365.149 drive-by selbsporträt

I snuck out of work a bit early today (actually, there was no need to sneak, and I didn’t particularly, as there were few people left by the time I left), and the early-afternoon light looked just about perfect for some high-contrast street shooting.

But, being that I work in an anonymous office park in an anonymous section of an anonymous suburb of an anonymous urban metropolis, there was no one about to shoot, so I shot some cars in the parking lot, and practiced my exposure locking skills.

Boring.

But I kept the camera out and shot a bit on the way home, including this shot of some stationary overpass supports as I sped past.

After some cursing and slamming on brakes and friendly horn beeps and unfriendly hand gestures and the usual sorts of homeward bound holiday-weekend fun, I shot a bit more, looking to capture a nice bit of Dune that I read last night (fail), but when I got home and loaded all the pictures in—as an aside, I’ve not been loading everything of late, but only those photos that had some chance of making it to 365 greatness or that might make for fun viewing later, and this has cut my import quotient by 60%—this one screamed at me.

So it got some heavy processing in Aperture, and a rather avant grade (for me) 16×9 crop before I realized that the drippy, smeary, splotch on the window was the reflection of my arm and hand and the camera, framed by my light-blue shirt…

Good times.

D7000. 24mm f/2.8 ai. ISO100, 1/15th (AP mode), f/2.8, and absolutely tortured in Aperture.

365.148 if I could paint like this, I’d…

if I could paint like this, I’d… well, I’d just… I mean I’d…

but I can’t, so I use a camera instead.

Fairly heavy on the post today, James… But I like it, so groovy. I didn’t leave Aperture, but I did pull out some of it’s hidden manipulation features… still nothing you couldn’t do in a darkroom, I don’t think, but far more than I usually do. But, like I said, it matters not.

I have a feeling that this would fairly well represent Paul-Muad’Dib’s becoming the Kwisatz Haderach, but I haven’t gotten to that part yet, so it doesn’t.

D7000. Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5 E Series, reversed, on 100mm extension. ISO100, 1/5th (AP Mode), f/3.5. Heavily processed in Aperture.

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.