7/52-25 Zomb-E Week II

If I was more awake, or had my mind on the business at hand, I’d come up with some sort of silly sub-title for this… The Revenge, perhaps, or The Awakening, or who knows. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them!

Given that that’s all I can come up with just now means I either need more coffee or more sleep, or maybe I should slow down on the coffee, maybe I slept too long.

Anyway. I shot exclusively with the Nikon 75-150mm E-Series lens that I broke long ago, and that now only works when mounted in reverse as sort of a macro lens that focuses (via the zoom ring) from ~4″ (1.75:1, if I recall) to well past infinity. Hence Zomb-E.

I shot pretty much every day, but didn’t challenge myself much, though I did try to shoot crepe myrtle blossoms blowing in the wind. One thing I wish I’d captured competently: the blooming cactus & agave plants around the apartments. I’d never seen an agave bloom before and who knows when/if I will again. I might try to shoot it again, and should today, but the flowers have mostly died, and I expect the agave itself will follow, as I just read that Agave plants are monocarpic. And GoGo learning something every day!

EXIF is in the lightbox, and if you’d like to see more work from the Zomb-E, or from the 75-150 prior to its zombification (most of which were shot with the lens reversed, but still… it wasn’t broken at the time), please click around a bit.

Oh, and lest I forget, one of these is not like the other, and I’m glad I shot a couple of safeties…

Downtown Grapevine PhotoWalk, 2013 edition

Yesterday found me in Downtown Grapevine with the Dallas Photo Walk MeetUp Group. It was overcast all morning, with some very occasional sun just peeking through the clouds. Lighting conditions made things a bit tricky, but the Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5 E Series performed very well, and it was really good to see the group again, as it’s been several weeks since I made the time to join them.

In some sense, shame on me… in other senses, I’ve had very very very very good reasons to be away: Life is Wonderful just now.

I made two laps up and down Main Street, from the old Railroad Dept to the donut shack and back, which made for good exercise, and got a couple of decent shots, anyway. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Everything was shot with the aforementioned E Series lens, exif is in the lightbox, if you care, and most received 20-40 seconds of well-thought-out slider play in Lightroom 4. (Debating whether to upgrade to 5 or not, but probably shouldn’t spend the money just now: there is something far more important to save for at the moment.)

7/52-24@24mm

I felt as if I didn’t do much shooting this last week, but when I loaded the week’s pictures into the computer, I found I shot almost every day, at least 9 or 10 pictures, so I guess I did alright, at least as far as whipping out the camera goes…

That said, I didn’t get out much, and so the week’s pictures were shot in familiar locations: 3 in/around the apartments; 3 in/around the office; and 1 somewhere in between. There’s just too much going on to get out much, and hooray for that!

Life is wonderful at the moment, though I am missing something very important, and pining a bit. Not to worry, though, as I’ll only be pining for another week or so, and then all will be back to the “New Normal” of being, well, absolutely marvelous.

As intimated in the title, everything was shot with the Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai, though a couple of pics were cropped slightly and so are a narrower field of view than the ~36mm on the crop sensor. Full exif is in the lightbox if you’re interested. If I haven’t mentioned it before, I quite like the old Nikkor lenses… the color is just outstanding from most of them, with a slight yellow cast from the coatings, maybe, or something, some indefinable quality that is simply lacking in the fancy, new crispy-sharp, poured glass lenses, and the 24 ai is no exception.

7/52-23 Macro Week

Well, I shot more with the phone than with the big camera this week, and probably have a more coherent series there than here, but I started out the week with grand plans of going on lots of walks, shooting flowers and bugs around the neighborhood, etc., so even though I didn’t do any of that (flowers were out back of Momma’s house, other two were in the living room of the apartment…) I’m sticking with the plan, so here you go.

Not much more to say. I seem to be at a loss for words lately… Oh well.

D7000, Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina), reversed. EXIF in the lightbox, if you’re interested. A couple of these received slight crops, and most got slight bumps to various contrast/highlight/shadow/clarity/vibrancy/saturation, as per my usual, but nothing outlandish.

7/52-22 underexposed in late May

Not much to say about this set. I dropped exposure compensation back to -2 to get hand-holdable speeds at 5:45am in the parking lot at work (or maybe it was during the rainstorm and just to keep the D7000 from overexposing, as it’s wont to do with 3rd party lenses), and forgot tot check it for the rest of the week…

(If you followed the 365 project and have a remarkable memory, you’ll remember that I often lament about forgetting to reset the camera… if not, well, I often forget to reset the camera to my personal default (AP mode, wide open or f/4 (depending on what I hope to shoot), ISO100) after doing some fancy stuff. This week was no exception.)

Fortunately, some salvageable shots did appear, so GoGo, I guess.

One picture with the Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1, the rest with the Sigma 30mm f/1.4. Other EXIF in the lightbox. Minimal post processing.

7/52-21 Focusing Closely on Nature

Well, I planned for this to be Bug Week, and so strapped on the Vivitar 70-210mm, and put it in close-focus mode to facilitate bug-shooting, but it was not to be… too busy just not shooting, I guess. So it became just Close Focus week.

I shot some random man-made stuff too—a trashbag blowing across the parking lot at work in the wee hours of the morning, the spring on one of those grip-strengthening thingys, etc.—but decided the Nature bit would make for a better (and perhaps more appropriate) theme. (I won’t elaborate on the appropriateness at this juncture.)

Not much more to say. Everything was shot with the D7000 and Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron, I believe) in close focus (macro) mode, all in Aperture Priority mode, if memory serves. EXIF data available in the lightbox, if you’re interested.