February 2012
1 post
January 2012
9 posts
1 tag
Image of the year
For the last two years, I’ve chosen my favorite image from the past year, and placed it on this blog (2010 2009). This year I’m a bit late in putting it up.
In 2011, I had far less photography focus than I would have liked. Between buying a house and long hours at work, I just had less time to spend on it. It turns out my first photo published of the year, which was the first of...
December 2011
4 posts
November 2011
1 post
1 tag
April 2011
1 post
Wow, it's been a while
I haven’t posted here in quite a long time… just lazy I guess. Or maybe it’s because Jessie and I bought a house! Ok, that’s not a good excuse. Just lazy.
So, in a torrent of photos, here’s the last six weeks of our 52week project:
February 2011
3 posts
2 tags
7/52
The original plan for this week was to get some photos of victorian costumes out in the environment, but then it rained all weekend.
The knitter’s-eye-view was Jessie’s idea. I guess there aren’t many photos of knitting taken from the point of view of the knitter, so we went to work to make it happen. It’s actually quite difficult to get a large field camera in place...
5/52 and 6/52
Looks like I didn’t write last week, so here’s a twofer.
Neither of these images turned out quite how I intended, and they both have the same problem. I envisioned the framing to be considerably tighter on each, but then somehow missed it. Oh well, at least I got the exposure and focus down. I’m especially happy about that for the first, since it actually makes use of...
2 tags
4/52
Week 4 of 52
Speckled white background
They hang there like icicles
Pots on the pegboard.
We just put up a new pegboard in the kitchen, so we used it as a backdrop for this week’s photo.
Only four weeks in, and I’m already cheating (sort of). I set up, we took the shot, I tore down the equipment and went to develop the film. This is when I realized that my film holder...
January 2011
4 posts
3/52
Illuminated.
Yet not from warm solar rays,
The cold apparent.
I love how all of these have been very different so far. I’m hoping to keep this up and not get stuck in the same sorts of images over and over. It it would be easy to keep taking similar image with the same light, but that’s not why I’m doing this. The goal is creation within constraint not repetition.
2 tags
2/52
She’s standng alone
Wooden planks high above water
The pelicans left
This week we tried to keep it simple again. No difficult directing or posing, just a simple late-afternoon shot on the wharf. To add a bit of extra visual interest, I added some tilt to the lens. The shot should have been 1/60 @ ƒ/8, but I forgot to change the aperture, and it’s at ƒ/5.6. Ooops. I realized...
2 tags
1/52
Cold winter, wearing
Striped socks for warmth. Suddenly:
Pigtopus attacks.
We wanted to keep it simple for our first week (of the 52 week project), so here it is. Details about the shot are on the flickr page.
1 tag
Image of the Year
At the end of 2009, I started a a new tradition of selecting my favorite image of 2009. This year, the decision was difficult, as I was torn between selecting the image I feel is the best aesthetically, and images I have a lot of emotional attachment to. Ultimately I decided to select the dancer above over my more emotionally motivated choices below.
2011 should be an interesting year! In...
December 2010
3 posts
2 tags
52 Weeks
I’ve decided to go ahead with the fifty-two project… taking and posting one photo every week. To give myself a challenge, I’m adding some constraints:
I will only shoot film (primarily 4x5 sheet film)
I will develop the film myself
I only get one frame each week (must get it right on that shot)
Jessie will be in it each week (so it’s a modeling challenge for her too)
...
She said "yes!"
I love this woman.
1 tag
52 weeks
Fifty-two weeks, fifty-two photos. That’s the idea behind the 52 weeks project. I’ve been considering starting in on such a project for 2011. I could use a project to get me thinking about photography again.
I need a theme to tie it all together, but what to do? I rather enjoy portraits, but that’s probably too generic a plan. I’ve recently started developing film...
August 2010
1 post
Blown Away
May 2010
2 posts
SCIENCE
April 2010
1 post
March 2010
1 post
December 2009
3 posts
Image of the year
Typically, we start the new year with a resolution. Instead, I’m ending the old year with my personal favorite image from 2009. After reading LeggNet’s Digital Capture blog post about his year-end tradition of looking back and decided I should start the same. What I love about this image is the sense of wonder it produces. Who is this floating girl? Why is there a dog? How is she floating? This...
More Costumes, Dancing
This past weekend was the last weekend for the Dickens Fair, and the December Gaskell Ball. We spent most of Saturday dancing; it was wonderful! I purchased both CDs from Brassworks and I’ve had various Victorian dance pieces in my head for the last few days. Jessie made a beautiful new blue day dress: we discovered a T-Rex: and danced some lovely waltzes at Fezziwig’s: Later that evening...
Waltzing
It’s been a long time since I posted anything here! Since my last post, I’ve been busy with a variety of waltzes: First up, the Gaskell Ball in October. Jessie and I had a blast dancing in our “schmancy dress” (her words) ! I have a set of photos from the event up on flickr Fast-forward a few weeks to the Dickens Christmas Fair with more fancy outfits, and more dancing. The fair is a lot...
October 2009
1 post
Headshot retouching
Photo retouching, before/after:
September 2009
1 post
Costumed Outings
Earlier this month, Jessie and I got all dressed up and headed out to the Sacramento Gold Rush Days, and then the PEERS Space Cowboy’s Ball. We had a great time! Rather than attempt to bore you with text, I’ll just share the pics:
August 2009
1 post
Knapp's Castle Roundup
Has it really been a month since I posted anything here? I bought a D700 at the beginning of the month, and I’ve been quite enjoying it. I’ve been up to Knapp’s Castle several times this month… twice for photo shoots. First, Patty, Theresa, and I hiked into the castle around 11 PM and stayed through 1 AM. We first set up at the ruins of the old wall: Then, the fog rolled in and we moved to the...
July 2009
6 posts
Accidental Diptych
These two photos ended up above each other in my flickr stream in an amusing fashion:
Texturing
My friend Jessie convinced me to try my hand at “texturing.” I combined these two images: To get: Overall, I like the tones and the vertical lines, but I’m not a big fan of the rivets across Melody’s face. I got the aluminum image from grungetextures.com. Their images are free for non-commercial use, as long as you give credit. Lots of good stuff there, I’ll have to try this more.
Before / After
Here’s a quick before and after retouch post, using a neat javascript utility I found:
Stagecoach Road Photoshoot
On Sunday, Melody and I took a quick trip to Stage Coach Rd. off of route 154. We captured several great portraits and I’m still post-processing them, but here’s a quick preview. This was my first real opportunity to use all of my newly acquired AlienBees gear (hooray for Craigslist). I decided to experiment with the beauty dish as a key light and use the softbox for fill. The first shot here was...
Last night I attended the 90th Annual Santa Barbara Hunter-Jumper Show with my friend Violet. She competed in a number of the events this week, but last night we were just watching the competition. I was struck at how quiet the event was. When the horse was close, you could hear it breathing, but there was little noise otherwise. Once the jumpers finished the course, the crowd erupted into...
Fireworks
This evening I went to Girsh Park to see the Goleta Fireworks, and I happened to get a couple of photos of Patty:
June 2009
9 posts
New flash!
I picked up a couple of AlienBees flashes from Craigslist this weekend on my way to Jessie’s graduation party in Sacramento. I haven’t had much of an opportunity to use them, but we did get a couple of shots in the pool at the party: I also got a beauty dish, which I’m very excited to use more of:
Austin: Inner Space Cavern
Denman and I visited Inner Space Cavern today. It was in the mid-sixties inside, but around 90% humidity, so it wasn’t much better than the 100-degree temperatures outside! Quite a bit of fun though. I’ve discovered that getting good photos inside a cave really requires a tripod, so I’m only sharing one with the world:
Austin: Hike to the Capitol
Today Denman and I took a six mile hike up a creek bed to the Capitol building. Along the way we stopped at Whole Foods and had a fantastic smoothie and lunch. We took a bus home since neither of us really wanted to hike in the 90+ degree heat.
Austin, TX
I’m in Austin, TX for the weekend, visiting my friend Denman. It’s HOT here, and I’m really not used to the heat. We visited the Zilker Botanical Gardens: and the Umlauf Sculpture Garden:
Now what?
Now that SoFoBoMo is complete, what’s next? With SoFoBoMo, I had a set of ideas and a goal to push for. Now I feel directionless. I have some vague ideas for some more portrait work, but I’d really like to continue my set of magic and mystery. Perhaps inspiration will hit suddenly. Perhaps I’ll have to dig through mythology or fairy tales or fiction. Or, perhaps you, my fine reader(s?), have an...
Of Light and Life -- SoFoBoMo '09 Complete!
Last night, I finished my SoFoBoMo 2009 book, titled: Of Light and Life A big thanks to Melody, Meka, Christy, Ryan, Dore, Patty, and Katie. for modeling. Thank you Jessica, Christy, and Melody for helping carry equipment. Also to my readers Ian F. and Beth S. for encouraging me. And finally a tip to Mike for the ghostscript resizing tip!
On Reducing the File Size of a PDF
For SoFoBoMo, I need to upload a PDF of my book that is less than 15 megabytes. Since I intend to print my book, the PDF at high-res is 90 megabytes! After some research, I found that ghostscript can down-size PDFs by reducing the resolution of the images it contains. Here’s the command to downsize Portraits.pdf (90MB) to Portraits_low.pdf (8MB):
gs -q -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite...