Sun-Bleached

I decided, this morning - err... afternoon, that I would venture out into the scorching heat and take some pictures. This task, by the way, was made doubly-hard by the fact that my car currently lacks air-conditioning - an experience that brings back shades of "the big e".

I like taking pictures of industrial... well, thingamajigs. Good news! There's plenty of thingamajigs at the Boat Yard at Calf's Pasture in Norwalk. And on a blindingly sunny day there are some cool textures that come alive. Shooting here was a bit of a nervous experience - I kept expecting someone to shout: "get out" or "private property" or "TERRORIST!". Fortunately everyone there seemed to be doing there own thing... and I'm not entirely sure I don't have every right to go there. Whateve.


Driving up the access road I noticed a crane barge that I thought would make an interesting subject. When I walked closer I discovered that what I was actually looking at is a crane that had simply been driven onto a barge. I don't know if that's how they usually do it, or not, but I think it's kind of cool.

Cats Turns a Corner

Yes, that's right. Cats.

For those of you who don't know, I'm currently designing the set and lights for Staples Summer Theatre's production of Cats. This is quite a feat considering we have a huge stage (54' at the apron) and only three people on the crew. All of whom have full-time jobs or other daytime obligations. But yesterday was a turning point for our production (at least from a technical perspective).
So far everything is half done. The lights are hung but not focused. The thrust is built but not painted. The tire is assembled but not screwed to the deck. Yesterday's momentous occasion was the completion of the first piece of set/lighting.


Megan stands in awe (ok, not so much) of our glorious creation. Moonie is made up of a 44" circle cut out of 1/2" plywood, a cardboard backing, and a string of x-mas lights, also fabric and staples to finish it all up.
I'm extremely satisfied by the rough - cratery - texture that the x-mas lights are projecting onto the back of the fabric. And the softness added by the black scrim in the foreground really makes it work. I used 2x 1/16" AC cable to secure it to the fourth electrical - the cable is so thin you can't see it from the front row. Even with the cyc lighting up. Unfortunately some of this coolness is going to be lost when we run a power cable. Alas.

Never the less.... Go team!

We now pause the silence to bring you this brief intermission [NAP]

Yes, that's right - this message marks an intermission in the daily inactivity that is this blog.

It's been an unbelievably busy time. Basically pedal to the metal ever since I got back from Colorado. I've spent every waking hour either at the office - where I'm working on a number of important projects. Or at the theatre where the set is... well, it still looks like a bunch of scaffolds and a wooden donut (which admittedly isn't that far off from a junk-heap). Just to make everything more manageable and pleasant I'm also, personally, going through a life-adjusting rough patch.

Long story short: When I'm not writing software or building a set I'm sleeping. As you can probably tell this leaves precious little time for photography of a blog-worthy nature. Which leaves me (and my blog) in a delicate position. I can either post nothing and risk loosing what few readers I have. Or post crap and risk alienating the same few readers.

Actually, now that I think about it there's a third option. I could annoy my readers by writing long, rambly posts about nothing interesting and then follow it up with a pointless video.

For want of a smile

[not my photo]

New Shoes + Boredom at LGA = ?

I suppose this is what happens when my Carry-on bag is my camera and my flight is running late. Last week I bought a pair of new shoes to replace my talking/floppy shoes for the Colorado trip - well, they haven't faired so well, but here is a nice macro-shot of them in all of their glorious freshness.


I shot this using two filters. One of them was a +1 magnification filter - I haven't quite mastered these poor-man's-macro-lens filters yet. The one thing I have noticed is that the filter leaves a very small sweet-spot in the center of the lens that can be in focus. Everything else, regardless of what plane its on, will be in varying levels of focus. I love this effect.
The other filter I used didn't really make much sense to use since its really meant for black and white film photography. I used a high-contrast orange filter. Why? I don't know. Oh well - it just meant that I had to do a little bit less post-production. It also meant I was completely unable to use the color information in the photo. Overall - not really worth it.

Kindling

Yep, its time to post another shot from my recent trip out west (not all the way out west - just most of the way). Here's a tree I shot at Boulder Park looks pretty scorched either from the ridiculous current heat-wave or some past fire. In fact the whole area was ridiculously dry. Signs everywhere indicated that the Fire-Hazard level was high and that there was an open-flame ban in effect


Well, I guess its too late for this one, oh well. Photographers looking at this will recognize the richness in the sky as being the result of a polarizer. Yup.

I had a lot of fun shooting in CO, and one of the major reasons is that the light is very-direct. The altitude gets you 1 mile farther up into the atmosphere - and I'm sure there's some sort of inverse-square proportion governing the amount of haze (read: U/V protection) that I have to deal with when taking photos in broad daylight.

I'm Back

I'm don't normally start a post with the photo, and this may be the first time I post a picture exclusively of myself. Sweet. Firsts!

I'm now back from my trip to go visit Sam in Colorado. Long weekend trips sometimes leave me feeling completely overwhelmed by the number of photos that I have to pour through and do the post-processing on. I think I've whittled down the 300+ shots that I kept to about 60. ish. You can expect to see some more of them making there way onto this blog. In the meantime, check out the rest of the trip!

A video clip [NAP]

Yes, that's right its another Not-A-Photo entry.



Whaaaa??? Why is he posting a horribly compressed video clip?

I don't know. YouTube butchered the video I shot on my Sony DSC-T3 in super-high-res-ultra mode. Alas. Not sure if I'm ever going to do this again - this may be a one-off.

This video, I shot on my recent Seattle trip, features a friendly fish-chucker throwing a fish to a child actor in some sort of video production. The child entirely fails to catch the heavy fish.

How to annoy your friends

In three easy steps

Step 1: Find a friend making an undignified face.
Step 2: Take a picture of said face.
Step 3: Post picture on your "blog" for the entire "Internet" to see.


Well, there's no doubt about what's going on in this shot. Max is eating fiberglass insulation on a dare.

Joking and funny faces aside; I really am quite happy with this shot. The ambient lighting and the high ISO value combined to add a really interesting grain to the left (camera-left) side of Max's face. Bonus points are always awarded for crazy ripple-y forehead action.