I’d like to have a better title for this—something about the dark and scary forest in which live all manner of unicorns and rainbows and fluffy bunnies and whatnot, perhaps—but I couldn’t really come up with anything, and I have very little to say about it at all, other than ‘here it is!’

D7000. LensBaby Muse (plastic), mounted on the Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron). ISO100, 1.6 seconds (AP Mode), both wide open, -2EV. Minimal processing in Aperture to bring out some detail in the upper half.

I had a hard time arriving at a 365 shot today… over 100 pictures made, 50 deleted before reaching the computer even, and the rest a big bunch of meh.

I’d still be shooting, but it’s dinner time and I can’t stare at screens any more today, so this will have to do.

I think I’m getting better at making Meh pictures, though, so that’s something I guess.

D7000. Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G, reversed, on 100mm extension. ISO100, 1 sec. f/1.8. Heavily processed in Aperture.

“He tried to focus on her, but past and future were merging into the present, blurring her image. He saw her in countless ways and positions and settings.”

Not much to say about this one… I read that passage last night, dogeared the page, came home from work today and made this picture.

Does this capture the quote? I think it does, but maybe you feel otherwise. It’s ok either way.

And actually, I do have something to more to say…

When I first had the idea to try illustrating a novel, I started writing down important things—or things that I saw as important—or memorable scenery, and I planned to go back later and shoot, say, a stillsuit, or the pain box, or a desert storm, or folding space, or etc.

But now I see that there is another, more interesting way to approach this … Read More »

“Paul felt the diminishment of his self as he advanced into the center of the circle. It was as though he lost a fragment of himself and sought it here.”

After numerous failed attempts to capture the morning light in the way that I wanted, I strapped on the EL Nikkor and returned to my project to illustrate novels with macro abstractions.

Good times, but I wonder if I captured it… and I wonder if I shouldn’t leave the narrative to the viewer, if I should enforce it on you or let you discover it for yourself. I think this is an issue most arts have, and I would like to expound on this, but I’m feeling a bit out of it at present. Perhaps later, if I come up with something worth saying.

Anyway.

D7000. EL Nikkor 50mm f/2.8, on 100mm extension. ISO100, … Read More »

Back to the macro… but I tried something interesting this time:

I took two shots (one at 1/3 second, the other at 1/13th, both ISO800 and f/11) and then tried to use the ‘Merge to HDR Pro” function in Photoshop. Alas, something shifted, and Ps was unable to align them properly.

So I opened them both, stacked them together, played with positioning and opacity until I was happy, and sent the resulting image back to Aperture, where I cropped off the parts that didn’t overlap, and did some fine-tuning.

I guess that would make this my first HDR-by-hand image.

Good times.

And if you have a good title for this, do let me know! I’m feeling a bit sleepy, or I’d have come up with one… Alas.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8, reversed, and stacked on the Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron). ISO800, 1/3sec & 1/13th … Read More »

After yesterday’s Happy Accident, I decided to try to get one On Purpose, and I must say that the Happy Accident turned out better, and was much easier to recognize as ‘shot-of-the-day’ than this one. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the Happy Accident was the only picture I took yesterday, but it screamed “I’m the One” immediately, whereas I took 12 shots today, and massaged most of them before settling on this one, mostly because it had the widest range of color.

I’ll keep playing with this idea, keep mulling it over, and see if I can come up with something more to do with this picture-making technique, but I’ll not be counting on any of them as 365 entries.

One thing I need to try is a lower ISO. And I’d also like to see what a deliberately defocused version … Read More »

While speeding to work this morning (I wasn’t running late, just speeding), I came up on an suv of some sort, and the light coming off of its spinners was AMAZING.

So I slowed down, whipped out the camera, popped off the lens cap, pointed it, and tripped the shutter…

But a D7000 in AP Mode, with ISO and Aperture determined by the user performs quite a bit differently than would an iPhone or any camera in full auto mode, and the D7000 didn’t see the beautiful spinners twinkling in the pre-dawn darkness, it just saw the pre-dawn darkness.

And while my choice of ISO (leftover, incidentally, from I-don’t-know-what), was far higher than I would have knowingly left it, it was not high enough to provide anything approaching hand-holdability, especially since I had a relatively high aperture value set.

I can’t in any way … Read More »

Well I finally managed to finish up the BlackKeys 44 camera I started several months ago, then realized I hadn’t played with the slider at all in it, so I shot another one.

This is my current favorite, I think: gritty, contrasty, black/white, with a minimal border = good times.

I also shot another roll of the Rodney X69 camera, in hopes that the slider controlled the intensity of the light leak. Unfortunately, it controls the intensity of the double-exposure offset. This is incredibly unfortunate, as it renders that camera completely useless for my purposes.

But this is all about the BlackKeys 44 camera, and it is a winner, IMO.

I shot through a second test of the BlackKeys 44 camera on the Hipstamatic Disposable series app today, and had no intention of using one of those for the 365. In fact, I shot a nice picture with the 645 Pro app that captured my agoraphobia in a beautiful and suggestive manner, and which I planned to put a hurt on with one or another or several of the Topaz Labs plugins for Aperture, but when I saw this picture pop up during import, I knew this was it.

Anyway.

Any time my hands get within 2 feet of the floor, Olive runs over to be petted, and this time was no different.

I had just pushed the shutter when she started rubbing all up on my hand, so half of the credit for this shot goes to her, for sure.^

The only thing … Read More »

This cat teds to watch me head out to work every morning, so today I whipped out the phone and shot it.

Good thing I did, since I had loads of stuff to do after work, and couldn’t be bothered to shoot anything for the 365. I did shoot a house, though, so that’s something, even if I didn’t do the best job ever. It doesn’t matter though, since my superdoublesecretmagic settings in the d7000 will pretty much render brilliant real estate photos with the lens cap on, so all is well enough.

iPhone 4, built in camera app.