California

Here are some of my pics from my trip to CA a few weeks ago. I went to attend an immersive on digital photography for archaeology at the Center For Digital Archaeology (CODA) (http://www.codifi.info/) and do some work on my thesis. I had a great time during the immersive and afterwards the instructor Michael and his Wife were kind enough to let me stay with them while Michael and I worked on my thesis stuff. During this time I got to do more photography than I have been able to in almost a year and here are a few samples. More to come!

Aerial Photography

So I recently figured out how to make photos taken out of the shitty plastic windows on a standard commuter jet somewhat passable.  This was great because following an experience several years ago I had all but given up.  However, upon returning from LA a week or two ago (its tough to remember with the end of the quarter happening at the same time) I discovered some adjustments in camera RAW that remove a good majority of the haziness.

Setting out this morning, I resolved to try Aerial photos again.  Throughout the 2-3 hour flight to Oakland I shot whenever something caught my eye out the window.  its a shame that the flight path didn't go over southern Utah, but I think I got some decent stuff.  One thing I was proud of was that I was able to photograph features that I could either recognize or later geo-refference (coordinates next to each photo's name/description.  if you copy/paste into Google maps you will see the photographed feature)

Denver    39.742359,-105.004807

Golden, CO   39.756903,-105.222988

Dillon, CO  39.630191,-106.044016


Other places, mostly in California but I have no idea where.

First real attempt at a night exposure

So I've been wanting to do real night exposures for awhile now, but my camera has always hampered me as it can only do 30 sec exposures maximum before going to bulb.  The problem was that to get exposures that werent too dark I would have toopen my apeture all the way and/or jack the ISO values, both of which created a fair ammount of grain, something that as a sharpness junkie I am firmly against.  So, since I actually was not in school for this week I went and blew the cash on a cable release which would allow me to do longer exposures and actually went out to do some photos.  "Hey" I said, "maybe I'll even do a blog post."

This ended up being either a 13 or a 20 min exposure at F8 with ISO set at 200.  The higher f-stop and low ISO value again designed to minimize grain, but the guy at the camera store said 400 would really be okay.  I may try this agian at 400, besides, I wanted to get some stars in there.

Editing competition 1

The paintball forum that I am on is having a little editing contest in the photography sub-forum:  http://www.mcarterbrown.com/forums/photography/142396-editing-competition-1-a.html

Here is my submission for the first go-around:

Before:

After:

Ægypt backlog part 1

After a long-ish hiatus I finally had a day off where I decided to sit down and do some work.  Here is a few images from Ægypt that hadn't made it online before I left:

OMG!  An agricultural field that isn't just corn or soybeans!  I had to get a picture of this...

 

A little Zen-type Setup G-Grizz and I created on a walk we took w/ Seth and Jen to the great Wadi.

Seth Hurries to get his Op map finished before we leave Abydos....

The apartments across the street from the hotel on our last night in Cairo.

New lenses

So this is a little backwards, but as I said in the last post, I was excited to process photo from my trip to the suburbs so this took a back-seat.  While still in Egypt I started to grow dissatisfied with my zoom lens due to a number of factors.  I had started to notice the sharpness I wanted wasnt always there, and I realized that whenever I was using my zoom, I was either shooting at 17mm or 50mm, nothing in-between.  Since the project had Nikon lenses I got a chance to try out some primes for the first time in my life and I found what I had been looking for.  I returned home and decided to off-load my flash unit that I never used and my zoom lens (which I still very much liked mind you) for 3 new lenses; a 20mm 1:2.8, a 55mm 1:3.5 micro(macro, Nikon is weird), and a 50mm 1:1.4.  Thus far I have recieved and used my 20mm (see last post), my 55mm, and my 50mm is on its way in the mail as we speak.

The greatest thing hands down about primes I believe is that it makes you a better photographer by limiting you to a certain focal length, which makes you deal with distance to the subject on a whole different level.  If you can't get close/far enough you either have to abandon the shot, or are forced to find a new way to make it work, something that zoom lenses don't really hold you to.

The quality and sharpness is really amazing too.  As long as you are mindful of the effects of diffraction fixed-focal-length name-brand lenses made by the camera companies are the way to go.  while third-party lenses can introduce AF problems, ones produced by Nikon for use on a Nikon body work wonders, and the less glass and distance the light has to travel through really make for a better image IMO.

Here are some images I shot fairly soon (often the very day) upon receiving my 55mm and then my 20mm lenses.

55mm 1:3.5 Micro

My trusted 17-50...you will be missed....

20mm 1:2.8

Growing up in the burbs

When my Wife and I decided not to have kids we almost by default shut out an aspect of American life that we could never live ourselves, just observe;  life in the suburbs, raising your kids.  While upon moving to WI we did live in a more suburb-type environment, there are things that I know that I missed since my parents were Immigrants and their ideas about how they wanted to raise my sister and I in that environment were more ad-hoc than anything else.  not to mention that intra-neighborhood socialization was not really a thing w/ our family.

My nephew is a different case.  he sees his world through the lenses of his friends and experiences living in that environment.  Like I said, I have hints of the ideas, but it wasn't until I sat down in front of the computer that I realized the way I was shooting was trying to capture the world through his eyes; maybe to get a better idea for myself what it must feel like.

on another level entirely, this is the first post (though not the first photos, I was just excited about this batch) shot entirely using my new 20mm 1:2.8 AFD lens.  the thing is amazingly sharp and the AF is nice and snappy, definitely worth trading in my flash and zoom lens for.  just waiting for the 50mm to arrive in the mail...

This is also the first batch of images after figuring out how to actually integrate Lightroom efficiently into my work-flow.  The program is amazing, offering a light footprint with the ability to seamlessly integrate w/ photoshop when I need more control.  The batch processing options are also great, watermarks are now placed automatically instead of my having to do each one separately, hamdulillah!

enough blather, images!

Oh animals, ever present...

some kids get all the best toys...

The next set are my nephew enjoying his slide.  I know, a departuere from what I was talking about before, but I like em.