on the “Tail of the Dragon” to enjoy a cool drive and hang out with other fun MINI owners. I will be meeting up with some local friends and some from across the continent. I am packing all of my camera gear to take lots of pictures, and will even try and experiment with a few new techniques specific to auto photography.

After that I will be driving out to Fayetteville NC for work related stuff. Not as exciting, but I am heading straight there from the Dragon so that’s gonna be fun.

One of the projects I hope to work on for this trip is a Video log of the journey. I am heading out for this trip by myself so I think it would be fun to document the trip and anything I may see along the way. I have my GoPro mounted inside the MINI (Top Gear style) to record the trip logs and will be editing it all together when it’s done. That mixed with some of the various tech tools and gear I have for the drive, should be fun!

Stay tuned! Next post may be from the road!

Praying Mantid!

Posted by Steve on March 29, 2012 No comments

Sarah is very happy with the garden she has in the front yard. On occasion I have taken some pictures out there of some cool looking flowers. Lately, though, there has been a flood of pesky bugs that have moved in. In order to combat this, Sarah has ordered an army! Well, an army of praying mantids. What I was expecting was this:

But what we got was these VERY tiny little mantid. They will grow to be larger, (maybe not a rideable size) but in the meantime, I get to do some Macro photography!

Getting Down with Bluegrass

Posted by Steve on February 20, 2012 No comments

This weekend we managed to pry ourselves out of the house and get out to accomplish things! First was taking a long walk to make sure we got some extra steps on our FitBit’s. 2.6 miles of walking out for lunch, and errands netted us quite the step count. After that it was off to Old town Alexandria to meet up with Sarah’s Sister and Brother-In-Law. You see, it was Josh’s Birthday and because he loves music, the plan was to go out and hear some live. The place that was picked….Tiffany Tavern.

When I heard “Tavern” I was all set to see a pub-like atmosphere with some fish and chips and Shepard’s pie. (although, I a a bit spoiled when it comes to Shepard’s Pie) Unfortunately, when we arrived I noticed that it was a lot more “Dineric” and less “Pubish” The food was ok, and the service was great, that is, until the band started playing. After that we rarely saw a waitress. (Maybe they were groupies that were fawning over the band members) I wouldn’t say that you shouldn’t go there, but it was not the greatest place. I give it a good solid “Meh”

So, how was the band? The band was actually great! Fun fact, as a kid I grew up around Bluegrass music so I am no stranger to it, and for the most part, really do enjoy it. The technique that goes into it is outstanding and it’s one of the forms of music that comes from a very deep rooted story based culture. Satyr Hill came with 6 band members (although I believe that a few of them were just visiting) and a rocken good time! You can see pictures from the set here at my Flickr page, and enjoy the slideshow below.

Oh, and the final step count for that day?

Gadget Time!!

Posted by Steve on February 16, 2012 No comments

It’s been a while since I have posted about some interesting gadgets, and I happen to have come across a few that are post worthy! So here goes.

Having driven the MINI around for the last few months, and being a part of the DC Metro MINI club, I REALLY enjoy my car. Many of the club owners like to make videos of their drives using the GoPro brand cameras. Being a camera type guy, I thought I would check one out and have some fun. So here is my pro/con list

Pro:

Light weight – Very small for just the camera and easy to pocket.
TONS of attachments (I got the Motor-sport version)
Easy to use – Menus are quick and easy
Cool Wide Angle – Gets everything in the shot
Good Quality (Not great, but good) – Auto adjustment of speed and ISO does oddly in low light

Con:

Over Simplified – It would be great if there were a few more options and configurations.
Low light sucks – In low light it ramps up the ISO a lot so there is some significant grain. But it’s not really meant for low light so….
Ball Joint mount would rock. – All of the mounts are pivot one way, you can add pivot points in, but it increases vibration.

Overall, I like it. It is currently mounted behind my rear view mirror and is nearly invisible to my FOV while driving.

This ties into another gadget I picked up. The OBDII adapter for Blue-Tooth. This is a chip that plugs into the data-port on my MINI (and any car after 1996) and provides all sorts of information on real time data from the engine to fault codes. I connect to it using my Android phone and an app Called Torque.

Now I just need to know what all that data actually means! (I am still learning).

Now, how does this all come together? Well, there is another android app called aLapRecorder HD. This connects to the OBDII chip and then can record all of that data for a specific drive. I can then output that data into a format that can be overlayed on to the GoPro video.

I will be using this for future drives out with the MINI to record the results. Especially the upcoming MINI’s on The Dragon event. If you have any questions about the above gadgets, please feel free to ask!

On the subject of Jelly Beans

Posted by Steve on February 15, 2012 No comments

The other day Sarah was out at an event with some friends while I gleefully stayed home and slept of played video games. Sometimes we do this. Well, when she came home she was loaded down with various food stuffs that were excess from the event. Some very evil person sent her home with a jar of Jelly Belly brand jelly beans.

O_O

Yes, the most amazing jelly bean on the planet. It is taking all of my willpower to not devour the whole jar in one sitting (it’s a big jar too). To combat my desire to “eat all the things”, I decided to set up a little photo shoot. Below are the results:

No one likes the black jelly beans!

As you can see from this chart, we show 100% Deliciousness.

Both of these shots were done with my SB600 strobe mounted on the Gorilla pod stand, positioned about 2 feet away and the Lightsphere about 1 ½ feet above the subject. (Triggered remotely)

MINI Photoshoot

Posted by Steve on February 6, 2012 No comments

This last Saturday we scheduled some time with the MINI club (DC Metro MINI’s) to get a bunch of us out for a photo shoot. Turns out a lot of the MINI folks are really into photography as well! One of the folks found a really nice parking garage and we line up about 15 MINI’s to start taking pictures. After we spent about 3 hours shooting in the garage we headed out to Wolf Trap in Northern VA for some outside shots. Unfortunately it started to rain so I ended up putting my D5100 away (no weather sealing). Thankfully some of the others had the right equipment and we got some great shots.

You can see all of the shots at these flickr links, below is just a few of the shots: