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.

365.210 I Will Do Better

I think I’ve figured out why I’ve been so out of it, non-committed, and creatively stunted, this week…

I gave up the nightly, after dinner candy binge a couple of weeks ago, which means I’ve had no candy in the apartment, which means I’ve had no candy immediately after arriving home (and after my afternoon snack), and instead it’s just been the usual after-work snack of cheese and crackers.

Without the sugar, I think the lactose and gluten are dragging me down in the afternoon, and since I generally shoot the 365 in the afternoon, I’ve been drug down instead of creatively inspired (or at least creatively willing, if that makes any sense).

So the next step is to change up the afternoon snack, add in a piece of fruit, or maybe a cup of yoghurt, or perhaps give it up altogether (though my daily calorie intake would drop by ~25% as a result), and I’ll see if that helps pull me out of the afternoon funk I’ve been in of late.

^fingers-crossed^

Anyway. I was waiting for the doors to decide it was time to allow entry, and decided to snap this of the entryway and elevator bank at work. Despite having some lens-correction in CS6, it still makes me dizzy and looks all twisted up, even though it’s square and plumb (if slightly off in the vertical center).

I don’t know why.

The editing went like this:
-shot with the built-in camera in HDR mode
-sent to Camera+ and hit with the clarity filter
-sent to BigLens, where it got the HDR effect, but no lens blur
-brought home, opened in Aperture
-decided the BigLens effect was too much
-decided the Camera+ effect was too much, and so
-sent the original HDR version to Photoshop for a lens correction and crop
-sent to Aperture for very mild adjustments of black point and definition.

Easy.

iPhone4, built-in camera app, in HDR mode. Lens-corrected and cropped in Photoshop CS6, with extremely mild processing in Aperture.

365.209 a pillow of winds

Well, I’m still struggling with how to depict “don’t you wonder sometimes about sound and vision.” I don’t even have a twinkling of an idea about how to go about shooting such an open-ended statement, and this lack of a clue has spilled over into the rest of my shooting, and even into my other free-time activities.

It bothers me more and more each day.

So today I offer the wadded-up reflector, abstracted, again, but this time with its pixels punished severely.

I’m torn, here. On the one hand, this pixel-punishing has a relationship to painting, somehow, and definitely to pure art-for-art’s-sake-iness. On the other hand, it feels like cheating, like I couldn’t be bothered to actually work with the camera, so instead I twist the result until I get happy with it.

Does anyone else ever feel this?

Anyway, I still like this picture, mostly, so I guess that’s what matters.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO800, 1/2.5th (APmode), f/3.5, -1EV. Moderate-to-Extreme processing in Aperture.

365.208 Ohne Titel (not feelin’ it)

I’ve had a fairly “not feelin’ it” sort of day… I wasn’t feeling getting out of bed, but wasn’t feeling staying in bed either. I wasn’t feeling the drive to work and wasn’t feeling staying home. I wasn’t feeling work (though I sorta just sleep-walked through it, and it went by fast enough), but I was already there so: meh.

When I went for some tea about 8am, there was this pot of coffee in the sink, and I remembered how much fun I had with the coffee pot and cleaning liquid homage to Jeff Koons from a week or two ago, so I whipped out the phone and shot a quick HDR sequence with the built-in camera.

Then I wasn’t feeling the drive home, or the getting home, or the Mr. Rogers-style costume change, or anything else, and so surprise! but I wasn’t feeling pulling out the camera or thinking of something to shoot or anything, so it’s a good thing I snapped this when I did.

So this started life as a straight iPhone shot and an HDR shot, both made with the built-in iOS 5 camera.

Then they came in and were HDR-ed again (for no particularly good reason) by Photoshop CS6. I just fiddled with some sliders till it looked good, then twiddled some more sliders before shipping it off to Aperture.

In Aperture, it got sent to Topaz Labs DeNoise 5 plugin, and then I twiddled some more sliders, and out this popped.

Surprise Surprise, but I’m not feelin’ it.

iPhone 4. Built-in camera app, HDR-ed in PS6, modified further in Aperture and Topaz Labs DeNoise 5.

365.207 tiny bubbles

If you’re not familiar with Don Ho’s classic, “Tiny Bubbles,” please stop now and go directly to YouTube: you may or may not be very very sorry…

If you find that yourself mumbling incoherently or trying to sing in Hawaiian, please accept my deepest apologies, and allow me to point you to http://unhearit.com/

Anyway.

I think this also looks like some sort of scary invasion or some such. I tried to find the Hawaiian translation of ‘alien invasion’ but none was forthcoming. (I didn’t try very hard…) Alas.

D7000. Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G, reversed on ~60mm extension. ISO100, 2 seconds (Ap mode), f/5.6ish, -1 1/3 EV. Moderate processing, a crop, and b/w conversion in Aperture.