photography

photography

So this one time I went to Mexico.

street in a little town
Self portrait courtesy the window of the bus that took me from a Mexican town to a Mexican city
a little town in Mexico the bus passed through
The pacific ocean, Playa Linda
photography

Click on the picture for the bigger version–it’ll take a second to load.

Almost at the mountain top, but the sun had already set

Courtesy Microsoft ICE.

photography

This community, Maxbal (spoken Mash-bal) is a two and a half hour rough-road (anything without low geared 4wd can’t make it) drive away from the town I live in.

This is the first group of students, ever, to graduate from 9th grade–the community was proud.

The teachers had the students go out into the soccer field to take their picture while the game continued.

Throw in
Soccer and school
photography

Here are some photos of Guatemala, I hope you enjoy them!

Soup
Medical checkups
yours truly spinning around, little whippersnapper under each arm
This is the land I live in. :)
My little buddy Eduardo. He's legit.
On the plane leaving the good 'ol US of A. Should this have been the first photo? I'm not sure.
photography

This hung out in the “photo” page for a while, it’s time to let it stick for good.

Adidas propped up on the train-ride home
funny, photography

When love comes to town gonna catch that train, when love comes to town gonna catch that flame.

Ironically, in the flight of the moment he failed to realize that this coal car had seen neither engine nor caboose in 13 years. It has indeed come to town, has been in town for a while and likely will be in town for a while to come. Smooth move, man, smooth move.

Nikon F3, E-series 50/1.8, Ilford HP5+

photography

part II:

Nikon F3; Zeiss Planar 50/1.4 and Dad’s Nikkor 28/3.5 (except for a few shots I took with an E series 50/1.8); no photoshop.

(part I is here: http://wp.me/p11VMI-j0)

Roll 1: Kodak Gold 100
I have previously dissed on Kodak film. It’s for chumps? Real camera nerds use Ilford for black and white, and pro-grade Fuji for color, right? Well, this roll saved the day. I had decided to bring one roll of film–and absentmindedly grabbed an already-exposed roll. Smooth move dave, smooth move. As the dice fell, a nearby gift/souvenir shop just happened to have film. What film was it? Kodak Gold 100. Kodak, I apologize; your film is everywhere, you rock.

Roll 2: Fuji Pro 160S
I like this film. Nothing really super crazy, just good color and grain.

Roll 3: Fuji Sensia 100
The jury didn’t even have to go out on this one: I <3 slide film. It is beautiful. If I had to take a camera, lens and two films for the rest of my life, it’d be the F3, a 35/1.4, and Sensia 200 (or maybe the Kodak slide film, I haven’t tried it yet) and Ilford HP5+. Done deal. Actually that doesn’t sound like a half bad plan anyways…

Roll 4: Fuji Superia 200 (another one of the old rolls of film from pops)
Nothing too crazy here, same reddish vintage-looking hues from the 7-year aged film. This roll was halfway used up when we left, so it had only a few trip shots worth posting here. Why call it roll 4? Because I didn’t realize until a moment ago that it was the first, not last, roll I took on the trip; water under the bridge.

Without further ado, here they are:

roll 1 #10. Chips and salsa and hummus and apple pie and coffee, at the top of a 3.2 mile hike. All baked by scratch at the tea house up there, baking supplies helicoptered in once per season, fresh supplies hiked in weekly. The staff (a family) lives there five days per week. Yes, awesome.
#11. Yummy in my tummy :)
#13
#15. This view is even better while having the aforementioned chips and salsa and hummus and pie and coffee.
#26
roll 2 #2. A train boiler blew back in the day, sending this piece (over 500 lbs) on it's way to where it sits now. The railroad tracks are 130 meters away. Egads.
roll 2 #3
#4
#5. Awesome man riding his bike through the rockies with a guitar.
#8
#11
#19
#24
roll 3 #3
#5
#7. This was taken with a prime lens, a 50 for that matter...this required me to get closer to a nasty spider than I like to get to spiders. Especially the nasty ones.
#10 Up and to the right, you can see some of a glacier. Once and a while pieces would calve off and their thunder would roll down the valley. Awesome.
#17
#18. Pops sacking a few sweet macro shots. Mom is a total shutter bug, too. Go figure.
#28
#35
#36
#37. Slide film is awesome.
roll 4 #9
#11
#12
..and that’s it. It was a great* trip.
*”great” is overused. I mean great, actually great.
other, photography

Well..I’ve done it. I bought LR3; the install just finished, and I’m poking around for a few minutes before hitting the sack. I took my first step onto the slippery slope of digital world a few weeks ago, D200 in hand, and now I step again. I will still resolutely dislike digital photo editing, with the following (maybe sorta possible) exceptions:

1. mellow HDR
The mind essentially does this when you look at a sunrise, it balances color/light so that you can see full detail in the ground (dark) and full color in the sky (bright). Well..actually I think what happens is that you see full detail in your field of view (the breadth/width human eyes can focus clearly on at one time), while the mind corrects the colors outside of that. I think I’m right, but may be far from fallacy-free. From the little browsing of HDR’d images I’ve done, what you “see” lands somewhere between a typical single exposure and a typical HDR job. I’m going to play around with very mellow HDR processing and some low light exposures. All that said, I’m super skeptical of it. I like natural light shots. I like them a lot. Yes details are lost and/or colors get washed out..but that’s part of what makes a perfectly taken photo so crazy beautiful, isn’t it? So yeah, HDR..we’ll see.

2. White balance
Film is awesome. It does white balance all on it’s own..oh wait, no, it’s SO awesome it doesn’t even need to do white balance! As a matter of fact, most film simply captures colors as most folks see them, straight up yo. Digital sensors aren’t that technologically advanced yet (oohhhhHHH SNAP, kid. Yeah huh). So when I have a digital shot with off-key white balance, I’ll fix it.

3. Straightening
Yup.

4. Exposure Value
Ummm..I’m on the fence about this one. I take a fair number of pictures, not knowing how my camera’s light metering functions would be pathetic, so I shouldn’t be flubbing up the exposure value to need to correct it. That said, I will likely use it to “push” exposures when need be (i.e., when cranking up the ISO and opening the aperture doesn’t cut it).

I can’t think of anything else at the moment. Tons of thoughts and ideas go through my head when I think about digital photo editing and before long I start thinking about what photography actually is. Someday I hope I’ll have good clear thoughts on all that riff raff and I’ll write it all up real nice and simple.

photography

Nikon D200, Zeiss Planar T 50/1.4

safer and more productive than texting whilst driving...
Starting fluid AND Old Spice Original Aftershave.
dear '82 Suzuki, I <3 u.
WATCH YOU
Shot at a stop, guy on the train that was going the opposite direction
the docks off in the distance
The classic blurred-departing-bus shot. Gotta have one every few albums, right?
underpass
If I wrote a letter to a world, to nicely detail how the whole of life works, you can bet your bottom dollar I would not want to see it sitting on bookshelves.
other, photography

Practicing on a (newly acquired rental) violin in my room as the sun gets close to setting:

Sunshine and music

Shot with a D200, Zeiss 50/1.4

photography

Rocky Mountains in Canada, 9 days.
—
part I:
Nikon D200; Zeiss Planar 50/1.4 and Dad’s Nikkor 28/3.5. The 28 is pre-AI, which made for some trickiness, but with some creativity it’s nothing insurmountable. By miles and miles this takes the pie, cake and tart in the biggest-post-on-dave’s-blog competition, and will likely keep those respective desserts for a long time. No Photoshop.
—
part II:
Nikon F3; same two lenses (except for a few shots I took with an E series 50/1.8).
ETA: ~2 weeks. No Photoshop.
—
Thoughts:
Shooting scenery with a 75 is really interesting–I liked it, but the few times I used the Zeiss on my film camera, seeing that pretty 50mm perspective through the viewfinder was a breath of fresh air. Shooting so many photos of such variety as a road trip gives gave me lots to think about in the realm of lenses. I think a 18-70 (which, with sensor crop, is actually 27-105) would be an absolutely stellar all-rounder as long as it’s reasonably fast. The 18-200ish lenses are pretty cool, but that just seems like trying to do too much.
#23
#50
#146
#154
#172
#239
#460
#538
#569
#579
#614
#3 (second memory card)
#77
#137
#254
#332
#403
#115 (third memory card; the thumbs up is for Dave H.)
#244

#245

#313
#324
#429
#466
#468
#495
#509

#545

#582
#614
#888
#907
#193 (fourth card)
#197
#244
#247
#270
#277
#287
#293 (US-Canada border. Back in the good old US of A baby!)
#336 (out of order because it perfectly follows the previous shot. Wave on, Old Glory)
#307
#327
#329
#381
#390
#403
#458
#547
#574 (this one ought to be a bit bigger than the others I believe)
#626
#665 Lest there be misunderstanding, the road trip wasn't taken in this truck. That said, it is very high up on my bucket list to take a road trip in an old vehicle that has lots and lots of character. I may after I finish work for the summer. Ride to Haida Gwaii from WA state on a thirty-year-old Suzuki? Yes, maybe.

It was a great trip; I do hope the 53 photos were enjoyable.

ideas, photography

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be too; home is where the heart is.

Letting a thing be your treasure makes for a shabby home for the heart.

That’s something to not forget, especially when buying things.

Especially especially when buying things like a Nikon D200.

So..ah..on that note, I bought a Nikon D200.

Side note: it is unbelievably hard to not spend a lot of time looking at more stuff to buy right after buying a really, really really cool camera:

“Ah that lens isn’t all so expensive, considering I’ll be shooting for National Geographic as soon as they see some of my work and realize I’d be a positively stellar staff photographer. Heck, may as well spring for a Nikon 200mm/2.0 IS, one of their 17-35/2.8 deals and one or two of the Carl Zeiss primes, while I’m at it..just for the sake of being ready to travel to foreign exotic places and do crazy work at the moment that National Geographic calls. Oh gees, I hadn’t even thought about a tripod. Maybe I’ll look at those basalt fiber ones as soon as I finish picking out my flash setup…”

photography

I got out of bed at 4:30 to catch a bus to South Seattle in time for the sunrise and Murphy’s law did it’s thing: the morning was fully overcast as daylight came. Mostly undeterred, I shot 22 or so frames of the area. Here are a few I liked.
Nikon F3, Series E 50mm/f1.8, Ilford HP5+. Scans done by Omega Photo, numbered by frame number.

#9
#10
#15
#16
#19
#20
#23