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Tag Archive for 'photography'
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:: considering all options ::
so last week at this time I was in glorious downtown San Francisco with my lovely wife and HIGHlarious sister-in-law. as I eluded to in a prior post, we had a great time and prior to landing at Luna Park and drowning ourselves in bottomless-mimosas/blood marys, we strolled through a few shoppes and the mission st thrift store.
before we left, we checked in with cruzer the cat who assured us that he’d keep an eye on shit while we out.
random shops selling random wares kept us busy for a while until the call of bottomless brunch beverages became too strong to resist.
before we left, i found a mirror and snapped one of the only few photos of myself in existence. one quick stop to the local thrift store revealed a cornucopia of random crap including an album i’ve been needing to pickup for my collection.
also, they still have porn available…but you’ve gotta be desperate enough to ask for it…and then look at porn in a thrift store.
at long last we had done enough non-drinking activities to justify stopping by for a quick (read: three-hour-long) drink.
so yeah a day that started with mimosas and fondue ended with mimosas and build-your-own-smores.
i love you, San Francisco.
so remember yesterday when i got all dressed up in my junior-photographer-snow-gear and drove up to the SoCal mountains? and then it started to rain and I got frustrated? and all i took a photo of was that one yellow fire hydrant?
well, this morning the skies were blue after a week’s worth of storms dissipated. i took advantage of 50F temperatures and sunny skies to inspect the storm’s fallout.
this time i had more luck but all i found were these snow-covered mountains. here’s the best of a few hours of shooting and the rest can be found in this flickr set.
more and more i’m finding that getting away from everything for a few hours and snapping a few photos is very therapeutic.
so this week’s worth of storms dropped tons of rain and eventually snow in SoCal. i took advantage of a short day at lab and drove 20mi east to snow-drenched mountains in hopes of photo ops.
the roads up the mountains were closed off—even with chains—so I had to resort to parking in the riteaid parking lot and trekking around in my bad ass sorel boots while protecting my camera gear from the elements.
so even though i was decked out in my snow jacket, and was super-excited, the photography conditions were subpar. Everything was grey, washed out and then the freezing rain started and frankly i just didnt care enough to stand out in freezing rain.
so you get a photo of a yellow fire hydrant. sorry.
so I left campus a few days early and am enjoying being at home with the pretty girl. despite the fact that southern california doesn’t actually experience autumn, I still dig the cool, wood-burnt smell of my hometown air in late-November.
while I wait for vacation to catch up to my wife’s work schedule, I’ve been playing around with my new lens—a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS
after shooting these shots for about 15mins, our neighbor came outside and asked, “can I ask why you’re standing underneath the trees with your telescope? can you even see the sky with that thing?”
so I brought Buster the Dog home a new toy today. it survived about 10mins which equals out to about a dollar per minute. it was totally worth it though b/c he got to have some fun and I got to play around some more with the 70-200mm lens in “action mode”.
you’re welcome.
after being very underwhelmed with the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L, I decided to exchange it for the mother of all Canon lenses…the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS.
The good news for Buster was that I needed something/someone to shoot…and well, you know where I’m going with this:
Here’s buster peeking out the back door and being captured sharply at 200mm.
…and here’s Buster acting more bored than I’ve ever seen him.
also, I find these photos funny b/c Buster is unaware of what life is like without having a camera firing at him ad nauseum.
When I stuck the camera in buster’s face this afternoon, I was met with this look which can be interpretted as: “Seriously? Again with the camera?”
You would think after literally 1000s of photos, he’d be used to it. he-is-not.
Buster was kind enough to help me test out a lens I rented for my New Orleans’ trip—the Canon 35mm L f/1.4 prime lens. Got to love that shallow depth of field action.
so because I have work to do at a research hospital and the pretty girl has a conference to attend, we find ourselves at the Fairmont Hotel in Scottsdale, AZ. while I’ve been to Phoenix before, this is my first time experiencing Arizona from the plush accommodations of the Fairmont. Gotta tell ya…not half-bad. Here’s a few snaps from earlier today, in the meantime, I’ll be paying $28 for a salad. Cheers!
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more times than not I find myself shooting photos in the harsh incandescent light of my living room. even with my fastest lens (a 50mm f/1.4), I often find myself needing some help from a flash. on my Canon 50D, I use the Canon 430 EX II and an Stofen Omni-Bounce diffuser to help soften the light.
Last week, I ordered a Gary Fong Lightsphere II
from Amazon and put it through a few tests this weekend. Once I accepted the fact that my flash unit looked like it was adorned with a piece of tupperware, I was pretty happy with the results. The Lightsphere (I bought the “cloud” variety vs. the translucent type) does what it claims, it spreads out otherwise harsh strobe light and gives the appearance of what you would expect from a small lightbox.
Per the usual, Buster agreed to be photographed ONLY if he were allowed to do so with a mouth-full-of-bed.
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…and the rest of the Flickr set:
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so today school tried to get all up in my grill and I had to back hand it before it got too out of line. crisis adverted.
when I walked home for lunch, I saw that the FedEX guy had delivered my fancy new Glen Fong Lightsphere. What’s a Lightsphere you ask, why it’s a $40 piece of tupperware that you slip onto your flash, of course.
the idea is that it takes your otherwise harsh and spotlight-like-flash and diffuses it into a soft-milky-tub-o-fun. after a few shots, I’m undecided. also, because I’m stuck out here with out misty, in a pinch buster becomes my default photo subject. today he wasn’t all that into it as is evidenced by these…
oh and dude, have you ever listened to the version of “Thunder Road” from the 1975 London show? fuck, I’m not a crazy springsteen fan, but jesus, it’s good.
here’s the video for your face:
yeah, that’s enough.
so I spent some time last night figuring out how to export photos from Adobe Lightroom with a nice border and my nameplate. Using a plugin called LR2/Mogrify, I’m able to select a photo, invoke the export plugin which then adds 3 different borders of varying sizes and colors. Once the new image has been created, Photoshop automatically opens and I paste in my nameplate in the bottom right-hand corner.
Here’s an example using a photo I took at the Manzanar War Relocation Center:
I’m wondering if I can create some sort of Photoshop action that would take the exported photo and automatically add the name plate in the same spot? Photoshop gurus? If so, that would make the entire process 100% automated.
Buster the Dog is very keen to his surroundings and pays close attention to little queues from Misty and I. This evening, we pulled out our luggage for the weekend trip and Buster got the panic-look on his face. Granted, giant-rolling-black-bags are not the most subtle of clues, but Buster knows this means that shit’s about to go down.
I couldn’t resist snapping a shot of his “oh dammit” look.
Canon EOS 50D | EF 50mm f/1.4 | ISO 200 | Lexar Digital Media
have I even told you where we’re going yet?
So even though I’ve been busy today working on actual work, my attention is divided between what’s in front of me and the anticipation of the FedEX guy arriving with the lenses I rented for the weekend.
You see, when it comes to my little photography hobby, I have a rather short attention span. I plan out what I want to photograph, take the shots, play with them in post and am ready to move on to the next excuse to shoot. That being said, I never post as many photos to Flickr+Facebook+the blog as I plan. With this in mind, I’m going to start posting photos from the honeymoon so that when I get back from this weekend’s trip, I’ll be free to show off shots with L-series glass.
Here are two shots from the honeymoon week: The first was taken from the bridge that spans the Twin Lakes looking towards the aptly named Twin Falls. The day after this was taken, we hiked up to the top of the falls and looked back on the bridge from above. It was amazing and highly recommended if you ever find yourself in Mammoth.
Canon EOS 50D | 50mm f/1.8 | ISO 100 | Lexar Digital Media
This shot was taken from the balcony of our honeymoon suite at the Westin hotel (yes, there’s a Westin in Mammoth Lakes). Misty managed to drag me out of bed at 5am and I managed to shoot the sunrise through one blood-shot-eye. The fact that any of the shots were in focus is a small miracle and a real testament to lens stabilization technology.
Canon EOS 50D | Tamron 17-35mm AF Di f/2.8 | ISO 100 | Lexar Digital Media
In honor of 105F degree temperatures here in bakersfield, ca, I’m uploading a few photos from our honeymoon in Mammoth Lakes.
Captured using a Canon 50D with a 50mm 1.8/f lens at ISO 100 on Lexar Digital Media
Looking through these photos reminds me that there are indeed places where it’s not hotter than balls in July.
so it’s been 3 weeks since the pretty girl and I tied the knot and I’ve been in a honeymoon/wedding daze ever since. we are slowly getting our new lives put together both physically and digitally.
tomorrow the blog officially relaunches with all sorts of new content and some fresh-squeezed-awesome.
Captured with a Canon EOS 50D using a 17-35mm 2.8/f lens on Lexar Digital Media
for now, here’s a photo I took from the balcony of our honeymoon suite…it was roughly 40F cooler there than it was here today in bako. need I say more?
