365.224 there’s a hole in the…

Dear Liza, Dear Liza

Ok… bit of backstory here…

Monday, some guys came through all the apartments, looking for leaks in the air conditioning system. They didn’t find anything.

Monday evening, after dinner, after my stories, I put the cats to bed, walked into my bedroom and heard a strange squishing noise…

Called the emergency maintenance line, told the jerk what was up, and about an hour later, the plumber came by and congratulated me for finding the leak.

So Ladies… this is my bedroom…

Double closets, room for a king, but fit with a queen, large windows, well lit, and with a big effing hole in the floor.

I’m chilling out in my apartment now, and it smells of damp earth.

I’m having visions of Charles Bronson in The Great Escape.

If I stop laughing about it, I’ll likely get bothered…

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 AI. ISO800, 1/40th, f/4, -2EV, on camera flash at full power for some fill. Minimal processing to bring out some texture in the dirt.

And, no, this isn’t one of my usual pretty pictures. But the 365 is not necessarily all pretty pictures. It’s also about life.

365.223 Introverted Streetog, perhaps

Well, I took the day off work to wait for some workmen to come rip up the bedroom floor, chop through the foundation, and repair a broken pipe for the complex’s air conditioner.

Somehow, a day at home in the middle of the week is much less exciting/engaging than a weekend day…

But I did enjoy watching the sun come up.

The courtyard sunrise is a good 2 hours behind the actual sunrise, and some fabulous light effects take place in that time.

Plus, with the unrelated workers in the process of replacing a rotted header board, there were some interesting opportunities for surreptitious shooting through the mini blinds.

iPhone4. Built-In camera app, in HDR mode. ISO80, 1/464th, f/2.8 (all chosen by the app). Mild processing in Aperture to bring the colors and dynamic range up to something like what I saw.

365.222 Helios

In some ways, I sorta think this looks like a 1970s era Have a Nice Day badge on an acid trip, or as rendered by one of those psychedelic concert poster artists for a Grateful Dead concert, but not quite.

In some other ways, I’d like to call this a portrait of Leto II on his wedding day, saying his vows to the gentle Hwi, but that is also not quite, perhaps.

So it’s just Helios, I guess.

It’s the tip of a fairy light bulb, looking down the bulb towards the base, in case you were wondering.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 AI, reversed, on 100mm extension. ISO100, 3 seconds (AP mode), f/8, -1EV. And for the first time in a long time, the only processing to this was removing about a dozen dust spots (and whatever Aperture’s RAW converter did to it…) in Aperture.

365.221 Ohne Titel (700 Fail)

I got an early start on the 365 shooting today, messing around with food coloring again, when the SB-700 decided to do it’s periodic lock-up thing.

Oh well. No big deal: power off (which appears to do nothing), pop open the battery door, wait a couple of seconds, close the battery door, power on, and go back to shooting as usual (this happens from time to time, and is not in any way heat related).

This time, however, when I got to the last step (powering on and going back to shooting), nothing. The power didn’t return.

Ok. Fresh eneloops. Nope.

Ok. Recharge the fully charged eneloops. Nope.

Ok. Try regular old throw-away batteries. Nope.

2 hours of cussing later, it appears the SB-700 has died. After ~9 months of periodic (maybe once a mont) usage.

The interwebs have been of no help.

Luckily, I have the receipt, and the camera shop where I bought it is on the way home, so maybe I can get some service on it… it should still be under warranty.

If not, that’s ~$400 thrown away, and I’ll switch to manual-only off-brand flashes and other accessories from here on out.

Anyway.

So this I made this after the flash failed. I like the swirly patterns, and decided it might look better in B/W, so: groovy, I guess.

I’m too bothered by the failure of yet another piece of expensive electronics to much care.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO100, 1/4th (AP mode), f/3.5 (ignore the exif), -1EV. Radical processing in Aperture and a trip through Topaz Labs B&W Effects.

365.220 Abstraktes Bild

So I tried playing around with food coloring and water this afternoon… Short answer: I need a larger container, preferably with reasonably flat sides. I won’t go into the long story, even though it was mostly fun…

But I still learned a few things, and there are passages of this particular photograph and a couple of others that I really like, so I suppose it was an all around win.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO100, 1/250th, f/3.5. SB700, with its diffusion panel in place, at 1/32 power, to the left and behind, fired into a small mirror angled into the subject. Mild-to-Medium processing in Aperture.

And much thanks to Christina Lawrie over at G+ for the idea…

365.219 closer

Almost. I got some others that went too far. All in all, I made 150 pictures today…

~100 on the way home: highway photography.
~30 after I realized those were fail; an experiment: mounting the LensBaby on the Zomb-E series… shoulda known the working distance would shrink dramatically.
~20 after, in an attempt to capture this, almost, and totally at the last minute, as a safety, because all of the others were fail.

But I like this, mostly.

Other shots from today’s after-shoot shooting suggest I might want to invest in a second 75-150, one without condensation on the inside of the front element, since the condensation that came with the Zomb-E Series before it became a Zomb-E shows up clearly in bright light sources at ~1:2 or greater, though when I can get shots like this with a Zomb-E lens, i don’t know why I’d consider much of anything else: I like these…

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO100, 1/400th (ApMode), f/3.5 (ignore the exif), -1EV. Medium levels of processing in Aperture to bring out some detail.

365.218 The New Oil/Crosswalk to Nowhere

Gotta love that magic iPhone flare!

I arrived a bit early to work today, and slow-walked my way in, took some pictures of the empty parking lot and all, and generally took it easy getting in.

It’s been awhile since I managed to get almost perfect flare on the iPhone! I’m loving it.

Also: given that it’s the summer, this is Texas, and water is scarce, I wish they’d turn the damnable sprinklers off, or at least use wastewater… At least they’re watering well before sun-up. I guess that’s something.

I wonder what my part is in this particular waste of a precious natural resource… I do willingly work for a company that willingly rents office space from the property owners, and so my labor is partly going to pay for this waste.

Am I culpable?

Yes. Yes I am. And so are we all.

Is there an alternative? Do you have any ideas? Can I be entirely consistent with my values and still feed/shelter/clothe myself?

iPhone 4. Built-in camera app. ISO1000, 1/15th, f/2.8 (all chosen automatically, with no input from me). Mild adjustments and a trip through Topaz Labs’ DeNoise 5.