Tag Archives: Photography - Page 5

Fun Filters!

Posted by on February 3, 2012 No comments
Inspired by an interesting Reddit post I thought I would try out a new technique.  In the post, they talking about forgetting your lens cap and just using a cut off water bottle to hold you over till you can get a new one.  Some of the posters thought it would make for an interesting shot if you forgot to take it off before shooting.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

Well, Kind of.  Actually, using the bottom of the bottle turns out a really crappy shot…..

But, the TOP of the bottle, on the other hand.  I thought, well if I can see out the center of the bottle, now THAT might make an interesting shot.  Sure enough, it did!

This is what the setup was like:

And these are the resulting shots (click to embiggen):

Random Objects

Posted by on February 3, 2012 No comments

In my quest to take more pictures I have decided to go with a theme.  Random Objects.  Just some things you may pass every day and not take notice of.  For the past few weeks I have made it a point to climb to the top of our 6 floor stairwell just to get some stairs into my daily routine.  In doing so I pass by these pipes every day.  This one caught a very nice shadow and looked interesting:

Open Here

TARDIS Long Exposure pictures

Posted by on January 28, 2012 No comments

Using the same technique I was talking about in my last post, I decided to take a good subject out to a good location and try again.  This time I went to one of the local Battlefield areas and found a great hill that provided an amazing view.  L st night the weather was nice and clear so there were some good stars out as well.

I opted for two styles of picture, the straight long exposure that I turned in a good B/W shot, and a colorful light painting shot.  For the subject, I used my ½ scale TARDIS that my son and I built.  The light painting was actually done with Sonic Screwdrivers as my son and his friend ran wildly around the TARDIS.

Overall I am happy with the results.  They aren’t HDR, this is just a single shot taken between 2-3 min long.  I fired the strobe once or twice on the outside of the TARDIS to give detail and then twice inside to give the light.  (Click for Flickr Link)

TARDIS at Night

Sonic Stars

Long Exposure lessons from the fail book.

Posted by on January 26, 2012 1 comment
Last night I decided to try out a neat technique using long exposure and strobe highlights.  in a good environment, this can be used to highlight areas and paint light into dark spots.  Unfortunately, if you don’t have the right subject, it just doesn’t come out right.

The plan was to set up the camera on a tripod, up on the deck of my back yard, overlooking the trees in the yard.  I set up a shot for F-16, ISO200, and decided on around 2-3min exposure.  Then I took my SB-600 out into the yard and flashed various parts of the yard and the trees to highlight them.

(Important side note, wear shoes you don’t care about if you own a dog that typically uses the back yard as his restroom)

The end result was not what I was expecting at all, and not in a good way.  The final picture looked like a picture of my back yard with spotlights on the trees:

The sky was very overcast, the angle was wrong, the subject of the trees just wasn’t that interesting.  The only thing this shot had going for it was the concept.  I understand the concept better now, it’s just a matter of finding the right subject.  I’ll certainly revisit this idea again in the future after a scouting trip to find a good shot.

Interestingly enough, one of the shots you can just make out a ghostly figure of myself in the distance.

Chili

Posted by on January 24, 2012 No comments

Decided I really need to step back up my picture taking so my goal is to try and get a good shot in at least once a week.  This doesn’t include the shots I take for Sarah’s food/craft blog.

Chili

Click to embiggen.

Workin for the Man

Posted by on February 6, 2011 No comments

So here I am working on Super-bowl Sunday.  I have a bit while I wait for some code to compile and figured I would write up an update to say what I have been doing for the last few weeks.  I mean, that’s what the blog is for right?  Lately it seems like my blog is more of a place where I forget to write things.  I guess that’s what Twitter has done to me.  I think ‘Oh I already updated folks on twitter so I don’t need to post to the blog as well”.  The downside to that is that I really like writing.  When I look back at all my posts from last year and beyond I realize that some of them get crazy long.  I see other peoples blog posts and wonder how they can cram so much into so few paragraphs, then I realize that they have left out so much detail.

Perfect case in point for this, I have downloaded and started reading Stepto’s (Stephen Toulouse) new book, “A Microsoft Life”.  It’s a compilation of a number of blog posts he wrote throughout his career at Microsoft.  All of the stories are fascinating, but I am left wanting more details.  Each chapter is a post from the blog but I read one and am left with the feeling that there could be so much more that could be fleshed out.  I guess that could be seen as a complaint about the book, it was so good that I wanted to know more.  If you are a geeky type of person and interested in the more inner workings of the MS world, I highly recommended it.

Meanwhile back on the gaming front, I mentioned last time that I picked up a new laptop.  The ASUS beast, or Tumbler, has been an awesome addition to the house.  I have found myself playing more PC based games in the last month, just because I could.  Yeah, it could be a little more portable, but I love that it’s big and powerful.  Because of this I picked up both Civilization V and Starcraft II.  SCII is great for a quick 30min to 1 hour map, while Civ V is awesome if I want to kiss my weekend goodbye.  It’s amazing, I feel like I have discovered time travel.  Seriously!  I start playing Civ V and suddenly I am teleported to 6 hours in the future where the dog is whining because he wants food and the plants are dying.  I also realized how much I suck at SC II.  I bought the game because I love the storyline and am I steeped in the single player game.  I tried to play Multi-player though and was just swamped.  I guess it’s because I love the building aspect and hate the idea of just fast building stuff to throw at the enemy.  I want to build my troops up so they will survive the attack and that takes time!

On the photography side of the house, I am pining over a new camera.  Unfortunately it doesn’t exist yet.  I have seen lots of rumor reports of a Nikon 5100, and everything I see in the rumors lead me to believe that it’s the perfect camera for me.  I really want to replace my D3000 before DragonCon, so while I still have a few months to figure it out.  I love that the D5000 has the flip out screen and better everything than the D3000, but not as good as the 3100, the D90 is about the right price range, but lacks some of the newer features like an auto-focus while filming movies, the D7000 has all the best features (except the flip out screen) but is well over $1k.  There is a great site that has been helping me compare models of cameras: http://snapsort.com/compare. There is some speculation that the February 9th press conference may bring an announcement, but even more rumors saying that the 5100 won’t be announced for a while still.  Either way, I will be giving the D3000 a true test at PAXEast.

So for now, I sign off.  I hope to finish up here soon and head home for some chili and Super-Bowl action.  Not really a football fan, but I love watching the big game.  Weird right?

Clearing away the cobwebs.

Posted by on January 26, 2011 No comments

So I never realized that getting a new job would end up meaning I had so much less time. The new job is a better position and as we all know, with great power… yeah yeah. So needless to say I have been keeping busy and it hasn’t given me the time to write much. So lets run through some quick updates.

So to close out here are some photos I have taken since the last post:

The ThinkGeek runner Up:

IBM PC 5150 Classic:

National Cathedral:

Geln Echo Park:

ChinaTown Gate:

Obsessions

Posted by on December 3, 2010 No comments

I have a bazillion hobbies. I have always found myself wanting to try out something, and if I like it I will get really into it. Because of this I have started to become quite the jack of all trades when it comes to hobbies. The other day, an idea popped into my head to take artistic photos of my various hobbies. It’s kind of along the lines of “Do what you know”. I am not even going to attempt to list all of them, you will just have to wait and see.

I have a gallery posted for my Obsessions and all of the pictures will be loaded there. You can also find them on Flickr. Here are a few that I have doe so far:

The one about my new Nikon Camera

Posted by on November 29, 2010 No comments

I really enjoy photography. Back when I was in high school I was the news paper photographer and worked in the dark room there developing all my own photos. I loved it. To this day I can still identify the smell of stop wash. When I moved up to the bay area and switched schools I made the attempt to continue my path but sadly was blocked from this due to how things were handled at the new school. Because of this I ended up switching gears and really got into Drama. A part of me really yearned to get back into photography but time and money constraints have never been with me. Over the years I have picked up various point and shoot cameras, both film based and digital. I kind of made a point to always have some sort of camera on me, just in case a shot needed taking. And of course any time I would process my photos, or even look at other photos from friends, I would dream of the time I could afford to pick up a DSLR and get back into it.

Recently, and you may know, I have switched jobs and had an opportunity to take a step forward on this pipe dream. I decided that I would start combing the pawn shops and craigslists to see if I could find a good, inexpensive, camera. Well, one thing I learned really quick is that there are no good cheap DSLR cameras. The other month, fate made the decision for me and I found a Nikon D3000 at a local pawn shop. Infer a brief haggling exchange, I managed to pick it up for a very decent price. Thus it was decided that I would be a Nikon guy. I soon learned that the D3000 was a fairly good starter camera, which worked great for me since I was re-learning all over again.

My D3000 didn’t come with the standard stock zoom lens. Instead I got really lucky and it was paired with a 35mm 1.8 Nikkor lens. (roughly a $200 bonus). I picked up a starter book and set about framing my head with F-stops and shutter speeds. I was amazed at how fast I was able to fall back into the routine and stop using the auto settings. I pretty much only shoot in manual mode and make sure that I shoot a few shots of each subject with varying settings. I have been really impressed with the d3000 as far as guiding me through the learning process. It shoots great shots for a starter camera and was easy to learn.

Now, that said, the D3000 also has quite a few limitations. For a modern day DSLR, the 10mp is kind of low. Also, while most of the settings are great for the beginner, it’s lacking some of the more advanced options. Some simple video recording would have been nice too. The nice thing is that there is an opportunity to grow eventually when I need up upgrade, I can just look into a new body and retire this one.

If you would like to check out some of my photos, you can view most of them in my gallery.

You can also find me on Flickr.

Playing pool with long exposure

Posted by on October 17, 2010 No comments

Went to play pool for brunch like we do every Sunday and took the chance to re-take a picture I tried last weekend.  Only with much better results since I have a better grasp on what I am doing with the settings. (Click for big)

Break shot with the following settings:

Nikon D3000, F/22, 20 Sec Exposure, ISO-100, No Flash, 35mm Focal Length.  Minor tweaks in Adobe CS2.