Digital Cyclops

I've pretty much abandoned this here photoblog.

I decided to slide over to wordpress.com for my photo-a-day project. I tried it in 2007, and did pretty well. I ran out of steam, unfortunately, but at least, if you've been reading boozysmurf at all, you know there was a viable medical reason for that lack of steam!

So, I MAY update here occasionally. But, the bulk of my photography-related stuff will be over at http://www.markramsden.wordpress.com, and I have nearly-daily updates there.

Enjoy!

So, lets chase some ghosts.



"Ghosts of Midway"
ISO 200, f/22, 15 seconds
0/6 EV
38mm (18-70mm Nikon ED DX, D70s)

Nikon D70s, 18-70mm f/3.5-5.6 DX
F/4.5, 1/50th sec, 70mm, ISO 320


Pushed up the exposure, contrast, and shadows, and I'm really happy with it.

Four shots of the same thing, the same scene.







One as shot. Plain as the day. One, de-saturated for black and white, with the contrast and shadows pushed up. Two HDR shots, at different levels, highlighting, I think, different things.

The first shot was what first attracted me, made me take the shot in the first place. I came up the stairs, looked to the left, and then looked straight in front of me. The shot, the first shot, that’s what I saw. I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped, and my eyes widened. It’s pretty much the shot that had defined the idea of Urban Exploration, as I had it in my head.

What I got was something else though. I knew the light was odd, right from the start, which was why I set up for an HDR shot. I took my standard RAW exposure (well, I took three or four, at different speeds and depths, but I knew that was going to happen, because the light was odd), and then I took my dozen shots at different shutters, from a tripod, to assemble into HDR later.

What I didn’t expect, even from the quick review I did on-site, was what I got. The light IS odd, and it’s done strange things to the image, which I don’t really understand. Well, I do, but the way in which they’ve happened is striking.

I planned right from the start that the broken window frame hanging down as my focal point, as, at least in my head, it dominated the image; it was the foreground, and it threw odd, off-angle lines through the whole image. And it does that. But it became… Not the focal point. Even with the broken green glass in it, with the angles that are askew, it doesn’t dominate the image in the way it did when I saw it.

What takes control is the brilliant, bright window (and it is a window, it’s not a patch of light coming from above, on the wall) with the perfectly aligned shapes and tiles in it. I don’t know if you could plan this shot better, I know I couldn’t. It’s perfect, dominant, aligned and positioned. And it was all done for me by chance. It becomes even more obvious in the Black and White shot. Admittedly, I pushed up the contrast, and the shadows in post-production, but the dramatic differences were already there. It made sense, the second I saw the image on screen, to bring them out, and make them unavoidable.

There's a frightningly surreal balance to the shot too. I take some credit for that, but again; the view through that window, the block of light, makes it an incredible shot, rather than one that's simply interesting and documentary.

The HDR's.. for once, they don't bring anything to it, I don't think. In fact, they may even detract. I tried two different setups for the HDR shots, and neither of them really gave me what I wanted. One of them leaves the shadows intact, and brightens all the basic colors. The green of the glass comes out in the framework, and the cracked whites in the glass are very sharp. The brick work through both sets of windows, the tile, the broken wood-framing, all become just properly visible. The very centre window, within the framing of the larger window, gives us a look outside at a brick section of a building next door. Despite the way it feels like a very two-dimensional image, there's a lot of strange depth to all of the shots, but this HDR/contrasty one, specifically.

The final HDR is simply too bright. it's almost a negative, but not quite. I'm still not sure about this one, something feels off about it, but it works too. I don't know if that's just that the subject is good, and well set, or... I don't know. Of the four, this is the one I like the least. It's too much, or too little. Either way, it's too something.

Any thoughts anyone has, much appreciated.

Definitely one of my best shots. Mild HDR to bring out the highlights.

Hallowe'en is a great time for photography, there's no way around it. The costumes are great, and people are acting just a little off-colour, which is also great. Facets of personality come out to play, and people are a little more comfortable in front of the camera.

With that in mind, this isn't the usual collection of hallowe'en costumes. That's freely available over in my 'other' journal, boozysmurf. Feel free to go take a look, because they're really quite good.

Hoever, this here, is about a collaboration with darsanofparvati. Now, she and I, we differ on some things, she favours tightly focused lighting, ambient, rather than flash, where I, while I like these things, also know that a well placed flash, or flashes, can really make a difference on the shot, and really create some interesting lighting effects.

This one is about her costume though, her concept, so, we did it her way.

The idea was to bring across the real idea of the costume. The concept was Little Red Ridinghood, but if she'd just cut her way from inside the wolf, after being consumed. She wore a latex wolf's mask, which she fixed up with fur and blood and paint, she wore it on her head, as a trophy. Her skin was atrophied with make-up, and blood smeared, well, everything.

Not your normal Lil' Red, that's for sure.

However, it worked really well. And the upside of things is that darsanofparvati really likes to set these shots up. So before the party, we took a chunk of time to do some portraiture of her costume. Very low light, and a MagLite as the only real, direct, light. Now, contrary to what darsanofparvati says, I don't have any problem with this technique, in fact, I quite like it, but I also don't want to be limited by it. What you get, in make-up, is this:

On top of all that, we were really playing with negative space. Because of the nature of the maglight, to get proper exposure within the circle of light, it very much meant that the rest of the shot was dark. This can go very well, or very badly. In all of these shots, it's about positioning the visible area properly; framing it with the darkness, with the negative space. Some of the shots, we cropped a lot of negative space out. Some of them, however, we left alone, and seeing the results online now, I'm glad we did.





The first one's the winner for me. The second, over-coloured (all though that was the agreement me and darsanofparvati came to), and doesn't have the feeling, the vibe that the first one does. The first one is all about negative space. It flows into the portrait without dominating it, and I love how she's part of the darkness. It fits the mood and the costume.

Now, these are a little different. There's slightly more ambient light (there actually isn't, I just set the camera to allow more light) and we end up with a very different effect.

One of the things I noticed doing these shots is the level of comfort I'm reaching with 'ordering' my subject around. Although I still give a preamble to orders like "Get on your knees", because, well, I don't want to get hit.







Of these two, I love the angle on the 2nd. It's also an aberation within the set, as it technically shows the whole body, but it illustrates my point about giving direction. This was one of the shots I really wanted to get, something more than just the face (much as the face tells a story all of its own.

This final one is my favorite though. This one gets all the elements that I thought the costume was trying to provoke, hits all the emotions and sends out that mean, dark, sultry, bloody vibe that I think really was the point of this costume, and shoot. A small amount of post-production was involved in all of them, and me and darsanofparvati collaborated for hours on it, up to and including violence in our disagreement of what did and didn't work. However, this one, we agreed upon right away, and It works. The blackness of the space balances the brighter colours in the face and eyes, the yellows in the mask, etc. I think it's fantastic, and more importantly, it's EXACTLY how I pictured it when I pressed the shutter, and that is a huge accomplishment for me.



ISO 500 , 1/40 sec,
f/4.5 , EV +0/6
D70s w/18-70mm DX f/3.5-5.6


Arguably, it's nearly a professional shot, I think. I likes it though. Negative space. It's all about the negative space.

And, if you're gonna do portraits, eventually, you gotta shoot your mom. ;)




ISO 400, 1/8 second
f/5.5 EV +/-0
Nikon D70s w/50mm f/1.8

ISO 200, 1/400 sec
F/13, EV +/-0

Nikon D70s w/50mm f/1.8
ISO 800, f/1.8
1/13th second, -2/3EV

D70s 55mm Micro-Nikkor, 2x-3x teleconverter
f/3.5, 1/30th second exposure
ISO 800

Ok, I've gone a little HDR crazy. But I dig this. And, in combination with my lil' church project, it gets even neater.

Yes, I said "neater".

Remember, way back when, I shot the my space mixer for Stairwell K, Donkeypunch, and, incidentally, Jacquie in the Kitchen?

How there was another guy there with a bagful of equipment, and was using drastically different lens combinations than I was?

Well, I found the guy. He's here, and his pictures from that night are here. Go check them out. Please! Then, take a look at mine, here, here, here and here, and finally, here, from that same night again, just to refresh yourself.

Now, I dunno if I'm just patting myself on the back or not, but I think I got better shots than he did. I think I made better decisions on lenses and settings.

However, the reason I found him was that he posted on a local photography board. I'm considering emailing him to ask him some questions. Is there any etiquette involved here, that anyone knows of?

This situation is intriguing to me. This guy makes money (I don't know about "a living") shooting concerts. But I'm pretty certain my shots are sharper, brighter. Whether or not they're artistically better is a matter of opinion. He did get a couple of great moments (like a shot of Ted of DonkeyPunch doing the "Home Alone"), but that's more about timing than anything, those happen to everyone, eventually, because you can't be looking at everything all the time. However, this is a pretty unique situation for me, because I can compare shots side-by-side, pro, to me. And when I do, I honestly think I'm in the same league.

I think what I need in this case is a wide, large-aperture lens, like the Sigma 20mm f/1.8 macro, or Nikon 20mm f/2.8, and a longer prime normal lens, either the Nikon 85mm F/1.8, or maybe even the Nikon 105mm f/2.0 DAF. The latter two are based on the same setup as my favoured 50mm f/1.8, which is the lens that I used exclusively to shoot the MySpace Mixer. All those lenses are useful for weddings, as well, which I seem to be shooting semi-regularly, and I've been looking for a good, high-quality wide-angle.

Anyone who knows cameras will note that all of the above are Prime lenses. They don't move, they're not zoom. You can have wide-angle zooms (I'm considering one, actually, the Tokina 12-24mm f/3.5-4) but there's a fixed range within the total range where the picture is really good, and outside that range the picture degrades. At the low end, it tends to get "soft" and out of focus, at the high-end, there's a tendency to get barrel distortion. You don't get these things with prime lenses, because there's no twisting and moving inside the lens, the glass that makes up the lens is all fixed in place and that is that. Obviously the advantage of zooms is that you don't need to change lenses to change the type of shot you're getting, but what you do have to do is spend a truly unbelievable amount of money to get a] wide apertures for low light and b] great picture/focus throughout a wider zoom range. For example, the Nikon and Canon 70-300mm zoom covers a huge zoom range (about 2x to 12x in point'n'shoot terms) but they're notoriously "soft" in the 70-80mm and really notoriously bad in the 200-300mm range. To the point which people advise getting the 70-210mm lenses rather than the 300mm, because you end up not being happy with the range of the 300mm anyways.

But I digress.

So, yeah, all my choices are primes. And for concerts, either normal or wide. (the other option being "long"; anything over about 150mm). I don't know if I just got the "right" prime lens first, the 50mm, but I like them. I find they, so far, at least, force me to think about what I'm doing a bit more, what I want to do when I'm out. I have to choose what lenses to take with me, what I want to do with them. It really works for me. Also, primes can be cheaper, as no moving parts (well, fewer) and often, wider apertures for less money. Which means, ta-da! Better low-light photography, with faster shutter speeds. Which makes the difference (coming back to my comparison of my shots to the pro's) in pseudo-high-speed, low-light situations. I got consistently crisper shots (I think), and I also think I know exactly why.

50mm lens, still my favorite. I'm looking for a good landscape lens (the Tokina 12-24mm is heading the pack) anda good telephoto, not necessarily zoom. However, the 50mm f/1.8 is still my absolute favorite lens in 90% of shooting. It's light, simple, and has fantastic bokeh.

So, of course, when my aunt was in town, what did I shoot with? The 50mm, of course.




50mm f/1.8 lens, D70s body.
ISO 250 EV -0.6 f/2.5
1/1250th of a second

That's High Dynamic Range photography, courtesy of Photomatix.

I thought these'd be really really cool, but they didn't come out the way I wanted them to. For one thing, the white-balance fucked up, and I couldn't fix it in post. The problem is, it throws the colours to really fix the white-balance, and makes the glow in the mirror really odd and unappealing.







The last one is the best of the lot, and even that, I had to "fix" a good bit first.

Ah well, you can't win everytime, right? That's what happens when you start messin' with shit.

Straight shot on this one, nothing special at all.



Played with the lighting on this, directed, created some heavy shadows.


The reflective sheet is a near Godsend. So cool for macro work.

Little bit of post-production work on this one, and I really like it. I pushed the contrast up, de-saturated the RAW file, and then added some noise to the .jpg to give it that "authentic film" feel.

The effect is, I think, fantastic.





This is the original:



Stats are:

Aperture: F/8
Shutter: 1/100th of a second
ISO: 200
Model Year: 1968
Brand: Chevrolet
Model: Chevelle
Engine 427cu Big Block
HP: 450

Lightning Photography!

I've had my D70s since last August, but there's been nary a storm since then, which boggles my mind.

However, last night, I got this:



Ottawa Ontario Canada, Looking West


And, at 19 seconds exposure, F/22, my first pic of the night was also my best.

At events, you get big crowds. Trying to single a small group out of a crowd with a camera is tough, thankfully, there's post-processing.

I think this isi a greally good use for this technique, and doesn't fall into the category of "over-use".

The event in question is the Great Glebe Garage Sale, it's an annual event in Ottawa, and there's basically 10 city blocks of garage sale. It's an awesome event, even better for people watching than stuff hunting. There's also live music, sometimes just for the hell of it, sometimes for charity. This lil' orchestra plays every year, and they're fantastic.

However, you get four girls with string instruments sitting on folding chairs in the middle of a garage sale, and, if you can't hear them, they disappear, like this:





Tough to see the actual subjects. I wasn't able to soften out the background with depth of field, because I was shooting quite long (f/14). So, post processing, and we all know how much I like the selective colourization technique.





And suddenly, the musicians stand out. Sweet!