Published on
March 12, 2010 in
Stuff.
In trying to catch up to the target dates for my 52 project, and given how long it took me to complete “Money”, I thought I’d give myself an easy one and just take a decent picture of eyes. As usual my ambition exceeded my estimates! I had the thought of “I see the world in your eyes”, so I tried to Pshop the earth into this image of an eye, but it didn’t quite “fit” no matter how hard I massaged it. I was sorely tempted to reshoot the eye so that it would better accommodate a planet, but instead I came up with the varient “When I look at you I see my whole universe”. It worked out OK.
You might want to click on the image above to see it in a much larger resolution, so that you can better see the detail of the spiral galaxy. I have every intention of doing the earth-in-eye image eventually, but for now I am adequately satisfied that this fulfills my self-imposed requirements for the completion of January 30th’s mildly overdue entry in my 52 project. All done!
Next 52 project: “Colorization”
Published on
March 3, 2010 in
Stuff.
I actually finished my long-overdue assignment for my 52 project! This was one of the first times I ever had to gather significant amounts of photographic gear and thematic props for a self-portrait-styled shoot, and I learned a few things about the difficulties involved in taking a good picture without benefit of being behind the viewfinder. Thanks to the fact that I couldn’t be absolutely sure where the camera was facing in relation to my body position I took a truly excessive numbers of shots while varying my pose and expression, and every 20 shots or so I would run back to the camera to chimp and make sure that everything was going all right. With a little massaging in Lightroom and Photoshop I was able to get almost exactly what I had intended.
Click for a larger version
I am not normally a fan of either black-and-white or film grain effects since neither really apply in the digital world, but I have to admit there is something to be said for removing the color so that the viewer doesn’t get distracted from the subject matter. I think “grainy B&W” is often used as an excuse for poor photographers to rescue a poor image, but on rare occasion it really does work as an artistic tool.
Now that I finally have “Money” all done I can proceed to catch up with the rest of my overdue 52 images. The next one on the list is “eyes”.
Published on
February 27, 2010 in
Stuff.
When I started my 52 project this year it was with the firm belief that I would be able to keep up with the schedule. After all, the day I decided I would do it I sat down and wrote up a list of a few dozen topics, and I arranged them according to relative difficulty. I assumed it would be no problem for me to pull a topic off the list, spend a day or two contemplating it, and then shoot it. Unfortunately I found that the realities of my life sometimes get in the way of my best intentions, and I have found myself slipping farther and farther behind schedule.
No more!
With warmer weather coming I should be able to move about my largely-unheated house more freely, so I should be able to catch up on all the projects that have been falling along the wayside. Thanks to some recent changes in my personal life I am also quite hopeful and pumped up with more energy than recent weeks, so with any luck this will be my last excuse for not progressing on the 52 project. After all, I wouldn’t want to let down my massive throngs of internet followers (hi Farrar!). 
Published on
February 22, 2010 in
Stuff.
CLIK AND BAI MEE!!
I am simultaneously micro-reviewing SmugMug’s pro printing and sales service AND using the opportunity to try to sell some of my painfully cute kitten photos!
I needed a system for allowing clients to interact with my photographs; an ordering site where they can select the images they like, get them printed in a huge array of sizes, surfaces, materials and objects, and have the products shipped directly to them without the need for me to intervene and micromanage it. I found one that seems to work well for my level of technical requirements and professional quality, and at as competitive a price as I have seen so far: SmugMug. Continue reading ‘Kittens prints for sale, and how I got there.’
Published on
January 17, 2010 in
Stuff.
This week’s theme was “Sky”. The weather did not cooperate a lot, as it was frequently an even sheet of uninteresting gray and often drizzling, but I did get lucky with a short break between weather systems.
During one of the only days where the sun came out I got this moody shot as a new storm front was blowing in from the left of the scene and obliterating the last of the afternoon sunshine on the right of the scene. There was just enough light from the late afternoon sun to put a hint of color and detail in the storm clouds, while really setting off the big fluffy clouds from the sunny morning. The bare trees provide a nice contrast against both extremes. Once again I am satisfied that I acheived the subject goal.
Next week: “Money”
Published on
January 12, 2010 in
Stuff.
Today was Day Two of the 2010 Imaging Expo in Nashville, and it was very nice! It was far larger than I would have expected for Nashville, easily rivaling events like Macworld in (San Fran or New York), and I spent about two hours walking the show floor. I’m budgeting my money right now, so I didn’t spend a lot of time chatting with people in every single booth as I don’t like to waste people’s time unless I am a serious prospect, but just looking around was informative and a good way to kill a chunk of my afternoon. There were many good companies there, but I did come away with a short list of my own personal “best of show” exhibitors and interesting sights. Continue reading ‘A trip to the 2010 Imaging Expo’
Published on
January 10, 2010 in
Stuff.
This year I am starting a “52″ project. A 52 project means that for each fully calender week I will have a different photographic theme I will try to capture in photographs, and I will post one of the better ones here on the blog. You may be familiar with “365″ projects, where you take a picture of something every day for a year, and while this is a fine idea for flexing the creative muscles the results are often pretty, well, throwaway. A 52 project gives me more time to concentrate on the week’s theme so that I can go to a little effort to get a shot worthy of keeping.
Here is one of the better shots from this week’s theme, “Cold”.
To start my project off I created a spreadsheet with the last Saturday of every week, for all of 2010. I then created three columns for ideas; “easy”, “medium” and “hard”, and I started filling them in with all sorts of thematic ideas as they occured to me. “Cold” was actually in the “medium” column, but I got a lucky break during the cold snap we had last week when some nice icicle structures started to form on my ancient wood porch in my backyard. I experimented with some macro shots, but it actually looked a lot like a running stream of water taken at a high shutter speed so I decided to back up a bit an include a little more of the surroundings. The crusty, mossy wood of my porch roof makes for an interesting contrast with the clean gray icicles, and the heavily out-of-focus background of the leafless trees in the yard adds a nice brown tone as a backdrop. I shot at about f2.8 so that I would use the lens optics near the sweet spot of sharpness, while still allowing such a shallow depth-of-field that the foreground and background would get thrown into a nice soft haze. All in all I am satisfied with it.
Next project, “Sky”.
