Where have I been?

Well, those of you were around last week know why I was an absent blogger. Sam was in town for "Spring Break". In Sam's case this is actually a week-long birthday celebration. This means that while I took many pictures this past week, very few of them are fit for posting - they tend to be more of the vacation-variety snapshot.


Those of you who frequent the New York art scene (I do not count my self among you) will recognize this as being the open-air garden area just east of MoMA. This is a big-old waterfall fountain, and one that I would love to spend hours taking pictures of... unfortunately, I found myself in the cold, without a tripod and with a low battery. Also apparently we had a spectator that I was unaware of, but that Sam noticed.

I'm still trying to learn how to best put my flash to use . In this shot it really upset the color of the image - though it's really ok, because I like the shot in black and white. In this shot the flash provides fill lighting for Sam's face and torso - without it she would be a heavy silhouette. I wasn't quite sure how to treat Sam's midriff... in the photo. Eventually I decided to leave it alone since burning it wasn't producing very interesting results.

Update: Midriff now removed. Disolved into a sea of blackness

Another shot from last weekend's jaunt

This week has been ridiculous. I spend Sunday night doing a strike at the Downtown Cabaret in Bridgeport. I then worked two 15 hour days in a row, leaving work and heading directly to the Cabaret for a light hang. I was hurting pretty bad for a few days, so Wednesday was a recovery day. Yesterday was spent in preparation for Sam's arrival.

So here we are, and me with no new photos.


As you can probably tell, either by the purveyor or his merchandise, this shot was taken in Chinatown. The shot started as a bit of a color study, but I've been getting a bit braver about taking pictures of people - so I kept shooting until something interesting happened in frame.

More NYC

Here's another shot from my recent trip into the city.


As you can probably tell, this shot spent some time in editing. I pumped the saturation over-all and then selectively pulled it down in areas. I then used the color gradient tool to do a little bit of manipulation on the shading of the people in the shot. I particularly like the way the 'Lotto ATM' light shines through the tape meant to obscure it.

Points to anyone who can pinpoint the location of this shot.

Shooting in NYC

A landmark occasion. Today marks the first time that I ventured into the city for the express purpose of taking pictures. I was unencumbered by hangers-on to slow my trekking. Sweet. I walked from Grand Central down towards City Hall and then back up again. I zig-zagged the whole way of course. I will be posting many shots from today's adventure. Here is the first.


The energy in Chinatown is utterly insane. I could stand all day and take pictures there. In fact, I probably should have. NYC affords a certain amount of anonymity to the photographer who is a little afraid of shooting strangers. I just kept shooting people buying and selling. This is the keeper. I'm glad I was looking through the lens at this moment, otherwise I probably would have walked away, embarrassed.

A little behind

Well, I've gotten a little behind. We had some tremendous weather this week. On Friday, I went out (without a jacket) and took a few shots.


Of all the shots I took on Friday this is my favorite. The sky gradient really came alive when I started to go to work on the raw file. I did a bit of saturation and color-temp tweaking.

I can't stress enough how excited I am for the return of good weather.

A Sunday wandering Westport

That's about as accurate a description of my Sunday as I can come up with. I spent some time at the Bearing Hill Beach then made my way over to Earthplace... sorry... it'll always be NCEA to me. Heehee.


I took this shot from the bottom of a particularly extreme bit of tree-ness. As you can probably guess this is at Earthplace. I was hoping I'd see some animals (preferably of the cloven-hooved variety), but no such luck. I originally shot this completely upside down. I gave it a 180 degree rotation in post. I like the sunlight playing off the bark.

Update: I made it to number four. Awww yeah.

Icy Winds

I managed, for the second day in a row, to leave the office while a little sunlight was still on the horizon. I headed for Compo Beach to take some tundra-like shots of the icy solitude. The wind was outrageous. It blew little face-cutting particles of ice around and making my exposed skin burn. I was fortunate enough to have brought along gloves but I forgot, entirely, the benefit that a hat would provide. By the time I made it back to the car (180 shots later) I was shivering and I couldn't feel my fingers or toes.


These tents proved to be particularly interesting. I'm not accustomed to seeing tents on the beach in the winter, and the 30mph winds made them particularly attractive subjects. I took many shots of the tents from the outside, and even a few from the inside. It wasn't until I started tweaking the raw files that I began to see on-screen what I had seen in person.

I am exceptionally pleased with this shot.

Update: Well, according to flickr scout, this shot has shown up as #3 on flickr's explore pages. Yay for interestingness!

Another Snowy One

Unfortunately, on this particular snowy day I wasn't "trapped" in Chicago. I decided that on my way home from work I was going to catch a little bit of light and take some pictures in the snow. As soon as I got on the road however I realized just how suicidal it was driving around and so I nixed my original plans and went after some low-hanging fruit.

I've actualy wanted to stop at this rest stop and take some pictures in the past. Today seemed as good a time as any. There was even a news crew set up to record a live segment in front of the traffic. Yeah, that bit never gets old.


I took a number of shots, all of them came out fairly mundane. I had to spend a decent amount of time in Photoshop tweaking and poking until I had usable material. In this particular shot I added a serious amount of vignetting. I like the feel it gives the image. I also bumped the various exposure and curve settings. I chose this as the best of the bunch because of the gleaming snow illuminated by the truck lights. I was worried about condensation today so I made a bit of a scarafice: I rode around with the heat off so my camera wouldn't have to make fast temperature adjustments. I'm not sure if it paid off or not, but I didn't have any serious condensation. So thats good.

Flickr, Interestingness and Addiction

I had, on Monday, the opportunity to read this article on FlickrNation. The article presents 10 tips to get more people looking at your photos posted on Flickr. Most of the tips seem to center on building yourself into the community. I like this. I used to only favorite those pictures taken by friends which I wanted to have a way back to. Now I use the favorite button like a thumbs-up, or a "Nice Job". When I give someone the thumbs-up they see that I have done so and take a look at my pictures in return. The same concept works for commenting as well.
I am now addicted. Looking at random pictures commenting and favoriting away. There's nothing disingenuous about this either. I love looking at random snippets of peoples lives and its great to give someone a thumbs-up. I'm an addict now.

So, is this all just attention whoring? Yes. But also no. Other than the occasional ego stroke, the fact that people are viewing my pictures puts on the pressure to produce and to maintain a level of quality that I otherwise wouldn't.

File it under pressure to produce. Despite the way I was feeling after work I decided to take some outdoor pictures. I've long thought about shooting some pictures along this particular stretch of the Post Road in Norwalk. It's particularly ugly and commercial and even features a stunningly rusty radio tower. The weather, however, was a bit more than I bargained for and I didn't go nuts walking around the area.


My goal for the evening was to take a series of photos, at different exposures, that I could later use for HDR processing. Unfortunately, I'm a terrible novice at this particular technique and so I didn't really manage to produce anything. I did however produce a nice non-HDR still image. Here it is.

Not a Photo [NAP]

Ok well, this is a little bit of a diversion. Normaly this space is reserved for my pictures. But today something cool happened. I'm quoted on boingboing!

I responded to Cory Doctorow's post on, competitor, Podzinger by letting him know about Podscope. To my surprise he returned my email and asked me for a 1-liner talking contrasting Podscope. I'm quoted in the update. Here's the story!

-Dave

Composition and Contrast

I took a couple of shots inside the pavilion at Sherwood Island. The pavilion itself is quite a piece of architecture. That is to say it is utterly dated in its outward appearance, but kind of charming in its own way. Looking at it the pavilion through the CPL was a bit like looking back in time.


Two things I really like about this shot. The contrast and the composition. The depth of the black makes the window seem to fade away. The black on top and bottom makes the window "pop" a bit more. I took a number of shots like this one. I may post another.

I did a bit in post to this shot. I raised the shadow levels tremendously - this is pretty obvious. I also bumped down the exposure and increased the saturation. It was very difficult to get any color showing through.

Update: This photo made it to number 82 on flickr's most interesting on February 25! Its my first time!

Praise be to sunlight

Praise be to sunlight, that glorious thing which makes my Saturday afternoon warm.

The weather has been bad lately. Really cold. This fact, combined with the daylight-savings-related lack of light, has made it difficult to take pictures. Not so today.

I'm a Westport native. Never mind what my birth certificate says. Somehow its never occurred to me that they don't charge admission to get into Sherwood Island State Park in the off-season. Lesson learned. This gives me a whole new beach environment to take pictures of. Not only that, but the buildings have a great 70's style to them that makes them look incredibly dingy and interesting.


A lot of the pictures I took today where under incredibly harsh sun. I slapped on the CPL and under-exposed everything. I like the arctic-winter feel that it produces. Expect to see me post a few more of the pictures from today. I feel like this was my first good day in a while.

Boring Technical Note: My circular polarizer fogs up. A lot. Its starting to become problematic. I need a cloth that I can use on it.

Too damn cold.

It has been cold. Very cold. So cold that when I go outside my tripod instantly becomes too cold to touch with bare hands. So cold that I have to let my camera's temperature adjust slowly so that the glass doesn't fog. In short: It has been too cold to take pictures outside.

Fellow CT dwellers may note that I am posting this on a particularly warm day. Well, for that, I have no excuse. I'm busy that's all. Heehee.

Determined to not have my blogyness completely undermined by the weather I decided to take some closeups of completely lame objects. The sort of flotsam that one can always find by Jullian's computer.



This picture pretty much explains how I feel about the weather of the past week. I hate in when it takes my fingers the entire day to warm up. bah. I used my recently acquired +1 macro filter. Kinda cool.

Graffiti

There's a lot of graffiti out there. Most of it is probably destructive, impulsive crap. But there is a special kind of graffiti that warms the cockles of my ice-cold heart. When ever I see graffiti that exhibits a designer's aesthetic I take notice.

During my recent trip to Chicago I found myself hanging around DePaul's Merle Reskin Theatre. On the east side of the venue an alley provides a service corridor to the nearby buildings.


This is exactly the style of graffiti that puts a big grin on my face. Someone drew a "Block" next to the sign reading "Do Not Block". I hardly know where to begin - the fact that the cube is so simply rendered makes it even more amusing.

I did a bit of post-production on this shot. I first bumped the contrast and saturation to produce a very vivid, if oddly colored, image. I then desaturated the image and added some texture using a thread-pattern and a brightness/contrast mask. I'm still new the whole masking-layer technique. Its a remarkably effective work-flow tool.

King of the Hill

Some animals are insane camera-whores. You may recognize this little rodent as a meerkat. A group of meerkats once graced the cover of National Geographic in much the same pose.

Sam and I were at the Lincoln Park Zoo. I turned a corner to discover a group of meerkats sitting on a log in their standard pose. I decided I had to sneak up - so that I could capture them standing on their log - just like in the NG cover. I tip-toed closer and closer until I was standing right in front of them - they didn't move.

Go stealthy Dave.

Wrong. I could have performed a one-man version of riverdance on the same hollow log that they were standing on and they would have just rolled with it. Oh well. I took some pictures. They didn't come out well.


The only interesting picture was of the king-of-the-hill meerkat. This guy just sat up there the whole time we watched. He was content with his lot. And I was content to take his picture.

-D

Snowed In.

Well, I'm not actually snowed in, but I am trapped in Chicago until Tuesday morning. All the flights into BDL were canceled. Well boo for travel, hooray for another day and a half with Mina. Meanwhile, the nice people at AA were, after quite a while on hold, perfectly happy to get me on Tuesday's earliest flight. And, with coach being full they bumped me up to first class. I hope I get some sort of cool mileage incentive.

All of this is sort of an explanation for the lack of postings. I've been in Chicago since Thursday evening. I've got all sorts of really cool pictures to post (including a swimming hippopotamus). The chi-town pictures will start to trickle in once I'm back at home base.

-Dave

NOTE: This is my first non-meta posting to not include a picture. Hmm. Any thoughts?

A Long Late Night

Yesterday was a long day. A long day which proceeded into a long night. The kind of night - at the office - that I truly dislike. I didn't even get a chance to leave until after 11pm. No dinner. Bleary eyes. Headache.

The cold air in the garage dulled my headache enough for me to take some pictures of the some late-night parking-garage eirieness.


It's easy to hate the light cast by so many mercury vapor lights. For that reason it's odd when I find myself moth-like and kind-of drawn to the hard lines and ugliness that they project. I'm sure this isn't the best picture that I've posted on here, but at the moment I took the shot it seemed perfectly in synch with the way I was feeling. So. Hmm.

Small and Pointy

House hunting has left me with little time to go out with my camera. Although its possible that I'm just using that as an excuse for not hanging outside in the cold. Alas.


This is a crop of one of the shots I took in long island. I feel like it may be a bit cliche' - I'm not sure. I find myself drawn to taking pictures of fences - in part because they provide interesting contrasts, but also because they have a certain allure. A fence is very mysterious - I wonder what's on the other side.

In this case the shot is less about the fence and more about the barb. Ouch. Pointy.

UPDATE: I just noticed, this is the second close-up in a row. Maybe I should consider a macro lens. Just a thought.

Pegs

You may have noticed a bit of a slow-down in my posting regularity. The truth is I haven't been to busy - to the contrary. I've been close to posting several photos but I keep changing my mind. I've spent some time thinking and decided that the reason I'm having a hard time is that I really like my most recent post and I feel like my next post really has to be on the same level. I actually didn't see that effect coming. I'm not sure if its good or bad. We shall see.

I really intended to go outside today and shoot some more, but after a beautiful morning spent looking at real estate the weather fell apart on me. Blah. Later on at Jeannie's house I managed to sneak off while the others were watching a "legally Blonde". I got some indoor shots.


This is a close-up on the pitch-bending pegs on a pedal harp. I like the color of the pegs, and the lighting in general. In this case the light is cast from a low-wattage, shaded incandescent lamp. I quite like it.

Alex the pigeon

On Sunday I returned from Long Island via the Bridgeport/Port Jefferson Ferry. As I was getting on the ferry in L.I. I noticed some pretty cool tug-boats and stopped to take some pictures. This, of course, was in flagrant disregard for their No-Photography policy. Apparently terrorists will only attack a target if they can first get their picture taken next to a tug-boat. One of the ground crewmen asked me to stop. I did. But not before getting a few pictures of Alex.

Note: In this picture Alex is the name of the tug-boat. Not the name of the pigeon. However. I like calling the pigeon Alex - and I'm the one who gets to decide.


So here we have a picture of a shiny pigeon sitting on a tire on the bow of a tug-boat. Hooray for interesting subjects. Boo for boring lighting. I wasn't at all pleased with the way most of these shots came out. The day was quite a dreary one and the grey sky didn't provide much of a contrast against the grey water.

Yesterday I did some reading on the Lomo effect and, more specifically, faking it in post. This was my first time using a script written by someone else on my photos. It did a lot of the things I typically do: Contrast, Saturation, Shadows. But it also added some gradient filter effects which came out quite nicely. I will have to spend more time playing in the future.