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.

365.217 heat and mania

I don’t quite know why, but I got myself really worked up, agitated, stretched too thin, at work today, and the heat that accompanied the drive home, along with the multiple instances of poor blinker management and, shall we say, a rather avant garde attitude toward lane markers got me even more excited, and not in a pleasant or agreeable way.

This comes close to capturing the streaming and swirling of my current thought and emotional pattern, and the process of making and editing it should’ve relaxed me some.

Alas.

So now it’s off to play video games and while away the evening, or at least the rest of the afternoon.

D7000. LensBaby Muse (Plastic). ISO100, 1/1600 (APmode), f/2 (ignore the EXIF: I didn’t change the non-cpu data before shooting like did yesterday…). Surprisingly mild processing in Aperture, given my attitude.

365.216 between Planck and Inflation, perhaps

Big thanks to Rob Weiher over at G+ for pointing out the fabulous light-manipulating properties of the LensBaby!

I took a cosmology course at the community college many years ago, and I’m often surprised by 1) how much I remember from that class (like Planck), especially given how long ago it was and how much, um… er… fun I imbibed enjoyed in the interim and 2) how much some of the stuff has to do with photography.

Like radiation and light types/sources and time intervals and big bangs and all.

Anyway.

This was fun, and I think I want to do some more… maybe even see if I can’t mount the lensbaby on another lens for more/stranger effects, perhaps… should be good times.

D7000. LensBaby Muse (Plastic). ISO100, 1/2000th (APmode), f/2, -2EV. Mild-to-Medium processing in Aperture.

365.215 Abstraktes Bild (Cuddly)

So… I’m very happy with this one. It’s just so soft and friendly and cuddly-looking, like a big fluffy comforter, perhaps, or a large pit full of large balls of yarn.

At the same time, there’s something menacing about it too, that I only just noticed when looking at it at 1/10th size in the Google+ add post window.

Anyway. I decided to see if the Zomb-E Series was the only lens that could do this, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s not, but that appears to be the only sort of lens design that will perform this spherical distortion trick (a zoom lens with a fixed rear element, reversed).

I tested with the Vivitar 70-210 f/3.5 (Kiron) and the Tokina 35-200 f/3.5-4.5 AT-X, and found that the Vivitar performed similarly to the Zomb-E, but the Tokina didn’t perform at all (though it gave some interesting results on its own). Insofar as the Vivitar and the Zomb-E series share similar designs, while the Tokina is completely different (with a rear element that moves in and out with zooming). Anyway…

I’ll get off this trick soon enough, for those of you who are tired of it already, and I hope to find some alternate subjects soon, but I’m really happy with the way they’re going for now, so GoGo.

D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron), reversed. ISO100, 1/100th (APmode), f/3.5, -1EV. Mild-to-Medium processing in Aperture, which is usual for these images, I suppose.

365.214 Ohne Titel

At every stage of the editing process, I thought of a different title: the new oil, breaking surface tension, Violence: breaking tensions, and so on.

Yet when I decided it was done, it seemed to work better without a title (though, to be honest “Ohne Titel” is itself a title of sorts…).

I also tried a number of crops, from ~10%-75% removal, but in the end decided to present the entire scene, as there are some passages that shouldn’t be missed, and even though I had to leave in some rough spots.

Oh well.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO100, 1/250th, f/16. SB-700, zoomed to 50mm and 1/16th power, hard camera left, fired into a silver reflector at camera right, and triggered by a pair of Cactus v5 triggers.