365.48 Point of Impact – part 2 – Ist es nicht sehr schön?

And this one really was fun! And it went quickly too!

I did tear half the apartment apart to get the camera in a position to shoot it, but that’s my own fault for not yet having a proper shooting platform set up: soon, probably not this month due to work-related time constraints, but soon.

Ok. This was another multiple exposure shot, this time with flash. Both were shot with the D7000 and 75-150mm f/3.5 E Series, zoomed all the way in, with the ISO set at 100:

Shot 1: 1/200th second, f/16, SB700 at 1/2 power fired into the CerealBoxStripBox(tm) that I positioned over the subject and slightly behind, as I wanted the light to spill over the side and bounce off the foamcore below to illuminate the underside.
Shot 2: 1/2, f/5.6, same flash set up (I meant to shut off the flash and try to get some hint of the yellow tungsten bulbs and afternoon light in the reflection, but I forgot, or got in too much of a hurry, or something… I don’t remember). Either way…

I think it’s beautiful.

365.47 Point of Impact, part 2: Dizzy

Well, this was a fun one…

D7000, Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.5 – 4.5 at 10mm (15mm equivalent), ISO100, 1/60th, f/6.3; SB-700 with its Florescent filter thing, at 1/4 power, camera left, triggered with Cactus v5 trigger.

I don’t do much with the 10-24 unless I’m shooting real estate, and this photo shows it! Wow. I need more practice with this lens, and with shooting in general.

It didn’t help that I put in a 9.5 hour day after not sleeping well thanks to the light snow fall and loud drainpipe outside my window last night. Yuck.

But tomorrow is another day, and another step towards getting better at making photographs! Woo!

365.46 Point of Impact (1)

This is the passenger side door handle from my beloved (and no-longer-extant) 1970 Volkswagon Beetle—a plain Beetle, none of that ‘super’ stuff—that was destroyed by a nice woman in a 1984 Ford Bronco in 1998 or 1999. I’m not really sure of the date any more…

I think the police must have brought me the handle, because I had to chase the nice woman down, and this went spinning away and skittered around the highway after she hit me and then tried to flee the scene. (Thankfully, those Beetles were tough little cars, and I was able to chase her down despite the Bronco-shaped dent in the side, and despite being covered in glass, bleeding from various safety glass nicks, and with the passenger door practically in my lap.)

Or maybe I picked it up later, when I went to visit the Professor in her final resting place. I don’t recall. But I’ve carried it with me ever since.

Anyway. I was hunting around for something to shoot, and I spotted this on the bookshelf. I shot it about 80 times in a box made out of 4 sheets of white foam core that I picked up at the Michael’s earlier today (2/$3 for 20x30inch sheets at the Michael’s on Greenville, near Lover’s, if you’re nearby and in need of some).

I was not particularly happy with any of the pictures I made.

Anyway. As I was postprocessing, a thought occurred. Why not shoot just this one thing for a full week, try out different lenses, from different angles, with various light modifiers, under a variety of conditions, etc.?

Brilliant, yes? I think so. We’ll see if it’s still recognizable by next Saturday…

D7000, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, ISO100, 1/250th, f/8; SB-700 at 1/64th, I think, but that’s about all I remember about that (remind me to take notes…).

Obey Dallas – continued, ammended

Apparently, there was some interwebs chatter regarding Shepard Fairey and his status as a sellout following his recent DJ appearance and muraling in Dallas. I don’t think I contributed to this chatter, as I don’t think my website gets much traffic,* but I would like to correct a few of my own errors, just to be sure that I’m being consistent and giving credit where it is due.

In my post about his visit, I suggested that Mr. Fairey didn’t actually participate in any of the wheatpasting. I am happy to report that Shep did, indeed, do some of the work himself, if the images here, here, and here, and an interview he gave to Peter Simek of D Magazine are to be believed (and I believe they are). Additionally, the murals they completed were mostly spraypaint (and bucket paint, perhaps, though I saw no evidence of that in his production photos).

I also reported—incorrectly, thanks to information on the Dallas Contemporary website—that Shep and the gang created “more than 12” murals in and around West Dallas… they did 5: one outside the Dallas Contemporary, three on Singleton (at McPherson, east of Sylvan), and one at the corner of Sylvan and Fort Worth Avenue, on the retaining wall below the Belmont Hotel. The image above is part of the mural outside the Belmont, and the full gallery—images I shot last Sunday at the Contemporary and on Singleton, plus shots of the Belmont mural from today—is below.

I’m very thankful that the Contemporary brought Mr. Fairey to Dallas, and found walls for him to decorate, as this visit has sparked some renewed interest in an idea I have for a follow-up to my thesis. Since I completed that essay, I’ve learned a great deal more about graffiti, and my thinking on street art and graffiti (and the Splasher group) has changed somewhat. We’ll see if I can keep this interest going long enough to get something written.

Anyway, here are some photos of the Belmont mural, and a reposting of the images from last week. Enjoy.

Also, I did find one (marginally) illegal piece today… there’s a sticker on a light pole on a tiny median at Singleton and Fort Worth Avenue about 20 yards from the mural at the Belmont… So that’s something, anyway.

 

*Google analytics reports 222 unique visitors and 28 repeats between January 12 and February 11… I’m not that popular *snif*

365.45 Abstraktes Bild

Momma is a big fan of spectra. She has a 14 color spectrum of yarn on top of some bookshelves. She has a 6 color spectrum of water bottles on one windowsill, and this set of 6 glasses on another windowsill.

I didn’t get a great angle on this due to physical limitations, so the yellow and green glasses sort of blend together (the wide aperture didn’t help either), and this is another handheld multifun thing, so sharpness isn’t what it could be, but I really like the colors, distortions, and the weird white ghost in the lower right corner, and I’m really glad I shoot raw, since the D7000 was set up for -2 EV from yesterday…

Any tricks you have on how I might get myself to remember to reset the camera before putting it away for the day will be appreciated.

Anyway…

D7000, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, ISO100, 1/500th (twice), f/2, -2EV (pushed to +2 in Aperture), some saturation added to reflections, black point raised slightly, and that’s about it.

And by the way, this is the only picture I’ve taken today… I think I’ll go rectify that.

365.44 HDR, the Easy Way

365.44 HDR, the Easy Way (or, More Multifun Fun, or, again, I couldn’t think of anything to shoot, so I shot this, or, “the view from my desk at 5:09 pm”)

I’ve been busy this afternoon: I had to fetch groceries since I need to go in to work tomorrow and need to make soup tomorrow and one of the annual marathons is on tomorrow which means I’ll be boxed in or out from ~6am to noonish; I posted short reviews and example images of the last two Hipstamatic Disposable cameras on my blog (and example shots from regular Hipstamatic’s new lens) [If you’re curious: the El Mario and Gregory GR8 cameras are complete wastes of 99 cents, imo.]; tried to wash clothes but all the machines are full; sat down to check email, found the sun glaring in my eyes, realized it was getting late, whipped out the camera and made this double exposure.

This technique definitely has some possibilites.

D7000, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, ISO100, 1/125 and 1/30(ish), f/3.5, both at -2.0 EV, shot in Aperture Priority mode, and stitched together in camera.

And if you look closely, I did move a tiny bit…

The Americana Lens from Hipstamatic

Hipstamatic offered up a new lens and case today. Here are some example shots of the lens with a few of my favorite films.

The lens gives everything a blue or purple cast, with a blurred bit in randomized areas.

I like this one, and it makes me think I should go through and turn off some of the films and lenses that I don’t like so they don’t show up in the randomizer. Then again, I use the randomizer for pretty much every shot I take, and I sort of like it when I set up a decent composition take the shot, and walk away, only to discover that the randomizer coughed up the Dreamy film…

And the case is glossy and crisp, like something from the future in the 1950s maybe, and it’s my current case of choice. (Sadly, I didn’t take a screenshot, and probably won’t, but if you ask nicely I might be convinced to add one someday.)