365.147 Abstraktes Bild

I’d like to have a better title for this—something about the dark and scary forest in which live all manner of unicorns and rainbows and fluffy bunnies and whatnot, perhaps—but I couldn’t really come up with anything, and I have very little to say about it at all, other than ‘here it is!’

D7000. LensBaby Muse (plastic), mounted on the Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron). ISO100, 1.6 seconds (AP Mode), both wide open, -2EV. Minimal processing in Aperture to bring out some detail in the upper half.

365.146 something descending the something, or moving through, or flowing after, or…

I had a hard time arriving at a 365 shot today… over 100 pictures made, 50 deleted before reaching the computer even, and the rest a big bunch of meh.

I’d still be shooting, but it’s dinner time and I can’t stare at screens any more today, so this will have to do.

I think I’m getting better at making Meh pictures, though, so that’s something I guess.

D7000. Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G, reversed, on 100mm extension. ISO100, 1 sec. f/1.8. Heavily processed in Aperture.

365.145 Water of Life

“He tried to focus on her, but past and future were merging into the present, blurring her image. He saw her in countless ways and positions and settings.”

Not much to say about this one… I read that passage last night, dogeared the page, came home from work today and made this picture.

Does this capture the quote? I think it does, but maybe you feel otherwise. It’s ok either way.

And actually, I do have something to more to say…

When I first had the idea to try illustrating a novel, I started writing down important things—or things that I saw as important—or memorable scenery, and I planned to go back later and shoot, say, a stillsuit, or the pain box, or a desert storm, or folding space, or etc.

But now I see that there is another, more interesting way to approach this series of illustrations, and that is what I’ve done here: mark passages that appeal to something within me, and illustrate the feeling, rather than the thing.

Maybe that’s a key to photography itself: if we want to do more than make bad catalogue photos (not that there’s anything wrong with bad catalogue photos: the world is in constant need of such photos), we could strive to capture a feeling, perhaps an emotion or thought or intuition or whatever, but capture that which lies beyond the object itself.

I’m sure I heard this somewhere before, so it’s likely that this strikes you as banal.

If so, apologies, but perhaps it bears repeating for relative n00bs like me.

D7000. EL Nikkor 50mm f/2.8, extended by 100mm. ISO100, 1/250th, f/2.8. SB-700 at 1/128th fired from about 8″ away and triggered by a set of Cactus v5s. Heavy processing in Aperture, mostly to bring out all the variation in the big orange swath in the upper left.

^Herbert, Frank. Dune. (Radnor, Pennsylvania: Chilton Book Company, 1965; Berkley Medalion Edition, Sixth Printing, 1977), 361.

365.144 a ceremony

“Paul felt the diminishment of his self as he advanced into the center of the circle. It was as though he lost a fragment of himself and sought it here.”

After numerous failed attempts to capture the morning light in the way that I wanted, I strapped on the EL Nikkor and returned to my project to illustrate novels with macro abstractions.

Good times, but I wonder if I captured it… and I wonder if I shouldn’t leave the narrative to the viewer, if I should enforce it on you or let you discover it for yourself. I think this is an issue most arts have, and I would like to expound on this, but I’m feeling a bit out of it at present. Perhaps later, if I come up with something worth saying.

Anyway.

D7000. EL Nikkor 50mm f/2.8, on 100mm extension. ISO100, 1 second, f/2.8. Moderate Aperture enhansements.

^Herbert, Frank. Dune. (Radnor, Pennsylvania: Chilton Book Company, 1965; Berkley Medalion Edition, Sixth Printing, 1977), 314.

365.143 Ohne Titel

Back to the macro… but I tried something interesting this time:

I took two shots (one at 1/3 second, the other at 1/13th, both ISO800 and f/11) and then tried to use the ‘Merge to HDR Pro” function in Photoshop. Alas, something shifted, and Ps was unable to align them properly.

So I opened them both, stacked them together, played with positioning and opacity until I was happy, and sent the resulting image back to Aperture, where I cropped off the parts that didn’t overlap, and did some fine-tuning.

I guess that would make this my first HDR-by-hand image.

Good times.

And if you have a good title for this, do let me know! I’m feeling a bit sleepy, or I’d have come up with one… Alas.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8, reversed, and stacked on the Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron). ISO800, 1/3sec & 1/13th second, f/11 (on the 24mm; the Vivitar was wide open). HDR by hand in Photoshop, fine-tuning in Aperture.

365.142 she canna take much more of this

After yesterday’s Happy Accident, I decided to try to get one On Purpose, and I must say that the Happy Accident turned out better, and was much easier to recognize as ‘shot-of-the-day’ than this one. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the Happy Accident was the only picture I took yesterday, but it screamed “I’m the One” immediately, whereas I took 12 shots today, and massaged most of them before settling on this one, mostly because it had the widest range of color.

I’ll keep playing with this idea, keep mulling it over, and see if I can come up with something more to do with this picture-making technique, but I’ll not be counting on any of them as 365 entries.

One thing I need to try is a lower ISO. And I’d also like to see what a deliberately defocused version looked like… And double exposure might be interesting, though I suppose manual mode and more intensive pre-set-up would be required, and I’d only be able to get one shot… And maybe HDRifying one for no reason too…

I’ll add these ideas to my shot list directly.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai. ISO800, 15 seconds (AP mode), f/8. Processed with heavy hand in Aperture.

365.140 a Happy Accident

While speeding to work this morning (I wasn’t running late, just speeding), I came up on an suv of some sort, and the light coming off of its spinners was AMAZING.

So I slowed down, whipped out the camera, popped off the lens cap, pointed it, and tripped the shutter…

But a D7000 in AP Mode, with ISO and Aperture determined by the user performs quite a bit differently than would an iPhone or any camera in full auto mode, and the D7000 didn’t see the beautiful spinners twinkling in the pre-dawn darkness, it just saw the pre-dawn darkness.

And while my choice of ISO (leftover, incidentally, from I-don’t-know-what), was far higher than I would have knowingly left it, it was not high enough to provide anything approaching hand-holdability, especially since I had a relatively high aperture value set.

I can’t in any way fault the D7000 here, as it performed admirably, and eked out its usual one stop overexposure (with this lens) that led to this image.

And I don’t know why I expected a relatively short shutter speed, or, rather, I didn’t even think about it because 1) I was driving, and 2) I got maybe one hour of sleep last night and have been pretty well out of it pretty much all day.

Anyways…

This shot, to me, looks like a candidate for an outtake of the cover shoot Black Sabbath’s Paranoid album, as covered by the Scissor Sisters, and I think I’ve stumbled on to a project to try for a week or two, or at least something to try again…

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai. ISO800, 15 seconds (AP Mode), f/8. Adjustments to exposure, black point, and contrast in Aperture to help tighten everything up.