365.137 a bad capture of some brilliant light

If you pay attention, there’s a great light show going on somewhere nearby at virtually any time of the day or night.

Realizing this fact and coming to appreciate light of all types is, on my view, one of the keys to improving skill as a photographer.

Sometimes it’s easy to capture the amazing light that’s all around all the time. At other times, not so much.

I see this sight most weekends (I leave too early in the morning to see it during the week), and I’ve tried to capture it multiple times, but I can’t seem to get it just right.

First, I’m usually on my way to go do something when I notice this light. It’s right outside my front door, and all I have to do is open the blinds and look out, but I usually don’t open the blinds until after 8 or 9 am, if at all. And so I only ever see it when I’m headed out somewhere, and I don’t take the time adjust settings manually or even play with exposure compensation or exposure locking, if I even bother to pull out the camera at all.

Second, I have yet to find a spot where everything lines up just right. (It doesn’t help that this apartment complex is 50+ years old, and a bit out of square… and the big black fountain in the center of the courtyard doesn’t help much either.)

Third, it would help if I had taken the time to check the focus… I thought I had it, but I didn’t really.

So there are two lessons I need to learn from this (at least): 1) Take Your Time, James! Check your settings, adjust your focus, and don’t be in such a hurry! and 2) move around more! If it looks good from here, it probably looks pretty good from over there too!

Actually, I’m usually pretty good about the second, but only when I attend to the first.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8. ISO100, 1/30 (AP Mode), f/5.6, -1EV, very minor adjustments in Aperture.

365.136 Scavenger Hunt Photowalk

The Dallas Photowalk MeetUp Group met up today for a scavenger hunt. I didn’t get much rest last night, and so I sort of mumbled my way through it, but I did manage to capture 8 out of 12 things in one picture (the 365 shot for today, above), another 4 in this one…
365.136 Scavenger Hunt Photowalk
and the final two here:

365.136 Scavenger Hunt Photowalk

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8. ISO100, 1.6 seconds (AP mode), f/22, -1EV, minimal processing in Aperture.

If you’re curious, here’s the full list:

  • Red
  • Big
  • Soft
  • Money
  • Water
  • Reflection
  • Triangle
  • Parallel
  • Place to sit
  • Arch
  • A cover
  • The letter “R”

As you may have noticed, some of my finds were a bit more conceptual than others…

365.135 Apparition

So I got up at my usual (ungodly) hour, let the cats out of bed, made coffee, took out cat droppings, laid out my clothes, took a shower, brushed teeth, dried off, and was absentmindedly pulling on my trousers when I saw it.

I didn’t know whether to scream like a little girl or fall on the ground and praise [insert deity here], so I ran into the living room and grabbed the camera…

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai. ISO1600, 1/10th (AP mode), f/2.8.

365.134 Why Hello, Kitty

New graffiti popped up on the old building I pass on the way home almost every day… And it’s pretty nice, too.

Or, rather, some street art-type-stuff popped up on the groovy building I pass every day. Unlike the usual tags and throw-ups I see there, this little stencil is sweet and friendly and (mostly) nonthreatening… This is not to say that the usual tags and throw-ups are threatening, at least not to me anyway.

I’ve had fantasies of buying this building and turning it into an art gallery (downstairs) and residence (upstairs). I know it would be a total money pit, but I really like this old fellow, and hope someone finds a way to do something with it.

iPhone 4. Built-in camera app. Shot from across the street, from the car window, with traffic streaming by, and straightened in Photoshop. If I make the time this evening, I’ll go shoot it properly, though I’m largely fine with this as it is.

365.133 ‘plunge’ is not this picture’s title…

But I couldn’t come up with a better one, and I only decided to abandon it after I’d already uploaded and titled it in Picasa, and it’s too much trouble to delete and start again, so I’m kinda stuck.

Oh well.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8, reversed. ISO400, 1/50th, f/2.8. Adujstments in Aperture were so slight as to not be worth mentioning.

365.132 I always wondered…

…what folding space looked like.

Well, maybe not always, but for quite some time. And I’m sure it looks nothing like that strange-honking scene in that awful Dune movie…

Or maybe this is a Base Ship in orbit above Caprica…

Or it could be something else, something of the actual world, which wouldn’t surprise me much, as this place is fantastic and wondrous as often as not.

Anyway. Enough hypothesizing. It’s really a test to see how the LensBaby performs when stacked on 100mm worth of extension tubes… As expected, it’s not sharp, has no depth of field to speak of, and produces the usual dreamy, blurry stuff for which this model is known.

Good times.

D7000. LensBaby Muse (plastic), stacked on 100mm extension. ISO100, 1.3 seconds (APmode), f/2.0. Quite a bit of adjustment in Aperture to bring out various details.

365.131 Ohne Titel

Not much to say about this one.

It took a long time, largely because I kept looking for a narrative photo, rather than looking for one that I enjoyed looking at. I knew—but didn’t really consider—that I would need to find the narrative and then make the photo, rather than the other way around, and if I’m going to illustrate a novel, I need to read the novel first, make notes, convert those notes into a shot list, and then get to work.

So this took a lot longer than it should’ve, and required many more lens-changes than would’ve been otherwise necessary. In fact, I ended up playing eeny, meeny, miny, moe to pick the one I ended up using.

Oh well.

D7000. Sigma 30mm f/1.4, reversed, on ~100mm extension. ISO100, 1/4 (AP mode), f/1.4, -2EV. Minor processing in Aperture.

 

Edit: and I feel that I cheated a bit on this one, since it’s relevantly similar to 365.125 Chrysalis, but not nearly as good. Oh well.