365.302 some (mediocre) fall color

Well, the drive up was safe and beautiful (once the sun came up). I left super early, and so I arrived super early, and also got to miss the rather dull parts of southern Oklahoma that make the trip so endless.

I’m not entirely satisfied with this picture. I couldn’t really crop it in a way that I liked, and I couldn’t spend the time needed to really bring out the pretty yellow glow in the older leaves, as my dear aunt and uncle have just arrived, and are now circling around wondering at the silly city boy playing on his computer instead of enjoying a beer and chitchatting.

(FYI: I don’t drink, and if I had known they were coming, I would’ve waited awhile to process and post this… if I was a better person, I would go ahead and put all this on hold and wait until later. Alas.)

However, given that flowers are still blooming in Dallas, and the temperature dropped 40 degrees between there and here, and it rained here today, so it’s really a treat to be able to shoot the color, and I’m looking forward to 3 or 4 days of hiking around and shooting, as long as the batteries hold out. (I drove off without the charger this morning… tsk tsk.)

D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron). ISO800, 1/400th (AP mode), f/3.5. About 10 minutes of wildly interrupted slider play in Aperture.

Note: the title refers to the photo, and not the color…

365.301 Abstraktes Bild

I’m leaving for vacation tomorrow, and have loads of stuff to do before then, so I’m tossing in an easy abstract picture today. I feel no shame about this whatsoever, as even this tossed off one is rather pretty, methinks.

I’d like to give this a title having to do with Sheeana or the Ghola Teg or Murbella or the transformation of Chapterhouse or something like that, but nothing really comes to mind, so…

I’m not sure what my interwebs access will be like over the next few days: if I can post, I will; if not, trust that I’ll be shooting away in the mountains of northwestern Arkansas, and trying to relax some.

Good times.

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8, reversed. ISO100, 1/60th (AP mode), f/1.8. About 2 minutes of processing in Aperture, mostly tuning the Sepia toning to get this almost platinum effect.

365.300 for RC Concepcion

Several weeks ago, RC Concepcion compared looking at people’s 365 projects to “watching a fat man do jumping jacks.”
I took some offense to this, and (despite claims to the contrary) I believe it was meant to offend and discourage amateurs like myself. I’m sure this is all in my imagination: why would RC alienate his audience like this? But at the very least, it showed an utter contempt for anyone taking part in a 365 project.
That said, should I be out riding that bicycle instead of shooting? Probably. Should I at least have on those running shoes and be out for a walk? Definitely. Should I smash that guitar over my gear, and then sell all my gear? Not if I want to get the best price, but perhaps.
The thing is, I enjoy making pictures, I enjoy sharing them, I enjoy having a reason to be creative every day, whether I want to or not, and this 365 project has done a great deal for me.
I’ve looked at, studied, practiced, and gotten better at making pictures that I want to look at; I’ve learned the ins and outs of the D7000 (the parts I use anyway), and I’ve used a broken lens to make pictures that people seem to actually enjoy; I’ve experimented, discovered, attempted, failed, and succeeded; and I’ve (mostly) enjoyed it.
And more than that, I’ve met some wonderful people thanks to this project, including the fabulous curators here at the 365 project, who have given me more encouragement and support than I even hoped for.
And even more than that, I’ve discovered things about myself; I’ve pushed up against my limits; fallen down and gotten back up; faced some of my fears; seen possibilities in myself, and found new things to focus on.
The 365 project has, so far, been (mostly) a joy, so why would I care what some professional photographer thinks about my project? RC has never seen any of my work, and I sincerely doubt he’ll read any of this or see this picture.
And I can understand how a professional photographer might get a bit tired of looking at bad amateur pictures over and over again: I definitely empathize with my painting professor, who must be exhausted by the continuous crop of 1st semester painters by now.
But Mike the painting professor does’t walk into class and talk complete smack about the paintings on display, no matter how bad they are.
So I understand the sentiment, but it’s the delivery that bothers me. Yes, I’m thin-skinned. And, yes, I should grow up (and get myself fitter, if this picture is any indication).
There are much friendlier ways to express disgust and disdain. It may not be completely honest, but you don’t risk alienating ever more of your audience.
And one other thing: RC, when was the last time you shot, purely for pleasure, for 300 consecutive days?
Ok. That’s enough.
I’m not entirely pleased with this picture, but it has a few things going for it, not the least of which: I can cross of one of the things on my shooting list. 😀
D7000. Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5 @10mm. ISO100, 1/15th, f/16. Three flashes: the key, an SB700, SU-4’d, with its diffusion panel in place, and at full power, near camera right; the fill, a Vivitar auto 200, mounted on the camera with a Cactus v5 trigger sandwiched in between; the rim, a Toshiba 312 behind the fatty. About 15 minutes of slider play in Aperture, mostly in an attempt to convince myself to actually post this, instead of wimping out and making some pretty macro.
Also, I wrote a much better version of this post, and then hit some strange combination of buttons and lost the whole post. The first version took about 20 minutes; this version took over 2 hours.

365.299 Monday

Mondays are strange phenomena for the working stiff. On the one hand, another week of drudgery begins, 5 more days of toil, another 40 or 50 hours before even a chance of relaxation.

But on the other hand—a hand that is, incidentally, overlooked much of the time—Mondays signify a new beginning, a chance to start again, an opportunity, even.

I tend to view Mondays in the second sense. After all, I spend most of my time alone, and so Mondays provide some socialization; they get me out of the house, and I can feel productive, useful, and (on ideal Mondays) appreciated.

I started today much like every other Monday, but with the addition of some unresolved work stresses that remained unresolved at the end of the day.

I start a short vacation on Thursday, and there will be some resolution before then, and if I can help it, I will not have another day where I leave the job angry and wholly unsatisfied.

Not this week, anyway.

And this feeling bled into my shooting time, and wouldn’t let me go. I tried and succeeded in making a macropano, but the subject, framing, color, etc., was not near up to my standards.

This is image is the best frame from that failed pano, and it too is not up to my standards.

299 days in, 69 days to go.

On second thought, this image almost perfectly captures how I feel about this particular Monday: full of promise and color, and containing a warm glow, but ultimately black at its core and in deep need of a full reset.

So its not a total fail after all. `/~

And given that I’m gainfully employed at all, I’ve highly fortunate, so it’s a win all the way around, almost.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai, reversed, ISO100, 1/15th, f/2.8. 3 minutes worth of slider play in Aperture to bring out some of the color.

365.298 aaarrrghhhh! My eyes! The goggles do nothing!

Focusing a reversed 50mm by rocking back and forth is especially difficult with gusty winds, though some of the problem can be overcome with higher shutter speeds (not that I did that here…).

So I decided to take the new macro rig on a walk today, and take along the SB-700 and the Cactus triggers. I also decided to add the broken battery grip, as I experienced a bit of wrist pain yesterday from the way I hold the D7000. The grip adds an extra couple of inches, and I can hold the camera in a more wrist-elbow-shoulder friendly manner.

Of course, this meant that I lost the stability of a second hand on the camera, and added maybe 2lbs to the rig. The weight wasn’t much of an issue, but a second hand definitely would’ve come in handy.

I’ve been reading up on diy flash brackets, and may drop $60 on RAM mount pieces to build one, but I promised myself there would be no more photography expenses this year. I may have to go back on my word, there, as I’ll be needing some sort of flash bracket if I plan to do much walk-around macro work with off-camera flash, and while there are far cheaper pre-made flash brackets—and even cheaper diy alternatives—many of them get rather poor ratings for stability, and the RAM build seems to be a popular and sturdy method.

Anyway.

The title is another throw-away line from the Simpson’s: the episode where a movie adaptation of Radioactive Man is being filmed in Springfield. The villan has Radioactive Man (played by +Rainier Wolfcastle) tied up in a warehouse, and Fallout Boy (+Milhouse Van Houten) is supposed to come to the rescue in the nick of time. Unfortunately, Milhouse backs out of the production, leaving Radioactive Man with a only a small pair of plastic goggles to protect his eyes from the radioactive sludge.

As you might imagine from the title, above, things don’t go so well…

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina), reversed. ISO100, 1/30th, f/8. SB-700, handheld, with its diffusion panel in place, at 1/4, held slightly less than arms length away, camera left, and triggered via a pair of Cactus v5 triggers. About 5 minutes of processing in Aperture to bring out some detail and bump up the contrast a bit.

Stockyards Photowalk & Scavenger Hunt

This morning found me in the Fort Worth Stockyards, taking part in a photowalk and scavenger hunt MeetUp with the North Texas Photography Explorers Meetup Group. The weather was beautiful, and I ended up being more interested in the walking than the shooting, though I did manage to take 320 pictures…

Here is the Scavenger Hunt List. Did I miss anything?

    • Something Risky
    • Horns
    • Amazing
    • Spanish Influence
    • Old West
    • A Sign
    • The number “5”
    • S
    • Triangle
    • Box

All in all, it was a fun time, and I was glad to bump into Judy, with whom I’ve walked and talked on a couple of photowalks now.

Photowalks are always more fun with a buddy, for sure.

Everything was shot with the D7000 in Aperture Priority mode, and everything except the Bee was shot with the Sigma 30mm f/1.4. The Bee got his from the Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 that I’ve been playing with lately. This was the first time I’ve taken a second lens on a photowalk, and it might become the norm: it was nice to be able to whip out a decent macro set up at a moment’s notice, and the kit weighed less than a pound and fit easily into a jean pocket.