365.253 keep playing

So today I tried to combine the zoomy-flashy thing with multiple exposures…

It didn’t work. Or, rather, it only worked once as far as I can tell.

The process is something like playing a very complex, mallet-based instrument, or performing as a percussionist with several shakers/rattley things/tinkley bells/etc. to shake, rattle, or tinkle all in the span of a couple of seconds.

At first, it was just zooming in and out, and letting the pop-up do its thing.

Then, I switched to the SB-700 and radio triggers. This failed completely. I think the wireless trigger caused the multiple-exposure setting to reset, or perhaps overrode something.

So I switched to pop-up as commander, but forgot to get the sb-7000 to line of sight for the first couple of attempts, and then realized that I was only one of the zoomy-flashy operations in the multiple exposure, and was also only getting a single exposure, despite tripping the shutter multiple times.

I think it worked in this one, as you can clearly se three kickstands receding, and this came during the first part of the sequence, before I really started to branch out and get crazy with things. If you look closely, there are three little mouse toys, three bigger rat toys, three rear tires, three rope things, etc., all lit by flash pops from the pop-up.

I didn’t achieve the effect I was hoping for, though I suppose I really had no expectation, but thought it would be different, with more blur to the transitions, and etc.

So this is shaping up to be a week of experimentation, which is fine with me, I suppose. At least it’s not more macro abstractions…

D7000. Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5 E-Series. Triple exposure, each one at ISO100, f/8, 6 seconds, with the pop-up in TTL mode and rear-curtain sync. About 10 minutes of slider play in Aperture, mostly to bring out various details.

365.252 something of interest…

So I played around with the zoomy-flashy thing again today. It was in large part an exercise in meh, but there remains something of interest about it.

In this example, we have Ivan, who is likely looking at his sister or his food or, perhaps, a bug.

But if you look very closely, there are two Ivans here: one, very small and very black inside of the larger, redder one. Believe me: it’s the same Ivan, mostly.

I like the double exposure type effect going on here. And I like that there are some interesting things going on in this otherwise very dull and uninteresting photo.

Anyway, like Double Exposure, I think the technique may require a plan to be taken to the fullest.

Either way, I think I’ll keep trying for a bit.

D7000. Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5 E-Series. ISO100, 1 second, f/8. A tap of the ‘auto-prettify’ button, and maybe 30 seconds of levels/definition/vibrancy slider play, but only after making multiple attempts to crop and trying multiple by-hand tweaks to bring up the wider, fainter, parts of the shot.

365.251 Ohne Titel (a happy discovery)

So I was pacing around looking for something to shoot, and decided to shoot Ivan, who was looking suspiciously at me (as usual) from his perch atop the cat tree.

But what lens to use? The 24mm f/2.8 AI is nice and on the camera, but too wide. The 50mm f/1.8G is brilliant, but in heavy rotation of late. !!Aha!!! the Holga 60mm f/8!

Of course, such a lens pretty much requires a flash indoors, so I popped up the pop-up for some cheesy on-camera stuff.

And, of course, indoors, with only one 100w lamp at about 20ft., APmode Shutter Speeds were clocking in at 6 seconds: far too long for handholding. So I tried some creative blurry stuff, and then decided to change over to the 36-72mm f/3.5 E-Series.

This scared Ivan terribly, and he fled under the sofa.

So I laid down on the floor and shot a few of him cowering, still with the flash on, and still in APmode, and then I remembered the old zoomy flashy trick, where you take a longish exposure, trip the shutter, zoomy in or out, and pop the flash at some point…

It didn’t work with Ivan, so I spun around, and poked the lens at the front door, with the trees beyond.

The shutter speeds in AP mode went a bit too quickly for decent zooming (it’s fairly impossible to rack a zoom from one end to the other in 1/1000th of a second, even a paltry 2x mid-range zoom like the 36-72).

So I flipped over to Manual, and tried various settings till I got something I liked, and here we have the result.

It’s resolutely not what I was looking for, but I really ended up liking this quite a bit, what with the obviously zoomed trees (though not a full 36-72, obviously), with the reasonably sharp frame over top, and the shadows that make it look almost like one of those divided picture frame things…

I think I might play with this a bit more in the coming days or months: good times.

D7000. Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5 E-Series. ISO100, 1/10th, f/22. Pop-Up Flash in TTL mode. Very minimal processing—about 5 seconds of slider play in the Levels only, plus a bit of straightening and very slight cropping—but only after I hemmed and hawed over this one or that one or the other one no wait that other one there maybe…

365.250 Ohne Titel (something suggestive)

This was made for +Macro Monday, curated by Kerry Murphy, Jennifer Eden, and Kelli Seeger Kim, over at Google+. Today’s theme-within-a-theme is ‘Abstract.’ And I submitted this picture even though this is quite obviously a picture of something, rather than a ‘true’ abstraction. However, given that this ‘object’ (the photograph) is a collection of 1’s and 0’s graphically displayed on a screen that captures a moment in time so brief as to be virtually nonexistent (in human terms) and rather unintelligible, and is not the actual object itself: even if this were truly a picture of something—a flower, say, or a bee—it would always already be an abstraction by virtue its representational character.

/pseudo-aesthetico-philosophical rant

So what should the subtitle be? I think it should be something that suggests both a relaxing trip through a hot tub and a medieval punishment of some sort, maybe. Or something like ‘laborious labor day luncheon,’ or something that reflects the violence displayed by water when it is boiled in a nonstick pot.

If you’ve never noticed, water boils far more vigorously in nonstick pots than in stainless or aluminum varieties. I grew up with stainless pots and pans and boiled countless iterations of macaroni & cheese/some other sort of accompaniment, and I’ve boiled so infrequently since, that this uber-rapid boiling action looks very foreign to me. The bubbles created by the boiling are much smaller, and thus the undulations of the surface are much finer.

Is this due to something in the nonstick coating changing something in the water? Is it due to a new additive in city water supplies since ~2003 or so when I first started using nonstick cookware? If it’s the former, I’m scared: given that all cooking is a form of chemistry, what is the nonstick coating changing in the water, and what is the ingestion of same changing in me? If it’s the latter, I’m scared for a different reason: what sorts of mind control drugs have they started putting in the water, and to what end?

The first is question/fear is somewhat legitimate, and likely has an answer.

The second is very likely nonsense, given that I’ve seen this phenomenon in multiple cities throughout the southern, central, and northeastern United States.

And there are likely other, more reasonable explanations.

In fact, I expect the answer has to do with surface tension: the surface of the water that touches the bottom of the pot is broken by the convection currents created by heat, thereby creating bubbles and undulations. In a stainless pot, the bubbles of steam(?) grow much larger because the water is able to form something of a bond with the pot. With nonstick pots, this bond is far weaker due to the coating, and so the bubbles of gas never grow very large.

If I’m way off here, I hope someone will let me know. After all, I’m an Art Historian, not a chemist, and not even a chef. After all, I’m cooking ramen noodles here, and I added to the drained noodles one premade veggie burger patty that took a couple of trips through the toaster…

In any case, GoGo Science!

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm, f/3.5 Zomb-E Series (a zoom lens with a broken focus action that now functions only when reversed and provides a reproduction ratio of roughly 1:1.75), at maximum magnification. ISO100, 1/250th, f/16. SB700 at 1/32nd and zoomed to 105mm hard camera right, triggered via a set of Cactus v5 triggers. About 15 minutes of slider play in Aperture to bring out some colors, textures, and to create a mood, though I’m not sure what sort of mood it creates…

The Impromptu PhotoWalk

Well. I went on an impromptu photowalk with the leader of the North Texas Photography Explorers MeetUp Group.

We met up shortly after 2, and wandered around for an hour or two.

Given that this took place in Dallas, on September 2, during the part of the day where the heat really gets going, on mostly unshaded, mostly white concrete roads/sidewalks/paths…

It was HOT.

And I didn’t bring any water.

Luckily, there are some waterfountains on the Katy Trail, otherwise it would’ve gotten ugly.

All in all, a good time, if a bit flipping HOT.

Everything was shot on a D7000 with the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G in APMode, somewhere between f/4.5 and f/8, and be aware: there are no real masterpieces here…

365.249 reflections/clear blue sky

I went on an impromptu photowalk this afternoon (more pictures to follow), and got some pretty OK results, I think.

I’ll tell more of a story when I post the full album here in a few minutes.

In the mean time…

D7000. Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G. ISO100, 1/1000th (ApMode), f/4.5. Some straightening, and a tiny bit of cropping off the top and right edge (to remove a shadow from the central-ish support column), but otherwise straight out of the Aperture RAW conversion.

365.248 disoriented

I got some nice pictures of some cat toys, but the cats decided to hide instead of play, again, so no cat pictures for caturday…

Scaredy Cats.

So I shot some pictures of the wires behind the computer, and liked this one, with no identifiable structures or forms much better…

GoGo, I guess?

D7000. Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G. ISO100, 1/10th (APmode), f/1.8. About 2 minutes of slider play in Aperture, exported, then I started over again and tortured pixels for about an hour before deciding I liked this one… of course, I’ve lost the version information… Oh well, it’s a throwaway anyway.