At the beach

Recovering from our karaoke madness required sleeping for the better part of Sunday. If for no other reason then having not slept the night before. Never the less around 5pm we found ourselves at Sherwood Island State Park.


This was shot with my new lens - I'm still (yes, still) learning on it. I like to be able to shoot wide-open, but there's just too much light when I'm shooting at the beach. I think I may have to slap on either the CPL or the ND2 and see if that alleviates the problem in an acceptable way.

Ermm.. Saturday Night

I have no good pictures. We sang a lot. Maru. Karaoke. NYC.

Scary Gary Revisited

I've been playing around a bit more in a studio-like environment. Now, don't be fooled - my idea of a studio is my workbench, a white card, some translucent plastic and a 500W fresnel. This particular shot was back-lit using Rosco Kelly Green and the translucent plastic.



Still scary.

AHHH!!

Ok. Well. Hmm.



Yeah, I'm not sure I have any words about this picture. I don't recommend looking at it after 8pm. Or ever, really. Gary has a tendency to sneak into peoples dreams.

In other, slightly less interesting news, I shot this in my make-shift studio basement area. I'm going to be playing with my setup in the next couple of days, but this was a good first try. I shot it under a single 6" fresnel against a piece of white card. High tech, huh.

More new lensy-ness

Well, I'm still experimenting with my new lens. So far the results have been mixed. It's a big change shooting from mostly-wide to mostly-narrow. I find myself having to back up a lot. On the other hand I often find I now have too much light, which is a great problem to have!



Close scrutiny of this shot of Gizmo reveals the other problem I'm coping with: Getting the focus just right. At 1.8 the depth of field is so shallow that its hard for me to distinguish what's in and out of focus in the viewfinder. In this shot you can see that feathers and beak are the sharpest, while Gizmo's eye is a bit soft. The lens also has some subtle vignetting which I'm having to correct for.

My New Toy

Well, I've just acquired a new toy. A Nikon 50mm f/1.8D lens! I bought this lens to fill a need that my D50's kit lens couldn't fill. The kit lens is a 18-55mm but it's aperture at 55mm is a pretty-small 5.6. This makes shooting in low-light a bit of a pain. The new lens is, by comparison, a gaping f/1.8 at 50mm and its built like a truck.



So, will this be my new lens of choice? Well, only time will tell - at the moment it's taking a bit of an adjustment. I'd say with the kit lens I take a lot of wide-angle shots, with this lens that's not even an option. If I want to get more in the picture I have to back up, which certainly isn't the same thing. Never the less, the new lens is very sharp and pretty fun to use so far, so I'm going to withhold judgment till I've got a bit more time on it. One thing's for sure: I love shooting wide-open. The shallow depth of field is chocked full of goodness.

Lost in time

This is a game I haven't played in a long time. Oh my god. It's awesome.

But, wait, don't take my word for it:



And see what happens when you try to pour acid on a horse:



Nice.

More Weather

Here's another shot from my recent wet night out.



This shot is full of lots of shiny, greasy, cold awesomeness. A little bad weather goes a long way sometimes. Bricks, headlights, traffic-lights other stuff.

So Sue Me

I don't think I should even bother trying to say that this shot "just happened". The truth is, I had a bit of technical trouble with it. I knew there was an image to be found when I walked under this phone pole, but the time of day wasn't "just right" and the color of the pole was a bit lack-luster. So I went for the slightly more artificial feel you see here.


I like this shot. Yes, I know what you're thinking: "Dave, of course you like the shot. That's why you posted it!"

Fine, you know what! I'll stop saying that.

You people can be so pushy.

PS: Sam informs me that in my previous post I used "telephone poll" instead of "telephone pole". She's correct. But I feel that at this point I should make something abundantly clear: Poland has nothing to do with this. I'm quite certain that all of my poles are made of North-American timber.

She's right

Sam's absolutely right. I am way behind in my posts here. I'm not going to bother making excuses. I'm a bad person.

This past weekend was the first time I've had a good day shooting in months! I took this shot shortly after Friday's ridiculous rains had subsided. I'm going to post another shot from that outing, but I wanted to start with this one.


The bend in the Post road by Centro gives me the opportunity to take pictures of traffic heading right for me. Not sure everyone sees it that way - but thats how I see it. There are a number of reasons I chose this shot: First of all, it has some motion to it... hmm... on second thought that really isn't a good reason. Secondly, I love the highlighted bit of sidewalk on the lower left of the shot, the texture very real. And lastly, I like the way the shot is framed by the trees and telephone poles.

Hmm.. that whole analytical paragraph seems a bit self-aggrandizing. Oh well. Go me!