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.

365.206 Some kind of change, some kind of Spinning Away

Well, I’m not satisfied with this one. I’m not satisfied with much of anything today, seeing as I spent the whole day effing with my website after a plugin update hosed everything, and the whole week trying to shoot “Don’t you wonder sometimes about Sound and Vision” and failing miserably due to lack of imagination.

But maybe I’m being overly critical.

Either way, I think it might be time to pony up the bucks for a proper macro lens… the Zomb-E series is a fabulous toy, but it breaks down a bit in cases like this. Of course, a proper macro lens would be of little help when the concept and execution are as poor as this. I’ll think on it a bit.

The lyric comes from “Spinning Away” by Brian Eno and John Cale, from their album Wrong Way Up. I can do without most of that record, as it sounds to my ear like bad 80s music for grown ups, but “Spinning Away” is pretty awesome, imo.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO100, 1/250th, f/11. SB-700, zoomed to 24mm, at 1/16th power, hard camera left, and triggered via a pair of Cactus V5 triggers. And the pixels were stretched to within an inch of their 1’s and 0’s in Aperture.

365.205 S/V#003 (Particle-like Wave)

I laid awake almost all night last night, not thinking about Sound & Vision, but something was bothering me…

Yesterday, I claimed that sound falls on the electromagnetic spectrum… Dumb@55.

Sound, in and of itself, while a wave, to be sure, is of a completely different order than light.

Light just moves, passes through all manner of vacuums and thin materials, and electromagnetism passes through pretty much everything.

Sound, on the other hand, does not exist in a vacuum, as it requires a medium. In fact, I might make the claim that there is no such thing as sound qua sound, but only the vibration of media.*

If I was a slightly different person, I would go back and edit yesterday’s post. But I’m not a different person, I’m always and only James, and I like to be wrong, mistaken, incorrect, because then I can learn something, be reminded of something, be shown another way.

So groovy…

Please pardon the out-of-focus droplet… If you’re really bothered by it, think of it as depicting the failure of this line of inquiry into Sound & Vision.

Rest assured that I’ll continue to “wonder sometimes, about Sound & Vision.”

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO100, 1/250th, f/11. SB-700, hard camera left, zoomed to 35mm, and at 1/4, fired via a pair of Cactus V5 triggers. Moderate processing in Aperture.

*Of course, I’m likely quite wrong about this too… but I think I’m closer.

365.204 S/V#002 (wave-like particle)

After much pondering, I noticed the wavy lines in the bottom of a pie pan reflector that I’ve never used, and remembered the wavelike particle-ness (and particle-like wave-ness) of water, and then remembered that sound is also a wave, and falls on the electromagnetic spectrum.

So I shot the pie pan: fail.

And then I had a flash of brilliance, and added a bit of water to it: still fail.

Then I added some agitation: better, but nope.

Then I added some flash: getting there, but not enough DoF.

So I cranked down the aperture, and Poof! Something that get’s a bit closer to ‘Don’t you wonder sometimes… about Sound & Vision!’ for the sliproject. We’ll see if it makes the cut.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 E-Series. ISO100, 1/250th, f/8. SB-700, mounted on-camera, with diffusion flap down, zoomed to 11mm (automatically, I think), at 1/8th. Rather heavily processed in Aperture.