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.

365.213 …and the possibilities…

Vacuum created
by the arrival of freedom
and the possibilities
it seemed to offer
-from “Up The Hill Backwards,” by David Bowie, from Scary Monsters…

Also… more idols than realities, ooo-hooo, I’m ok, you’re so so Awesome.

Anyway… I messed around with this a bunch, but came back to a relatively unaltered one (relatively).

Strange thing: I tried to HDR two versions of this shot with CS6’s Merge to HDR Pro, but it never worked. The Merge to HDR bit would just stop, with no visual indication: it never even opened in the editing window. I expect this has to do with the upgrade to Mountain Lion I made today, but I’ve been unable to find a solution, or any report of a similar problem.

If you have any information, please pass it on (if you’ve even read this far)…

Anyway.

I really like the foggy, nebulous center portion on this, and the extreme tunnel view is really working. I just wish I could come up with more ways to produce this effect, and figure out a way to do something with multiple exposures too…

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E-Series. ISO100, 1/200 (APmode), f/3.5. Processing consisted of allover painting of Intensify Contrast and Definition at ~60% intensity, an allover painting of vibrancy at ~30%, a slight reduction in saturation, and slight adjustments to contrast, definition, and black point.

365.212 time keeps on slippin slippin slippin

I spent some time experimenting this afternoon, and didn’t get very close to what I was going for… more experimentation will be required.

But at least I got something I could work with, and I’m actually rather happy with the way this appears to be off-center, due to the darker portion in the middle right. The bokeh balls themselves should be symmetrical, for the most part, because the Zomb-E Series, despite being zombified, is symmetrical.

Anyway. Weird Wild Stuff.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO100, 1/50th (Apmode), f/3.5, -1EV. Moderate processing in Aperture.

365.211 main point of reference

So this might end up being my final entry for Levi Moore’s sliproject…

from Brian Eno’s “Back in Judy’s Jungle,” Taking Tiger Mountain – By Strategy:

File under ‘Futile:’
That should give you its main point of reference
It’s all so confusing, what with pythons and then deadly flies

And I think this captures, if nothing else, a suggestion of multiple points of reference, I suppose. And if not, well at least it gets someway towards suggesting futility, to a degree, anyway.

Not the futility of this project, for sure, or of life itself, or anything so depressing, but the futility of escape from this vortex of  #bokeliciousness . Ha!

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO800 (leftover from the other day: CHECK SETTINGS, JACKASS!!!!1!!), 1/800th (APmode), f/3.5, -1EV (Also leftover, but usual for non-cpu lenses). Mild-to-moderate processing in Aperture.