365.244 what the!?!

Another day, another attempt at capturing the cats at play, another day they refuse to cooperate.

Jerks.

So I took the camera to them.

Ivan is not perfectly in focus here. I have great difficulty estimating distances, and would normally have just used f/8 or f/16 and not bothered, but I wanted to blur the foreground, and at this focus distance, with the amount of available light, and a subject that would remain still for 5 or 6 seconds at most, I zone-focused a bit close.

Oh well.

So. Let’s see. where to begin…

The composition is mediocre, at best. The exposure is close-enough, but (as discussed) the focus is off. And the only redeeming quality (for me) is the rather fun post processing I rocked out here.

So I’m well on the way to a week of fails. Hooray!

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 AI. ISO100, 4 seconds, f/4. About 7 minutes of playing with sliders (mostly the levels) in Aperture, but only after waffling around on which of the bad pictures I took (not ‘made,’ took) was the least bad for a good 25…

365.243 random still from an early Brothers Quay film

This is definitely a case of going backwards.

I’m not even really sure how I captured this. This was the first of a series of shots I made of a clothes pin after the cats refused to cooperate with my carefully arranged flash and camera set up, carefully placed to unobtrusively capture them attempting to silence the laser pointer.

Despite my best attempts, they weren’t in a playful mood.

Of course, now that I’ve given up and made this piece of garbage, they’re both ready to play…

Anyway. So I grabbed the macro rig and started shooting the clothes pin.

At 16:1, there’s not much recognizable, as you might imagine, and this was the only shot—largely unintentional—that even piqued my interest enough to start playing with it.

I performed my usual tweaks, then tweaked some more, then reverted to the original RAW, reprocessed, decided to preview some black & white conversions, decided to check out the built-in color adjustments, and realized immediately that the Toy Camera adjustment looked an awful lot like something out of Institute Benjamenta…

A few tweaks later, and wildly dissatisfied, but not about to start over, here it is.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 AI, reversed, on 100mm extension. ISO100, 4 seconds, f/8 (I think). About 20 minutes of playing around in Aperture (see above) to get this mediocre result. Woo.

365.242 there’s so much happening here

Note: the title should be read to the beat of that Buffalo Springfield song…

I’m at a point now where I can choose a subject, make a picture or 5, experiment with the various sliders in Aperture to achieve something pretty and/or artistic and/or suggestive and or ______, and be done with the 365 for the day (less the time it takes to write something and post it) in less than 15 minutes, and with a picture that I’m happy to use as wallpaper on the computer for awhile.

This is one such picture: shot—with quite a bit of playing around with the subject—edited, and prepared for posting in less than 15 minutes, and I pretty much knew I had it when I clicked the shutter. I took a couple of pictures after that, and I didn’t chimp, but I already knew this would be the one, even though it didn’t look like much straight out of the RAW conversion in Aperture.

I think this means that I need to make this my life-long passion and strive to create a body of abstract pictures worthy of a MoMA retrospective or some such, or start trying to branch out into other subjects, try other techniques, add in some rules or breakpoints or benchmarks to strive for, &c., because I’ve pretty much nailed this macro/abstract thing for myself even if nobody else likes or ‘gets’ or cares to even look at the pictures (and given the number of +1s, comments, and reshares I get, I’m pretty much making these in a vacuum).*

Actually, I chalk it up to time. I know I tend to spend about 30 minutes to 1 hour per day scrolling the G+ feed, and I expect many of the people who have me in their circles are the same.

Also, I know that I have a couple of circles with people who only reshare stuff, or who tend to post lots of links to SEO optimization and male enhancement supplements and whatnot, that I rarely look at, and I bet other people have a circles with ‘really good’ (read:_famous_-ish) photographers in, and I’m likely—and with good reason—relegated to a circle appropriate to my skill level and relative renown.

It’s also likely due to the number of +1s and comments and reshares I toss out. I make every attempt to post one, comment on two, and ‘like’ three every day, but I also refuse to +1 something that I don’t genuinely appreciate, and I rarely comment unless I have something specific and constructive to say. And so the people who +1 everything they see, or leave comments like ‘gr8 captur’ or ‘soooooo pretty!!!!1!’ are unlikely to have me on their radar, since I so rarely see anything that I genuinely appreciate.

These are clearly failures on my part, and I fully recognize and am attempting to come to some sort of terms with these failures, and I in know way lay any blame or expectation on any viewer or circle-buddy for my invisibility.

Anyway, I think I am getting better, despite the dearth of external validation, so GoGo, I guess.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO100, 1/3rd (APmode), f/3.5, -1EV. 6 minutes of slider play in Aperture, plus 4 minutes of playing with other images, and checking to verify that this one is the one. (I feel this is a more appropriate measure, rather than the nebulous mild/medium/heavy scale I’ve used up until now, and I’ll be using this method, or something more descriptive, in the future).

*this is not to suggest that I don’t fully appreciate every +1 and comment and reshare that I receive… I am, however, very glad that I’m doing this for myself, for my own personal enjoyment and growth and creative expression, rather than for any recognition or approval from others, otherwise I should’ve walked away and reclaimed the 30-180 minutes/day for some other more productive activity—napping, perhaps, or eating chocolate while staring mindlessly at the tele, for example—many months ago, and most definitely long before I hit the 2/3rds mark.

and apologies for the WoT. Much of this rant applies only to the Google+ universe, since I know (thanks to Google Analytics) that I have roughly 50 visitors per week to this website of mine, a number that actually surprises me somewhat, and I’m even more surprised that over half of these are new visitors, which means it’s not just Mom (Hi!) that looks at this…

So Hello, everyone! I expect that at least some of you are actual humans, as opposed to zombie users searching for something to hack. Thank you so much for your support!

Dallas Skyline Meetup

The North Texas Photography Explorers MeetUp Group met up last night in the Trinity River bottoms between Oak Cliff and Downtown.

This used to be a fairly sketchy area, but I felt completely safe, and the only people I saw were in cars, on bicycles, or other MeetUpers, though there is evidence of some late-night shenanigans—graffiti, mostly, and a few drive-through cups—that probably don’t point to much danger. I saw no indication of hard drug use or much in the way of gang-related activity (save one fairly obvious tag indicating territory, and quite distinct from the other, largely benign graffiti). This makes sense, since North Oak Cliff has become quite gentrified of late…

Anyway.

The MeetUp group leader suggested bringing a wide-angle lens, so I brought the Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5 DX, and the Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5 E Series.

Needless to say, I swapped out the 10-24 for the 36-72 rather early… Wide-Angle shooting—to my eye—requires some foreground elements, and there is fairly little foreground interest to be had, when one is standing on the downward slope of a levee, overlooking some rather fertile looking land that used to be mighty, raging river sometime long ago. The Welcome to Dallas, Sucker image (number 3, below) is the only shot I included with the 10-24.

Aside from that shot, and the 3 obvious Hipstamatic pics, everything else was made with the 36-72mm, mostly at f/11 or f/8, mostly in APmode at -1EV. Shutter Speeds varied, obviously, and I probably should’ve taken my time, chimped more, and shot in full manual, but I was feeling lazy and moving around some. I still got some shots I was pleased enough with to share, so that’s GoGo, for sure.

All in all, the MeetUp was a good time. I really need to get out to these things more often…

365.241 Dallas Skyline

now with 20% more sunstars!

Well, the North Texas Photography Explorers MeetUp Group met up to shoot the Dallas Skyline from the Trinity River bottoms/levee tonight. I met a couple of friendly people, shot with one most of the night, waved hello and/or goodbye at some others, and generally enjoyed myself.

I’m going to make a concerted effort to get out to more of these, as I’ve been a bit lax on my attendance of late.

Anyway. Here’s a quick and dirty one, with some slapped-together processing.

I’d have a better title for it, maybe, and I’d post a big blob of related shots, and different angles, and whatnot, but it’s waaaay past my bedtime, so others will have to wait for tomorrow.

D7000. Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5 E Series. ISO100, 15 seconds (APmode), f/8, -1EV. Quite a bit of processing in Aperture to gritty-up the the river bottoms while leaving the city nice and shiny.

365.240 Concept Proved… Now What?

So I proved the concept yesterday, and was all excited about playing with it today: thought about it off and on since last night.

But when it came time to shoot… blank.

So here I am doing a U-Turn. Woo. Exciting. Yawn.

I’m going to go put a pen and pad next to the bed, and on the back of the toilet, and somewhere near the stove or food prep area, and on the coffee table in hopes that something will come to me in a flash of brilliance or something.

In the mean time…

My meager backdrop is in the wash, and I think I’ll make a trip to the fabric store for a much bigger piece. My current one is roughly 3’x18″ and was purchased to shoot product photos back in graphic design class in 2004ish, and is not intended to serve as a backdrop for a human person…

D7000. Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5 E-Series, at 72mm. ISO100, 6 seconds, f/8. SB-700, zoomed to 24mm, at 1/8th, fired into a silver umbrella and ineffectually bounced off of a silver reflector (camera right), and triggered via a pair of Cactus v5 triggers: one on the flash; one in my hand. Medium processing in Aperture to remove filth from the backdrop and bring out a bit of detail.

365.239 proof of concept

Feeling better today.

Didn’t make the time, or put in the thought, to get the picture I wanted, since the only idea I had didn’t work very well, but I did manage to learn some things about the general method I used, so a proof of concept is great.

One thing… Why is only the left edge in focus? I was the same rough distance away from the lens/camera/film plane for all. It could be that the Vivitar is a bit heavy for the D7000 (it is), or maybe something is off with the film plane (I surely hope not). Some testing will be needed.

And I’ll need to do some more playing with this… as the possibilities for this method look promisingly possible.

D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5, at about 80mm. ISO100, 6 seconds, f/3.5. SB-700, zoomed to 24mm, at 1/8th, fired into a silver umbrella. Mild processing in Aperture.