I have had my eye on a rectilinear ultra-wide lens to add to my kit, but such a proposition has been cost prohibitive. I own a camera that I purchased for $500 that is now worth $200. I own 5 lenses, none of which have I spent more than $350. I am ‘invested’ in a system that was just divested from its parent company and has a questionable future. To spend $550 for new glass seems foolish, especially considering the limited utility of an ultra-wide lens. But even still, I would love to take some night-sky images this year, but I don’t have any glass that is wide or fast enough. I have tried to capture the milky way in the past with my 17mm f1.8, but it isn’t wide enough. The 14mm on my walk-around (14-150m) lens is barely wide enough, but too slow at f4.0. Meanwhile, the Laowa […]
The PC is getting slow and occasionally shuts down spontaneously; it has now lived a longer life than any of my previous 4 PCs. For $450 spent 5 years ago, I have no complaints. And perhaps it has another few years left. Obviously, I can’t say for certain, but (even so) I have decided to prepare for the inevitable and have spent the last 2 months shifting my entire photographic post-processing workflow to a free open source software (FOSS) solution. The issue isn’t cost or effectiveness. To be honest, I had become quite proficient (for a hobbyist) working within the Adobe ecosystem, importing and processing my photos in Lightroom (LR) and editing them further in Photoshop (PS) with plugins from Nik and On1. I had a variety of actions for film emulation and grains, luminosity masks, and skin retouching. And for $120 per year, I found the cost to be […]
Last week, I missed it. There was a beautiful sunrise and it lit up the sky but was fleeting. I was running a little later than I had hoped and the sky was already brilliant when I pulled out of the neighborhood, but the clouds were so low and the cloud bank started so far east, it was fading as I pulled up to the canal crossing at Bolivar Road, less than one minute away. When I went to bed last night the forecast looked too promising to stay in bed, even though the forecast was for a wake-up temp of 8 degrees. Imagine my discontent when the car thermometer never crested 0 degrees on my drive to the bridge on Poolbrook Road that crosses the old Erie Canal. Strangely, everything went according to plan. I found an obvious composition that I was pleased with and I had the pleasant […]
I just needed to get out, shooting inside wasn’t cutting it. By the latter half of the morning, the light was not any good, but it didn’t matter. It was chilly, but not so much so that I couldn’t hold the camera in my bare hands. I started at the golf course while the kids were in TKD. I continued later in the afternoon, shortly after lunch. It was just me, walking the trails with my 25mm lens, practicing my (lack of) vision and (slow-to-develop) composition. I didn’t come away with anything that I would print on a 3×5 piece of office paper, much less hang on a wall … but I wasn’t expecting to come away with anything anyways. I was just happy to be out and about.
It was a spare-of-the-moment decision before bed last night; the forecast looked promising for a decent sunrise, the sun is rising (sorta) in-line with the canal near the white bridge, and I haven’t been sleeping well. So, as I was laying in bed I decided that I would head out and see if I couldn’t make the most of it. When I awoke and looked out the office window an hour before sunrise, I only saw clear skies, but the radar said that clouds were on their way and approaching from the south west (not the north, where my window faces), so I stuck with my plan. I had a hat and gloves this morning, but I was under-dressed otherwise and my toes would remain cold for another hour after coming home. Even so, it was worth it. Unrelated to photography, it is the opening weekend of shotgun-season and I […]
I set my alarm determined to go out with the camera, but with no significant notion of what to capture. At the end of the morning, it showed. The skies were clear, so when the alarm sounded at 0530, there wasn’t going to be a nice sunset to capture. So that left me to choose between a wildlife hike or searching for light in local woods. Both would require some walking, but I am trying to rest my foot, which I think has a stress fracture (I have been resting it for nearly 2 weeks now). So that left me with few options … so I went to Green Lakes with the plan of practicing with the 25mm prime and limiting my walking distance. I would go on to spend the morning visualizing what a scene would look like through my viewfinder, then bringing the camera to my eye. I […]
I’ve had my eye on this composition for years, but haven’t found the right conditions to photograph it yet. I was thinking that the IR would do the trick, but it falls short. The subject is supposed to be the quarry. With the IR, the trees are the brightest part of the image. The clouds are neat, but they too distract from what I intend the subject to be. I’ll continue to wait for that late-day in a summer when I am nearby and the doppler radar reveals that a bank of dark clouds will be moving from west to east (foreground to background) after a storm with sunlight behind it. The trees will be a illuminated by a bright warm yellow light, contrasting with a dark blue cloudy background, while the metal construction on the quarry buildings reflect back the bright post-storm light. Then all the ingredients will be […]
Christine would run a race or finish a triathlon and she would later show me the pictures that the professional had taken. Surely, I thought to myself, I can do better. It turns out that I could. I became tired of paying so-called professionals for images that were blown-out and poorly composed. Surely, I thought to myself, I can do better. It turns out that I could. When Mr Cooper asked me to make the images for his new website, I thought to myself, I can do this too. It turned out that I could do this too. I’m not sure if I wish I were a professional photographer, but I’m increasingly confident that I have the technical skills to pull it off if I ever want to. The mastery, though, would come with much needed improvements in posing and communication with the subjects of my images, where I continue […]
It is typically the worst time of day to go out and capture images with a camera, but not infrared. I had a choice to go for a bicycle ride or go for a drive with my new camera, and I chose the latter. I wouldn’t capture anything worthy of a “portfolio”, but it would be fun an interesting nonetheless. First I drove to Chapman Park to see if there were any interesting images to be made there. The images of the fishing pier were interesting, but not my favorites of the day. I’m still not sure if I prefer to soften the contrast of these images or not, but I processed all the images of this day in same manner, being certain to utilize the entire histogram, including the blacks. Strangely, my favorite image of the day was the simplest. It is the top of a silo that I […]