365.185 Abstraktes Bild

On the back of the camera, this looked like Captain America somehow.

In the computer, it looked fairly dull, at first, but then began to transform: a discotheque; a growth of some foreign mold or crystal; superman’s skin, even; there were others.

In the end, it just became an abstraction, and I’m fine with that.

D7000. EL Nikkor 50mm f/2.8, on 100mm extension. ISO100, 1/25th (AP Mode), f/2.8, -2EV. Levels, mid-contrast, definition, and some other slight pushes in Aperture.

And now I need to clean this mess up… Insofar As I planned on shooting the same thing with the same tools all week, I didn’t put my toys away a single day: for shame. This place is now a wreck. Yuck.

But I made some pretty pictures! So that’s win, I suppose.

365.184 Anytime is the Right Time

I wrote a whole rant about some advice a couple of professional photographers gave on their video podcast a couple of months go (and that I’m only getting around to watching just now), but I realized that 1) their advice was aimed at people who want to be professional photographers (i.e., not me); 2) their advice was based around photos to include in one’s portfolio (not this one, to be sure, and not that I particularly need a portfolio); 3) they were talking about traditional sorts of proper photography: landscapes and people and whatnot (and not abstracts like this); 4) there is no number 4; and 5) this is not a good enough photo to challenge any claims made by the pros, for sure.

So I deleted the rant and started again, since I only really wanted to say one thing:

Anytime is the Right Time for Photography!

D7000. Sigma 30mm f/1.4. ISO100, 1/30th (AP Mode), f/4, -2EV. Mild-to-medium processing in Aperture.

365.183 Killer 2:40-3:02

Open a new tab and go find a way to listen to Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Killer, especially the little section from 2:40-3:02. (This would be the version on theSamdhi album from 2011, the one you can find a youtube of with relative ease, or could as of 4:50pm Central Time today…) That rather manic bit of sound is the title of this piece.

I’m feeling a bit manic and put off all of a sudden, or maybe for the last half hour or so, I don’t really know, and I had a much calmer composition all ready—come to think of it, I’ll post it below—but I decided to just check and make sure there wasn’t a better one, and this one jumped out.

Groovy.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 E Series, extended by ~50mm. ISO100, 1/3, f/3.5. Minimal processing in Aperture.

here’s the outtake… same settings, but a bit more processing in Aperture:365.183 Killer 2:40-3:02

365.182 Knee 4

Quite frankly, I think this should be printed up at around 40×60″ and hanging in a gallery.

I don’t have much to say about it beyond that, though it’s amazing what one can do with some cheap LED torches, an off camera flash, and a CTO gel…

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO100, 1/10th (AP Mode), f/8 (iirc), -1EV. SB700, zoomed to 80mm, and @1/16th from hard left; two LED light bars, one lighting the front, the other bringing up the rear. Minimal processing in Aperture, just enough to get back to the jpeg preview…

365.181 Tricolore, maybe

Three colors of light…

1) Tungsten, from a mini maglite.
2) Cold Blue LED, from a cheap flashlight.
3) Fuorescent/Window Green, from the plastic filter that came with the SB700.

I have some things I want to do with this setup, and this shot wasn’t the one I intended to use (though the one I thought would work didn’t turn out the way I expected it to), but the one that screamed “It’s ME” at me when I scrolled through the library, and I might have to do multiple exposures with multiple focus points to get the shot that I wanted.

That’s the way it goes sometimes.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO100, 1/15th (AP Mode), f/11, -1EV. Moderate processing in Aperture to bring out detail and texture and to add some subtlety.

By the way, I hope the title of this doesn’t read as sacrilege. If it does, please accept my deepest apologies, and offer another title if you would, as I’m a bit flat today.

365.180 a quick bit of light play

And this is just what the title suggests…

In keeping with recent 365 photos, this is me mixing light sources and playing with color: on the left, a minimaglite; on the right an LED Lightbar thing; all around tungsten-balanced cfl and afternoon diffused sunlight. Pretty!

D7000. Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G, reversed. ISO100, 1/5th (AP mode), f/5.6 or f/8 (not really sure…). Minimal processing in Aperture.

365.179 pretty nothing

Other pictures from today’s shoot had a stronger suggestion of narrative than this one, but none caught my eye the way this one does.

And others were lined up better, with the camera more closely aligned with the pins than this one, but no others had the color variation or intensity of this one.

So this is it, I guess. Just a pretty picture with nothing really going on, and with a couple of warts to sort of distract from otherwise regular flow.

Like yesterday’s shot, the color in this was achieved by mixing light sources: a blue led light bar, bounced off of the red metal handle of its twin forming the key light, and a mini maglite shining straight down as a sort of fill, in a ratio of roughly 4:1.

I find the intensity of color that these two light sources spit out quite fascinating.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series, extended by 100mm. ISO100, 1/15, f/4. Minimal processing in Aperture.