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.

More paintball

yep its more paintball photos.  This time its photos of my new marker that I had to wait 5 months to get back.  Got to play w/ it a few times since I got back from egypt and its mostly pretty cool except for the issues that I had to fix after getting it back from the "expert" that I had it at putting it together....Malesh, I still like it :).

Edit:  Added a picture of my new pump marker.  Im really proud of it because this is the first custom marker I have conceived and built myself that worked!  Go me!

Paintball

Now that I've been back for a couple weeks I'm trying to get back into the swing of things and remain creative.  As many know, I love the sport of paintball and just his past Wed my friends and I were at out field across the river Near Hokah (check out the river rats facebook page if you are interested).  I wasn't there to play, instead, I went to trade a part w/ a friend, and to do some photos.

This shoot was exciting for two reasons; I just got a 55 mm macro AIS lens in the mail, and I just installed lightroom on my computer which is what I used to process these.  the lens is real nice and makes me want to sell my zoom in favor of other prime lenses.  The new lens is interesting; I was able to pick it up fairly cheaply (around $70) b/c it is an old fully manual lens.  Since it is fully manual, and for some god-awful reason the d90 doesn't have a lens-controlled-aperture setting, I cannot use my in-camera meter which means I have to guess at exposure.  As annoying as the guess and check method is, digital makes it real easy, and my guesses have not been too far off, which makes me feel like a real photographer :).

As far as the lens itself is concerned, I really like having a fixed focal length.  not only is the image quality much sharper, but not being able to zoom in and out makes one think about image composition more; I am strongly considering sellingm y zoom lens all together and switching over to primes entirely.  I have also noticed a tendency for it to not focus well when cranked out to "infinity" even when things are relatively far away, I have to pull it back just a tad to get stuff in focus w/ it...not fun when trying to shoot through a paintball mask...

Lets try not to Bucket-Boy this up now....

Had a great day off, spent almost all of it doing photo stuff.  Generated some new work that I'm excited enough about to preempt working on Luxor stuff.  so without further ado...

This morning I woke up w/ the urge to mess w/ my old, somewhat maksur tripod, I figured out a few weeks ago that I could take the central column out and reverse it to get the camera to hang very close to the ground.  Today I did that and went looking for something to shoot.  Ive been very intrigued by the ants here, and I found one of their nests and went to town using a 60mm macro lens we have here for the project.  after spending a fair amount of time on the ground, this was the result.

A photo I had Amanda take of me while I was using the new rig to photograph the ants.  God her lens is great....not to mention her eye.

Left the front gateway this morning to find two of our guards on camels.  I for one feel much more secure knowing that the terrorists have no chance of facing down a camel-tank...

 Up until last week, the photo-studio had no doorknob.  you could lock it from the outside with a latch and padlock, but god forbid the wind blew it shut when you were in there...the preferred methods of extrication were either pounding for someone to let you out or getting your fingers into the door crack to pry it open.  However, the carpenter came on tues or wed and installed the snazziest door handle that I have seen in a long time.  I had to show it off.  This was also done with the 60 mm macro; I really got to get me one of those...

One of the cool things about living in the desert is the occurrence of dust storms.  They can blow up pretty quick, but you still have warning.  Last week we thought one was coming, ran around sclosing windows and unplugging and storing electronics and then all ran to the roof to get a good view.  As it usually goes in Ægypt, not much actually materialized, and a good 20 mins was spent standing around doing nothing (also Ægypt appropriate).  Jen however was uber prepared with her scarf and also looked really cool, hence the photos.

Prior to last week, we had been in the wadi (basically the entrance to the high desert through a dry riverbed, you can see the entrance in the "Desert solitaire" post in the background) just once, the first week we got here.  After that the police freaked out, and Matt had to go meet w/ the head of security in the Suhoag governate to resolve the matter, which essentially came down to him telling the local guys to stop being such jerks and do their jobs.  Last friday we finally got to go up again, and while I have more pictures, I haven't gotten through them all yet as its something so massive it definitely presents a difficulty in representing the sheer magnitude of it, and just throwing up a snapshot isnt my style.  what I do have though are these 2 portraits, one of Ileana and one of Damon that I both really like.

Luxor Part "II"

More pics from Luxor.  not much to say I suppose before the actual pictures, so here we go...

The room at El-Fayrouz, a wonderful and cheap hotel we stayed at on the west bank.  Can you tell its 3 guys?

A statue outside of the Hatshepsut temple.  I didn't really like the temple that much...there wasn't really anything to it...but this statue I felt would make an awesome "portrait".

Another shot of the guy making the shisha pipe.  I liked this shot because I was able to capture his cig smoke and the flame in the burner.

A friend and I were able to duck into a small room at Karnak without any old fogey tourists lumbering in after us to ruin it.  She had actually sunburned her hands earlier in the trip and was wearing gauze on them as protection against the sun.  I thought the luminescence of it made a great photo in the beam coming from the skylight niche.

My english box is maksur...

So we are officially back from Luxor, and while I have more I havent had much time to process but its been awhile since I posted so it'll be a several-parter.

My friend Geneva on the ferry over to the west bank the day we got there.  Greg is in the background but hes dark so that keeps him from ruining it :)  I was however severely annoyed at the fact that I jad left my camera set on jpeg basic from the previous night when I was taking BS photos and processing this image was disaster.  after about an hour and a little help from Greg, I finally got it where I wanted, but it could have been better.....malesh...

So Seth, Jen, and I were in the market and Jen was looking for a skirt, so we took off down a side street to another clothing shop.  on the way there we passed a guy who was in the process of making a shisha water-pipe.  I asked him if I could take some photos of him and he said yes, so I stood there for about 10 mins watching, shooting, and smoking a cig w/ his friends.  This set by-far are imo the best photos that I got the whole trip.  small debate going on here at the house.  My frineds seem to prefer the second photo while I prefer the first.  Seth especially likes that You cant see his hands in the second photo but I prefer seeing the process better in the first photo.  In all three of these photos he is using the iron in his hand to apply solder to the seams on the pipe.  There shall be more, I just haven't gotten to processing them yet.