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.

365.130 ce n’est pas une peinture

If not for that bit of lens flare in the lower right, this could quite easily be a painting, or even a pastel sketch… Granted, this isn’t straight out of the camera, but it’s not very heavily processed either:

Aperture’s built-in RAW conversion
Exposure +.44
Black Point +2.43
Brightness +.06
Contrast +.12
Definition +.57
Saturation +.04
Vibrancy +.28
and some rather minor adjustments to levels.

So nothing crazy, no outside image editors, no plugins, nothing. Just pure, unadulterated digital macro photography. But peep the delicate handling of the colors, the soft feathering of edges, the texture that seems to lie under everything.

Fun stuff.

And speaking of fun, two things: 1) I’m reading Dune (thanks to 365.126) and thoroughly enjoying both it and the act of just simply sitting and reading fiction, something I haven’t done in quite some time. I’m afraid I’ve lost some patience and focus, what with all the internet usage I’ve been into for the past years, and I hope some simple reading will help me regain some of that. And 2) Yesterday, I mentioned fantasizing about creating book covers or something. Late last night, I had a though: why not illustrate an entire book? I haven’t started yet, but I think that this idea might form the basis for a long-term photographic project.

Good times.

D7000. Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5, reversed. ISO100, 1/4 sec., f/3.5, -1EV. (further adjustments noted above).