365.175 A Tipping Point

At first, I saw this as something disintegrating.
Then it appeared as a strange tide rolling in.
Then as coagulation or agglomeration.
And yet again as rushing and crushing.

Insofar as this picture looks like all of these, I think maybe it’s a tipping point, ready to go either way.

In other news, I discovered that the Collier Kaleidoscope has sprung a leak. I am somewhat saddened by this, as I’ll have to dispose of the source of 20 or so images for this project, and find a new muse.

D7000. Sigma 30mm f/1.4, reversed, and stacked on 100mm extension. ISO100, 1/25th, f/1.4. Moderate processing in Aperture.

365.174 Almost

Almost sunrise.
Almost everyone is still asleep.
Almost looks like rain, if you didn’t know better.
Almost got run over by someone who thought they were running late.
Almost got everything lined up.
Almost patient enough to wait out the fast-moving clouds.
Almost observant enough to line up the various markings better (especially the arrows).
Almost had to flip over into manual.
Almost dropped the camera (twice).
Almost got a shot I was completely happy with.

But not quite.

D7000. Sigma 30mm f/1.4. ISO1600, 1/25th (AP Mode), f/2.8. Minimal processing in Aperture, and a trip through Topaz Labs DeNoise 5.

365.173 Under the Gun

I had fun making this, but a heckuva time getting it uploaded and edited, and I’m not particularly pleased with the results so we’ll be trying again on the morrow, perhaps.

So I plugged the SD card into the new mbp, and after a few seconds, Aperture opened and offered to import the pictures for me. Thanks!

I switched the library over to referenced yesterday, and also forgot to set up my import name change scheme (or my export name scheme…), so I set that up and then imported to the referenced library.

Aperture claimed success, and so I went to start editing pictures.

FAIL. Unsupported file type. The RAW adjustments were created with a different version of Aperture, and can not be opened. Do you want to reprocess? Yes. FAIL. Unsupported file type.

I tried another picture, then another, then another. Same thing every time.

So I deleted them all, and imported again. Same thing.

Pictures made yesterday: same.

Pictures made last year: same.

%$@&6

Ok. Don’t panic.

I ejected the card, and pulled it from the computer. But the icon remained on the desktop.

Great.

Restart.

FAIL. Hard Reboot.

Wait 30 seconds…

Start. Wait 2 minutes while the 5400rpm drive spins up and gets its $#!7 together.

All applications greyed out. Mouse clicks unrecognized. Keyboard taps unrecognized.

$^%@ &^$)#

Ok. Hard reboot, and wait 5 minutes, then start up, wait 25 minutes while Spotlight re-scans everything before I can do anything with the computer (and this is a quad core machine…).

Start Aperture and check files. Everything seems to be in order, but it can’t find my last import… Ok, so I import the pics again. Success!

Please believe there will be some serious system checking going on very shortly, and maybe a trip to the “Genius” Bar in my future. Hooray.

D7000. Sigma 30mm f/1.4. ISO100, 3 seconds, f/8. Some cropping and mild manipulation in aperture.

365.171 Askew

Have you ever had an idea for a shot, spent 20 minutes setting it up, 20 minutes trying various arrangements, angles, subject/camera positioning, but finding nothing that worked, then glanced over, saw some groovy light happening, and snapped the shot in one go?

Well that’s what I just did… and here I thought (read: hoped) I was done with the broken mirror for a bit.

Oh well.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO800, 1/60th (AP Mode), f/3.5. Mild-to-Medium post work in Aperture.

365.170 weak

The biggest problem with committing to a 365 project is posting those pics that you’re wildly unhappy with, but know its the best one you’re going to get that day.

This photo is weak. The concept is worn out (for now, for me, if not for you). The execution is poor. The composition nonexistent.

But it’s the best I can do today.

If by some miracle I come up with something better, I’ll delete this one and post the better one.

But don’t hold your breath.

D7000. LensBaby Muse (Plastic), +10 and +4 macro lenses affixed to the front. ISO100, 2 seconds, f/5.6. Torturous processing in Aperture. I even took it into Ps 5.1, but couldn’t find anything to make it better there, either.

Oh well. I won’t be posting this to the effbook.

365.169 Coltrane, Lush Life, Track One

I’ve long wanted to title things with musical phrases, but I’ve yet to come up with a way to do it.

For example, you walk into a gallery, and there next to a painting is a card with some musical notation where the title would usually go, followed by the artist name and materials and provenance and whatnot.

Or you’re in a smoky jazz club one night, and a solo pianist is on the stand, and she says “This one’s called [and she pulls out a bass clarinet and blows 20 seconds of smokin’ solo]” before launching into a new piece.

In the first case, perhaps 1% of the viewers of the title would ‘hear’ it. Everyone else would think something like ‘how strange’ or ‘how quaint’ or ‘how artistic.’

In the second case, most everyone in the club would likely wonder what was going on, but everyone would hear the title of the piece.

But with a written title, like the one above, most everyone who reads English ‘hears’ the title (so to speak).

But ‘Coltrane, Lush Life, track One’ conveys nothing of the first few bars of that particular track that I want to convey with this photograph.

Is there a way around this? Is there a way to get to the feeling of 8 bars of Coltrane within written language?

If you have any clues, I’d love to have a conversation…

D7000. Nikkor 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO400, 1/4th (AP Mode), f/8, with a healthy amount of post processing in Aperture 3.3 (which I like better today than yesterday, though it’s not remembering what it loaded from one day to the next any more: buggy).