Midweek Macro #7 – something mysterious, almost

Something mysterious, almost. Like the capital on the swing ride at the small town carnival that rolled into town last week, or looking through a clear umbrella at an evil-looking fog, maybe.

I played with this one a long time, adding grain, darkening the vignette, playing with split toning, but ended up with something somewhat closer to the original, as the original had plenty of spook to it.

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina), reversed. ISO800, 1/160th (Ap mode), f/4, -1EV. About 3 minutes of slider play in Lightroom.

7/52-12 subtle and/or vibrant

Seeing that it’s Springtime in North Texas, the week started warm-ish and cloudy, and ended cold and rainy… In between, though, the sky was blue, the birds were chirping, and there was color everywhere!

Come Wednesday, I still hadn’t come up with a theme for the week, so I took a look in the cameras to see what I had shot. In the phone, I found 130-odd pictures I took to test out the Plastica app (there may or may not be a review in the works… depends on if and to what extent I continue to play with it), but not much else. In the D7000, there was nothing to find, as it had not been powered up all week. And in the LX-7, I found four pictures of the subtle blue and red color in the clouds from last Sunday.

Then, on my way out to the car that afternoon, the sky was vibrant, and the yellow-green of the trees was super-saturated, so out came the LX-7 and I had a theme! GoGo.

Not much else to say.

Everything was shot with the LX-7, mostly at 35 or 50mm (with one 28mm and one 90mm thrown in for good measure), all but one wide open (the clouds at 28mm were at f/2), and everything on Aperture Priority  mode. Pictures were processed in Lightroom, for maybe 30 seconds each, mostly to get the RAW files back to what they looked like in the jpeg preview on the back of the camera, which pretty much means I should probably start shooting that camera in jpeg or jpeg/RAW mode.

7/52-11 Unexpected Egrets

For this week’s 7/52, I decided that the theme would be “not at home; not at work” and made ‘limited’ myself to shooting in areas outside of a 100 yard radius of my apartment or desk cubicle, and also disallowed shooting from the car window.

One of my main goals with this hobby is to get out in the world more, to get away from just sitting at a desk, or sitting in the car, or sitting on the sofa, or hanging around the apartment. I’ve had limited success thusfar, as a tour through my 365 or previous 7/52 entries will show.

So last Sunday, I started trying to brainstorm places to go shoot after work. If I was smart, or less lazy, or more open to going out in the world with the camera, or whatever, I would’ve just gone on walks in the neighborhood after dinner. This would serve a dual-purpose: better shooting light, and an increase in ‘exercise.’ Alas, I’m too lazy, or too shy, or just plain too stupid, or too something.

Anyway, that was my plan: walks after dinner, or perhaps after work.

So Monday, came, and I was on my way home from work when I remembered this little park or walking path, or something on the south-east (really just south) corner of Inwood and Harry Hines that I’ve passed before, and decided to stop and see what it was, find parking, and do a general scoping-out of the place.

It looked quite and safe-enough and not the least bit crowded or overrun with people, but I was already too far out of my comfort zone, so I didn’t even get out of the car.

Tuesday came, and I stopped again on my way home, pulled into one of the two parking spots, and was out of the car and walking around with the camera before I had time to question it.

I shot some trees and some shadows and some randomness, found a plaque that gave a reason for this little park—something about a memorial to those who had served at Parkland or Harris Methodist or I don’t really remember—and started down the walking path, when I noticed these alien pod-looking things in the tree-tops.

Come to find out, this area is a nesting sanctuary for Egrets and other birds (mostly Great Egrets this time of year).

Apparently, the Great Egret was hunted nearly to extinction for its  breeding plumage (used to decorate fancy hats in the 1910s and 1920s), but is making a strong comeback, thanks, in part, to nesting sanctuaries of like the one at Inwood & Harry Hines. (FYI: if you visit this location in GMaps and zoom in some, you can see a bunch of white blobs in the tree tops. Those blobs are Great Egrets doing their nesting/breeding thing.)

So Wednesday, I returned with the 70-210, and tried my hand at shooting birds… I should think about investing in some auto-focus lenses… but I should really remember to stop-down a bit and work on my technique first. After all, it’s technique and vision that makes pictures, not gear.

In the end, I ended up with some nice-enough shots, I think. They’re not world-class, by any stretch, but they were a tiny, baby-step of a stretch for me, so I think they’re win. Unfortunately, I did violate one of the primary rules of the 365 by shooting only two days this week (or, rather, by shooting for the 7/52 only two days… I shot every day, but not for this project).

The first two were shot with the Sigma 30mm f/1.4, ISO100, Aperture-Priority at f/4, and the rest were shot with the Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron), also ISO100, AP mode, at f/3.5 (shot #3) and f/8 (the rest).

Phoneography Friday #5

Shot with ProCamera’s zoom function, and pixels tortured in Filterstorm.

This is the first time I’ve used the zoom function on any iPhone app, and I quite like the results. The quality of the original is not particularly good, but it did provide an interesting starting point and was capable of being manipulated into something worth looking at. All in all, good times.

MM #5: Is it really? I’m not so sure…

This bad picture is sort of a teaser for something I’ve been thinking about whilst munching a piece or three (or 13) of (not) dark (enough) chocolate most night after dinner, while watching a bit of tele before bed. Some nights, these happy platitudinous advertising messages bother me less than other nights; some nights I pay them no mind; other nights I actually eat decent chocolate (or none at all, if I’m flush with do-si-dos or savannah smiles or homemade cookies or even ice cream, if I’m feeling naughty and want to sleep poorly). And I know I don’t really have enough in the way of philosophy training to really come to any convincing conclusions, plus, given that I completed the University work years ago—and stopped drinking a couple of years after that—my armchair skills are a bit weak. But I think there are some claims to make about these cheery little messages, or at least some things to explore about them. Here’s hoping I keep at it enough to actually toss off a few posts…

This bad picture was made with the D7000 and Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron made, perhaps). ISO100, 1/15th (AP mode), f/3.5, and absolutely crushed in Lightroom to attempt to salvage something mediocre out of a bad picture rather than just go try to make a good one <– tsk. tsk.