7/52-45 black & white & hipstamatic all over

With the release of new film & lens filters comes (not much) responsibility to test them out and report findings…

I’ve wanted to do a black & white week again for some time, and I thought I’d found my chance when the Long Island hipstapack (with BlackKeys Extra Fine film & Florence lens) appeared last month. Alas, I didn’t jump on it straight away, and forgot about it until the  the Photojournalism snappack appeared. Given that I’m rarely have much of a plan for the project these days, it seemed like a good time to play around a bit.

I originally intended to test out different lenses with the BlackKeys Extra Fine film, but forgot and/or couldn’t be bothered to swap lens filters, so you’re stuck with the Diego lens. Together, the combination yields decent results. I’m not a big fan of the vertical and horizontal lines that appear (not sure if they’re from the film or lens filters… testing would help), but the contrast and sharpness are good, and I appreciate the crisp edge. All in all, it works pretty well, I think, and I should practice more with B/W. Maybe some day soon, or maybe a project for some future date.

iPhone 5. Hipstamatic (classic). Diego lens, BlackKeys Extra Fine film. Some slight cropping and very slight adjustments in Lightroom 5.

Oh! And you get an extra this week, you lucky people you!

7/52-44 Cloudy, with a chance of…

Alhamdulillah!

I spent the week playing with the Vivitar 70-210, but didn’t spend much time playing with it: still far too wrapped up in being married: Alhamdulillah!

Not much else to say, really. Life is wonderful.

D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 (Kiron-made, likely). I took a bunch in macro mode, but all of these were shot in the normal telephoto setting. Most received minor adjustments to contrast and clarity in Lightroom.

7/52-43 let’s make this a test…

Ok. So I shot a bunch of randomness this week with the iPhone and the D7000+Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to identify which of the pictures came from the phone, and which came from the camera.

I’ve made it a bit easier by including 3 Hipstamatic shots, so those should be easy. The rest have been cropped to 4/3, and may or may not have had grain added or smoothed. If you must cheat, EXIF is in the lightbox.

In other news, life continues to be very busy. Fun, exciting, and pleasant, but very busy. Alhamdulillah!

7/52-42 busyness continues

Oh so very busy this week. I intended to shoot the bulk of the 7/52 at the State Fair photowalk with one of the MeetUp groups I’ve been to busy to meet up with for months, but I worked from home for 12 hours instead.

Thankfully, I played around with the Hueless app for 4 or 5 minutes one morning while Hana was getting ready for work, and, equally thankfully, I saw some groovy afternoon light and exploited it yesterday afternoon, otherwise I’d have one picture to show. As it is, there’s only one duplicated scene, and the light is sufficiently different, I think.

Now, back to work! Yay.

iPhone 5, Hueless app. D7000, 50mm f/1.8 G. Minimal cropping/contast adjustments to a couple. EXIF is in the lightbox, if you’re interested.

7/52-41 Eating & Drinking

This married life is keeping me wonderfully busy: Alhamdulillah!

I don’t know if I mentioned this before or not, but for a week or so, I wondered why life got so much busier after marriage. After all, there are two people around to do the chores, go for groceries, and etc., and so shouldn’t there be overall less to do? Or, rather, there should be roughly twice as much to do, but two people to do it, for—at best—no increase in overall time required to complete chores (and other obligations, including all the fun stuff). This assumes an equation like this:

James + Hana = James & Hana

or

James’s chores + Hana’s chores = James & Hana’s chores*

or

(1 + 1)/2 = 2/2 = 1

Seems obvious, right?

But something occurred to me… As of 6 weeks ago, there was James, and there was Hana. Now, though, while there is still James and still Hana, there is also James & Hana… So the equation above completely ignores the relationship, the combined James + Hana entity, and in reality the equation looks more like:

James + Hana = James and Hana and James & Hana

or

James’s chores + Hana’s chores = James’s chores, Hana’s chores, and James & Hana’s chores

or

1 + 1 = 1 + 1 + 1

Which seems both counterintuitive and completely obvious. After all, this new entity, the married couple, has its own chores and obligations that neither individual had before, and we still both have our own chores. True, we can combine some things (trips to the grocery, cooking meals, washing clothes, packing lunch, etc.), but all of these things is at least double what it was when we were single.

Take groceries, for example. As a single person, I was able to limit my diet to such an extent that my grocery bill was something like $60/month. But Hana doesn’t want to eat the same 3 meals every single week day, and she’s pretty good about remembering to eat on the weekends (as is most every other sensible person), and so there are more groceries to buy, and more cooking to do, more dishes to wash, etc. While we can take turns doing the shopping, cooking, and cleaning, it all takes twice as long (maybe a bit less), for no net gain. And the same applies for other domestic activities: our apartment is twice as big and so takes twice as long to clean; there are two cars to fill with fuel instead of just one; two showers to take; etc.

In addition, while Hana had some invitations to dinner or other events, and some family activities to attend to, and while James had far fewer, but still some such events, James & Hana have all of those and more.

I still don’t quite know how 1 + 1 = 3 (or even 2.625), but it seems clear that it does.

Have other married couples experienced this?

Anyway.

So I didn’t make much time to shoot this week, and don’t expect to have huge amounts of time to ponder themes and go out shooting in the foreseeable future, but I don’t mind. In fact, I’m incredibly happy and blessed and fortunate to be in such a state: Alhamdulillah (All praise and thanks to God)! SubhanAllah (Glory be to God)! MashAllah (by the will of God)!

Everything was shot with the D7000 and Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai, and most got very minimal adjustments in Lightroom 5. EXIF available in the lightbox, if you care.

*I’m not implying that married life is a chore. Indeed, it’s the opposite, or, if it is a chore, it’s one that I look forward to and constantly thank God for, and so consequently is not something that we would ordinarily call a ‘chore.’ Ahh, semantics.