365.280 atmosphere

Well, I like this picture, but I don’t think its quite up to the standards I’ve set for myself. I would go back to shooting, but I’m too busy second-guessing and doubting myself at present to do anything but second-guess and doubt.

It’s alright though, because I think this picture, perhaps desaturated a bit, would make a nice gatefold image for a prog rock record or maybe a hippy-type jam band, so that’s win, for sure.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO100, 1/6th (AP mode), f/8, -1EV. Maybe 1 minute of processing in Aperture to help bring some drinition of forms out of the fog.

365.279 Abstraktes Bild (Anbetung des Kaboutermanneke)

Since you likely don’t see what I see here, the subtitle likely makes little sense.

So you should make up your own story about what’s going on here, if anything. Deal?

Thanks!

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO400, 1/50th (AP mode), f/3.5, -1EV. ~6-8 minutes of slider play in Aperture.

365.278 Wholly Unreal: a successful (mostly) focus-stacking experiment

This picture started its life as 57 separate pictures, each produced with the Nikkor 24mm f/2.8, reversed on a D7000, all at ISO400, 1/2.5th or 1/3 of a second, in AP mode, at f/8 and -1 EV.

With that, I got approximately 20mm depth of field total, which translates to maybe 1/2mm per frame at most.

I’m fairly positive that I couldn’t handhold this, and so I very much wonder how the live-bug-eye shooters do it. I would guess by using flash, not shooting in raw, and firing on continuous capture at 8+ frames/second or better, while perfectly controlling their movements backward and forward to capture the half-millimeter (or less) of those eyes. This must be especially tough when shooting on extension tubes.

Anyway.

I could’ve made some modifications to the final image to remove some of the obvious falsehood of it, but I really like the somethingsnotquiterighthere-ness of it.

And I could’ve done better with the framing and general composition, but there are converging lines and all sorts of trickery to get your eye moving around a little bit, and, anyways, this isn’t meant to be an art piece, or a portfolio piece, or even a particularly good photograph. This was a test. This was only a test.

365.276 an experiment

So I experimented with focus stacking today… As you can see, it didn’t work out very well.

This is 18 shots, auto-blended in CS6. It lost the four shots that captured the back 1/4 of the tiny rock, but I don’t mind that much.

What I do mind is missing the focus increments, and the way photoshop skips around in its auto blending, and the fact that the wood floor has a tiny bit of give to it that causes the framing to shift ever so slightly whenever I move in my chair. But I do kinda like some of the things that are going on here.

Oh well.

If at first (or second, or third, or hundredth) you don’t succeed… and all that.

In other news, my social anxiety is in full effect. I’m about to take 4 pictures to a bar in Fort Worth for a one-night art show. I’m excited to show some pictures personally, but I’m deeply anxious about being around a bunch of people and a bunch of loud music all night. If I could drink a few beers, that would help, but I don’t drink. If I could just hang the stuff and leave, that would help too. But I think I pretty much have to stay as long as my pictures are up.

Wish me luck.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai, reversed, on ~50mm extension. 18 pictures shot at ISO400, 2 seconds (Ap mode), f/4 (I would’ve gone with a smaller aperture, but I start getting flare at f/5.6). Levels corrected and focus-blended in Photoshop.

365.275 menacing

Ok. I admit it. This was a mistake.

The Vivitar 70-210 is too long and too fat to get out of the way of the pop-up flash on the D7000. This didn’t cross my mind when I walked out the door with the camera and the intent to make a shot similar to this, one that I almost got yesterday of the yellows and golds and greens and purples in this fucsia rose.

But this mistake created an interesting effect that sorta (but not really) reminds me of some low-budget horror film posters from the early 1970s. Or like the alien bursting from what’shisname’s chest, maybe. Like an octopus lauching itself at the red shirt’s face even. I think you get the point.

Sometimes mistakes make for beauty, or for something interesting, anyway.

D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron). ISO400, 1/80th, f/16, pop-up in manual mode at 1/16th (if memory serves). About 3 minutes of processing in Aperture before reverting to original and adding back about 20 seconds of slider manipulation.

365.274 Welcome to the Jungle

Well, today was the quarterly luncheon for the team I lead, so I ate a bunch of stuff that I don’t normally eat for lunch (or for any other meal, really). Guess what that means? As soon as digestion really got going, I developed a really bad mood: like an eff this, ima quit and move to the desert sorta mood.

And then I got to drive home, where the mood turned to one of futility, so that when I arrived home, I was mad at the world nothing in particular, yet simultaneously despairing of my self and my station.

I wonder if varying my diet some would help with these incidents? I also wonder if varying my diet would lead to more or less general peacefulness that I feel most of the time?

I don’t know.

Luckily, I don’t need to know, particularly, since I’m able to eat what I want and when I want about 95% of the time.

Also lucky: since I was bothered for most of the drive home, I didn’t have much time to psych myself out of going for a brief walk down the alley and back. I don’t like feeling wretched, but I do quite enjoy getting out with the camera, even briefly, since I so often am quite simply too afraid to set foot outside.

As to this picture, or the title, anyway: I’m thinking of Welcome to the Jungle, but performed as if Axl was acting as a second front man for Jethro Tull during a performance of Bungle in the Jungle, to the tune of the GnR classic, but with copious amounts of flute solo.

How magical would that be?

D7000. Tokina AT-X 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5, in Macro Mode. ISO125 (finger slip), 1/250th (AP mode), f/3.5 (ish, as I’m not quite sure where the lens was at the time). About 25 minutes of slider play in Aperture to take the background down a stop or two and help give some interest/nervousness to the bokeh.