Softbox
Now this, this is a softbox.
Unbelievably cute kittens
Unbelievably cute kittens - The photography is pretty good, too—nice narrow depth of field, well lit with a flash.
Now this, this is a softbox.
Well, I guess this will about do it for 2007. Mykala and I are baking a cake and watching Comcast channel 107 “CURNT,” which is broadcasting the entire Radiohead In Rainbows album, entitled “Scotch_Mist: a film with Radiohead in it”. It’s really fun to see them (Radiohead) record in these video vignettes. Right now, they are performing “Faust Arp” on a hill in front of a sunset. It’s cooler than my adjective-poor description would have you imagine.
Question of the day: how was this photo taken? The guy is suspended so far above the water, so high up. Someone guessed a trampoline… I’m thinking that’s the simplest explanation, but perhaps they found a way to catapult him off the back of a boat while it was moving, then as they drove away they took the picture.
No new picture here
Eliciting the response
Horrors! No picture?
Dentistry, cleaning
Recently took over me
And all of my time
Kindly understand
More pics will be posted soon
For now, please sit tight
This picture of an LA transit station is unfreakinbelievable. The future called and said “hey, I’m no longer stereotyped as ugly!”
Welcome to the October Picture Vacuum. We’ve come up a bit short this month, but I’ll hop back on that horse. Photography will resume!
Picture update coming soon - it’s been about two weeks since I put new pictures up! This will be exciting. I’ll try to get some good ones up. In the meantime, listen to John Mayer’s song “3x5.” Or, leave your own recommendation for me.
Now I’ll bet you’re wondering why I haven’t posted some new pictures for a while, aren’t you? Me, too. See, these really big birds came by and snatched the camera from my hands when I was trying to take a picture of a… no, no, that’s not it. Well, the answer is quite simple, really — I just finished moving out to Saint Paul, into my first apartment off campus. Moving into your own place where you cook your own meals is particularly difficult since kitchens need many many many many little items to make things work. You can run scenarios through in your head all you want, but really you just have to attempt to cook something, then write down everything you don’t have. The resulting list can get long.
More “daily” pictures on their way soon, I just haven’t gotten them edited down off the camera yet. Hang in there!
Imagine you’re an urban explorer journeying into the gigantic tailrace of an underground hydroelectric station that has been turned off for two years. Then, imagine you combine silhouettes and spotlights in order to photographically illustrate your exploration of the amazing underground space. Well, you would get this picture. You may visit the corresponding story page at Vanishing Point, which describes the Rankine Tailrace and Michael Cook’s journey into it.
Here’s a great write-up from blurbomat.com about “How to Turn an Ordinary Photo Into an Extraordinary Photo”. I really like his masking technique - I never got around to figuring out how to feather the edges of a selection properly. Good stuff.
Welcome to the best picture ever. “dooce: Not very happy about his recent bath.”
Not too long ago, June 9 to be precise, the daily photograph journal at tumbledry passed 2 years of daily photos. For the approximately 730 pictures posted, about 7,000 pictures have been taken. So, a little under 10% of the past two year’s photographs are represented here. I believe an evolution in style, subject matter, and especially post-processing is evident. One can also see the devolution of my lens—it is a very cheap “kit” lens, and after two years of service, it is beginning to show its age through not-so-sharp imagery. My idea, however, is that I should be able to still get good pictures with a bad lens.
Unbelievably cute kittens - The photography is pretty good, too—nice narrow depth of field, well lit with a flash.
Fantastic off camera lighting kit - Some time ago, Mykala linked me to an article at Strobist about building your own softbox for $10. Since then, I have regularly dropped in to read the website responsible for that tutorial. It’s all about how to get your light off of your camera and into the space around you, and creating extremely interesting effects, etc. Turns out that if I actually had a camera with a PC sync terminal (just about any camera except my own, ha), the least expensive lighting kit would be perfect. You get a great manual flash, off-camera connecting cords, a tripod, a diffusing umbrella (like the kind from your school portraits), and other extraordinarily useful accessories. Plus, for a bit more money, you can connect cameras like my own. Just takes a bit more fiddling.
Instant camera attached to cat - When you attach a camera to a cat and set it up to take pictures of the things it sees, you get to see some interesting things.
Well, I thought the hardest part is done by developing the software and soldering the controller board. But it is more the housing to protect the camera. You can not imagine what kind of requirements have to be fulfilled if you want to equip your cat with a camera. I built a small housing out of plastic plates and put it on the collar of the cat for evaluation purpose. This housing was last seen as the cat walked out of the door… Probably the wires I used for attaching were not strong enough. Or someone released the cat from the interesting looking piece. For the second try I used the plastic package of a child toy (Kinderueberraschung), put a stone in it for loading it with some weight and attached it again to the cat collar. This time the part returned - dirty and scratched outside, water inside. What the hell is the cat doing !? This raised the requirements for the camera protective housing a lot:
- Shock resistant - cat jumps from tree, housing hit ground
- Scratch resistant - Cat cleans itself with claws or sneaks above the ground
- Water resistant - If cat drinks, the piece around their neck will hang into water
- Theft resistant - If equipment draws attention cat will loose it, especially if it is easily removable.
Ok, here we go. Since one of the purposes of this site is to preserve things in which I am interested for posterity: I will now embark on an image-powered summary of some of my interests from the past week.
Interest 1: Vega4
This music group sounds like Snow Patrol; that’s a good thing. I like ‘em … I caught them on the radio (not on the television, though I must admit that seems to be one of the best place to hear new, alternative music these days); I’ve been thinking about getting their album ever since. A quote from a PopMatters review follows:
People Magazine: No Photoshop - When they shot the world’s 100 most beautiful people, People magazine decided against any Photoshoppery or make-up. This article details some techniques to beautify the your subjects.
I think I may have burnt out my ability to take decent photographs. A re-infusion of creative juices, or simply some new subject matter would go miles in the daily photolog part of this website. Have no fear, I’m brainstorming some solutions. In the meantime, the pictures suck a bit.
Dust is stupendously annoying. More annoying than bandits killing everyone in your village. Not necessarily quite as annoying as having the foil on the top of the yogurt tub rip into little bits, of course, but still very annoying indeed.
— Daniel Rutter
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