Requisite Landmark Tourist Shot

Hmm... On second thought I'm not sure that title makes any sense. Oh well.

For anyone who hasn't been, the Space Needle is 520 feet of 50's design, built in the 40's. At its base is the site of the 1946 word's fair, which celebrated the age-of-space. Somehow the Internet-age just doesn't stack up in the coolness department.


The fairgrounds, on this particular day, were completely deserted. It seemed rather surreal and post-apocalyptic I wandered around and managed to get a few cool shots. I bet it looks downright creepy at night. This shot is of the Space Needle rising above the top of a carousel. It was a sunny day, so I was definitely working the CPL.

Update: RBWright points out a bit of lysdexia. It's the 1964 Worlds Fair. Oops.

Sunny Seattle?

A meeting, on Tuesday, landed me in Seattle, Washington, for a few days. It was my first time in the city, so I was greatful that the meeting ended in time for me to do the lame-business-tourist thing. I'll post some more pictures but I want to start with one that I can claim absolutely no credit for.


There is simply no angle or composition that can harm the gorgeous aesthetic of this Gehry masterpiece. Neither, however, is there any angle or composition that can truly do it justice. This building, home to the EMP and the Sci-Fi Museum, sits at the site of the '64 worlds fair just beneath the iconic "Space Needle". As impressive as it is on the outside, the inside is just as gorgeous. It seems to be a crumpled ball made of many different materials. Its other neat trick is that the red-metallic panels cast a red glow over anything near by depending on the light. It's confusing and wonderful.

See the full set.

Spring

Taking the rental car onto the highway, upon my recent arrival in Charleston, I was struck by the degree to which spring had beat the hell out of South Carolina. That is to say: spring was squarely in the rear-view mirror. Summer had struck.

It seems, though, that while I lounged about on vacation Spring was hard at work on my home turf. Now, the smell of lilac and dogwood is overpowering - woe be to allergy sufferers.


I'm not really sure what kind of tree this is. I'm sure this statement will illicit an answer from Sam.

On my drive home, I pass a row of these trees within walking distance from my house. For the past couple of days, the 7pm sun shines low and warm on these trees. Today I took a walk down to take some pictures. I ended up spending 20 minutes playing with my flash and various exposure settings. I'm a serious novice when it comes to flash photography - though I feel a bit better after today. You can tell that the flash made a serious difference in this shot. Without it you would be looking at a silhouette.

Full moon rising over Charleston

Will and I went out drinking on my first night in town. Aside from drinking, smoking cigars and talking about compile-time optimizers, we also took a few photos. Its hard for me to resist a balmy night in a strange but comfortable city!


Anyone who's looked at my photos as a whole is probably aware of my penchant for long-exposures. On this particular night I found myself grateful for having lugged my tripod around on a night out drinking. The way the moon shines, silvery, off the still water is fascinating. The next night the waters were a bit more turpid, so I'm glad I got this shot when I did.

Rainbow Row

Charleston has a curious collection of antebellum architecture. Running along East Bay street by the Charleston gunnery battery is Rainbow Row. A row of houses, each with a different color. Here two houses meet a shadow cast by the left house breaks up the image. Stucco abounds.


The shot is slightly underexposed - this is for two reasons. When I'm in the field I tend to underexpose daylight photography so that I have a bit more texture to work with in post. The other reason is actually kind of embarrassing. I recently upgraded from a CRT monitor to a ultra-bright flat panel. The size and brightness has made my work-flow a bit more comfortable, but I think I'm being screwed up by a bad gamma setting. Oh well.

I took another photo similar to this one. I really am crazy about the texture of the stucco. The colors of the buildings glowed in the evening.

I'm Back.

Well, I spent the past weekend in Charleston, South Carolina. Wow - just an absolutely gorgeous town. To make for an even better weekend I had the honor of being Best Man at WW's wedding. I'm not going to go on-and-on providing a detailed chronology of the weekend instead I will provide the following bullet items:

• Got to see Will and Margaret
• Sam met me there
• The weather was gorgeous
• Will got married
• I gave a speach
  

As for my photographic responsibilities - I happily shirked them during the actual wedding. Perhaps if I'd been a bystander I'd have take more pictures. Instead, as a member of the wedding party, I had more pictures taken of me than I care to think about. I'm sure I'll be squinty/awkward in most of them.


This photo obviously catalogs a portion of my out-bound trip from Charlotte to Charleston. Airport stop-overs typically involve either boredom or drinking. In this case, the former. To pass the time I took some pictures. On this trip I opted not to bring my laptop so my carry-on item was my camera and tripod. I took this shot, plus a number of uninspired shots of a guy in a rocking-chair. Oh well.
There are two reasons I like this shot - actually three if you count composition (Now that I think about it - I'm sure most people do). I like the various levels of black and the texture of the canvas-esque plastic material.

By the way, here's a tip: Don't try to write on one of these yellow tags with a gel-pen. It'll all end in tears.

Westport Library

The truth is, I'm not really sure why it took me so long to post this one. Things have been quite busy; between house-hunting and healthcare its hard to find my motivation some days. Here's the great news though: The recent daylight-savings change means that at 5pm-ish there's still plenty of daylight!


After a particularly wretched day I decided to get out and take some pictures. I spent my time wandering around downtown Westport finding myself eventually out behind the library taking pictures at the Levitt. Walking back to my car I stopped to take pictures of the glowing glass bricks which make up a portion of the Westport Public Library.

I probably took about 30 shots of this. My intention was to do some HDR on them and see what happens. Maybe someday. I take an over-under on all of my shots - which in this case took quite a while. I'm pleased with the layout, the color and the light.

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.