7/52-28 Skies, Dive, Dried

First off, let me just apologize for the complete lack of a coherent theme, largely poor composition, and general lack of subject (beyond “pretty”). No excuses.

Whew. Busy week. 10 and 11 hour meetings at work had me going in late and coming home later, which made for different lighting conditions than I’m used to seeing on my way to and from work. GoGo.

Seems there are some advantages to working a more average schedule after all…

So I shot this week with the LX7, recently returned from the UK, where it visited the Isle of Skye and various points in the southwest of England. Don’t worry: I didn’t go off to UK and not post any pictures; the camera was on loan to a coworker.

EXIF, if any is in existence, should be in the lightbox, and I did minimal post work on most of the pics. I did try out the radial filter in Lightroom 5 (between that and decent perspective correction, definitely worth the upgrade fee…) on one of the pics: the treatment is perhaps a bit heavy-handed, but it was my first time…

7/52-27 phoning it in

aka one camera (app) one lens(/film filter) #2

It was a busy, stressful, and wildly exciting week for me, and I had no idea what I wanted to shoot, until I saw this picture from Instagram user @blumenkraft, and off I went!

Much thanks to Jochen Spalding for this hipstarecipe, without which you’d likely be viewing a different sort of phoned in post.

Should I tell you about the stress and excitement? Hummm I think I’ll wait. This deserves a post of its own and not just an aside in 7/52…

Not much else to say on this. Everything was shot with the iPhone 5 and Hipstamatic app, using the John S lens and Robusta film. There’s a bonus pic, trying out the software flash… I haven’t done much with this, but I think there are some possibilities.

It was tough finding appropriate subjects for this treatment: landscapes were either too contrasty or too saturated (due probably to the slight green cast from the John S lens), but I think I got a few shots of interest out of the apartment and the cubby at work. All in all, the 7/52 was fun, and provided a few brief respites from the stress and excitement, and for many uses, I’m more convinced than ever that a phone makes a suitable artistic device, and that (depending on purpose and intent) one might not need a big camera.

There are cases, of course, where a big camera is absolutely needed: when you need or want to zoom in or out and can’t do so with your feet; when you want the telephoto compression or bokeh that only a larger-sensor camera can provide; when you need high detail for product shots or for printing BIG (in which case, you should probably be shooting medium format). Or perhaps you just want to show off…

For my own purposes, the phone works just fine for anything from about 6 inches to 15 feet or so, with some uses for landscapes, and limited (read: artistic) uses for close-up stuff. If I want macro? Big camera. Bokeh? Big camera. Proper zoom lenses? Big camera. Anything other than 28-35mm (the iPhone 5 field of view is roughly equivalent to a 33mm lens on a full frame camera).

Anyway, this is a 7/52 post, not a screed for or against any image capturing device. If you like to shoot, grab whatever you have and make some pictures!

7/52-26 the carpark at dawn

I’m disappointed with my photographic output this week. I have some excuses, and they’re good ones, but I won’t put them forward. Had I realized this week marked the halfway point in the project, I might’ve taken some extra care to ensure I had some quality shooting time. Alas. Let this be a reminder to all: Prior Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

At least there’s a theme: the parking lot at work in the wee hours. Before dawn, there are few signs of life at the corporate office park, only empty expanses of concrete, punctuated by city-ordinance-mandated trees and shrubberies, the odd car, and… a bunny.

D7000. Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 G. EXIF in the lightbox, if you care. Minimal processing in Lightroom.

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.