365.318 LBC0

Well.

Have I been in one pissed off mood today. Sheesh.

I woke up miffed. By what, I have no idea.

Had plans to have breakfast and visit the Arboretum this morning with Momma, so I woke up early (usual weekday time of 4:30a instead of usual weekend time of 5) to make sure I had time to get my clothes washed before she came.

Well, the fancy new washer here at the apartments decided it didn’t want to wash the load of clothes that was in it, so when I went to put the two loads into the two dryes, I found I had to go back inside, fetch the detergent, move the unwashed load into the working washer, and start over again, meaning I’d just lost roughly 50 minutes.

The miffed became peeved.

Then I tried to clean pictures off the iPhone: it took 4 restarts of Aperture and 3 eject and reattachments of the iPhone to get the pictures imported, and then Aperture decided to crash while importing to the backup location.

The peeved became wild frustration.

Then I tried to give some money to a kickstarter campaign, but got distracted by Chrome’s failure to properly auto-complete, cleaned out the auto-complete settings, tried again, auto-complete failed again, tried again, again with the failing of the auto-complete, so I gave up on the whole thing (apologies, Kickstarter starter!).

The wild frustration became seething anger.

Then I went and fetched clothes out of the dryers, hung and folded, and found it was just 7. Great: plenty of time. Except I found a cheerful message from momma that she was on her way. This meant I had roughly 10 minutes to shave and shower.

The anger became fury.

So I ran, shaved and showered as quickly as I could, and came out to find 2 calls and another message from momma: a cheerful “I’m here,” with an obvious “and pissed that you’re not waiting on me” subtext.

The fury intensified.

So I went to call her back and just then the phone began ringing. I told her I was running a bit behind and would need 5 or 10 minutes to get my shoes on and comb my hair.

Thanks to the marvelous cell phone service that is AT&T, she gave her usual “I can’t hear you” reply, so I screamed into the phone “GIVE ME 5 OR 10 MINUTES” and hung up.

I took some deep breaths, put on my shoes, and started to walk to the bathroom to comb my hair when the phone started ringing again.

Fury. Fury. Fury.

I answered, screamed “I NEED 5 MINUTES!,” and pressed the hang-up button as forcefully as I could.

The room turned read and I could feel blood pounding in my temples.

Fury. Fury. Fury. Fury.

I tried to take some deep breaths, but found that I quite literally couldn’t, so I called Momma and suggested, as calmly as I could, that she should go have a nice breakfast and nice walk around the Arboretum, as I was in a foul mood and wouldn’t be any company.

Fury. Fury. Fury. Fury. Fury.

I went and combed my hair. I paced around the apartment. I felt like an asshole for screaming at my mother. I stomped around the apartment. I drove to the grocery and stomped through the aisles, stormed through the checkout, grabbed up my bags and charged back to the car. I came home.

Fury. Fury. Fury. Fury.

I forced myself to take a nap.

It didn’t help.

I listened to music, surfed the internet, swept the floors, worked on the Tokina review, and tried to calm down.

I didn’t, really.

I called up a buddy to see if he still wanted the intuos tablet I offered him a month ago. Went and met him and his wife for lunch and I was cheery and friendly throughout and it was really great to see them both and I definitely enjoyed the time I spent with them (and I probably owe Alicia a couple of bucks for my end of the lunch), but I really just wanted to smash something.

I came home and had another nap. I shot some macro junk that I’ll be deleting shortly. I went out into the courtyard and stared at the bricks in the entryway. They looked nice-ish, so I snapped a quick iPhone shot. I shot some more macro junk. I imported the macro junk and decided it was all junk. I stomped around the apartment. I looked at the brick pics on the phone and decided I liked the picture sideways, so I began the process of convincing Aperture to import from the phone again. I learned that the killall command in the Terminal works for any application, and used that to force Aperture to quit (twice) instead of using ‘Force Quit,’ which made restarting easier and eventually led to successful importing of today’s 365 pic.

Still: Fury. Fury. Fury. Fury.

Let’s hope some dinner and playing with cats and some netflix and a good night’s sleep helps. My shoulders and back are starting to ache from being tensed up all day.

iPhone4. ProCamera app. ISO80, 1/30th, f/2.8 (all handled by the OS). About 30 seconds of slider play in Aperture.

355.317 Serenity NOW (2)

I really shouldn’t nap after work. 9 times out of 10, I wake up feeling great, but the first person I come into contact with raises an aggravation that persists for the rest of the day.

This usually doesn’t matter a whole lot, as I so rarely see any three-dimensional humans after work anyway, much less speak to them. But today, while shooting this, I was interrupted by 2, count ’em: 2! well-meaning and friendly neighbors who just wanted to say hello and ask after my health, even though it was obvious that I was busy playing with the camera.

I was perfectly nice to them, as always, but believe me when I say “Serenity NOW” today, I mean SERENITY NAO!!!1!!

And apologies for trotting out this tired technique again, but 1) I knew I could make a competent-ish picture this way and 2) the light is entirely different at 5pm (after DST ends) than at 2:30pm in July when other versions were made: hence the oranges and reds in this.

Also, I think the composition here is pretty weak, with all manner of shapes practically dragging your eye out of the frame and that are in no way countered by the strong swirling towards the center. So apologies for that too. A crop to square would probably help, some, but I’d lose too much (like the groovy shapes of the bokeh balls on the sides and in the corners).

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO400, 1/80th (AP mode), f/3.5, -1EV. About 2 minutes of slider play in Aperture.

365.316 Serenity Now!!!

Earlier today, I remembered that I didn’t submit anything for last week’s Weekly Photographic Challenge (theme: Chaos), so I checked out the profile and found out this week’s theme: Serenity.

My first thought, any time I see the word ‘serenity:’ SERENITY NOW!

I went and watched the Seinfeld episode in which Serenity Now appears, only to find that it in no way matches my memory, which is much funnier and wildly useful for calming me down when I’m feeling angry or frustrated.

Strange how a wildly inaccurate memory of a television show from 15 years ago could bring much more serenity than the actual program.

Memory is a strange and wonderful thing.

D7000. JCPenney Diamatic 135mm f/2.8. ISO400, 1/25th (APmode), f/2.8. About 3 minutes of slider play in Aperture.

365.315 yep… they still need cleaning

I ran some errands after work, and by the time I got home, I’d lost any interest in shooting, so I laid down on the floor and started shooting random stuff: cat hair, a broken off belt loop that’s now a cat toy, the afternoon light on the blinds, the trees outside through the little holes in the blinds, and finally ended up shooting the front door again, again, again, again.

Not much more to say about this. Oh well.

D7000. Tokina AT-X 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5, in close focus mode. ISO800, 1/5th (AP mode), f/8, -1EV, pop-up in Manual at 1/8th. About 5 minutes of slider play in Aperture to bring up the washed out colors and flat contrast provided by the Tokina. Looking at it now, I might’ve gone a bit far. Oh well.

365.314 encroach

Happy Election Day!

This vine grows around the courtyard entrance, and it looks really beautiful in the afternoon. This is probably my 25th attempt to capture said beauty, but it’s not really particularly close. This—and all other attempts—lack the subtlety of it all.

In other news, I think I have enough images for the Tokina review… now to make time to finish writing it, give it a couple of days to breathe, slap an edit on it, and share away. Hopefully, I’ll get there this weekend, but I make no promises.

One thing I noticed here, the barrel distortion present at 35mm has become pincushion distortion at 110mm (where this was shot), before becoming wildly complex moustache distortion at 200mm, and this even on a 1.5x crop like the D7000.

Fun!

D7000. Tokina AT-X 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5. ISO800, 1/125th, f/11. About 4 minutes of slider play, plus maybe 3 minutes of cloning out specks and splotches on the window in Aperture.

365.313 what a difference an hour makes

I didn’t notice it yesterday, but then I went out shooting at my usual time (if not for the time change event) and so I wouldn’t have.

But today, when I left work, Wow! What a difference an hour makes!

Given the relatively flat landscape, the numerous houses, and very many rather old trees, the afternoon light filtering through the trees is pretty much gone by the time I get home, and it’s only going to get darker between now and ~December 21.

By going to the ends of alleys and intersections of streets, I was able to find some lovely light, as you can see here, but it’s going to take me awhile to get used to it, probably as long as it takes my biological functions to reset themselves to the new numbers on the clock.

Should I ever convince myself to stop at a park or something on the way home from work, though, the light should be much more conducive to creating nice pictures, and so I suppose it’s worth it.

Anyway, I noticed something curious about the pictures I shot yesterday with the Tokina: the center is sharp, yes, but the corners were blurred, even at f/8, so I set out to run some tests.

Any idea how hard it is to find ~8°10″ worth of natural things worth shooting all in the same plane of focus, especially at any distance worth mentioning? I found two wooden fences, and I’ll need a tripod and remote release to shoot them at f/8 at 4:15pm, even at ISO800, and I’m loathe to go much higher, even on this camera.

Sheesh.

D7000. Tokina AT-X 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5 at 200mm. ISO800, 1/200th (AP mode), f/8. About 7 minutes of slider play in Aperture: the Tokina is pretty flat when it comes to reproducing contrast and saturation.

365.312 it’s sharp after all! (with bonus Outtake at f/4.5)

Above: the 365 pic, shot at f/8. Below: a similar composition wide open at f/4.5.

After the photowalk yesterday, while editing pictures, I noticed that the subject of several shots was completely out of focus. This was somewhat bothersome, as my initial thought was that something was wrong with a) the lens; b) the D7000’s green dot focus computer; c) my technique.

I’ve been meaning to review the Tokina for quite some time, as I’ve been unable to find any lengthy user reviews of this particular model (AT-X 35-200 f/3.5-4.5 from sometime during or after 1982). So I went out today to take some random shots of the neighborhood, and took every shot at its minimum aperture and at f/8 to see what was what.

Well, you can see for yourself here.

Both images received the same post-processing in Aperture: +.35 to exposure; +.1 to Brightness; +.05 to Contrast; +.15 to Saturation; +.1 to Vibrancy; and a levels tweak to make sure white and black were represented. Additionally, both pictures received a .1 increase to saturation in the background and .25 increase to definition in the foreground.

I’ll say more in the review, coming soon (hopefully): stay tuned.

D7000. Tokina AT-X 35-200 f/3.5-4.5, at 200mm. 365 pic: ISO800, 1/1250th (AP Mode), f/8; Outtake: ISO800, 1/4000th, f/4. (See above for processing information.)

And it just struck me: a competent professional reviewer would’ve used a tripod to ensure identical composition. Alas, I’m not a professional reviewer: I’m a user, an amateur photographer, and someone more interested in general usability than mtf charts and all that.