Is the title alone enough to suggest a story here? I certainly have one running through my head, and I can probably be bothered to type it up for you, but I hope it sparks something in you too, maybe.
D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai. ISO400, 1/80th (APmode), f/2.8, -1 EV. About 7 minutes of slider play in Aperture.
So I experimented with focus stacking today… As you can see, it didn’t work out very well.
This is 18 shots, auto-blended in CS6. It lost the four shots that captured the back 1/4 of the tiny rock, but I don’t mind that much.
What I do mind is missing the focus increments, and the way photoshop skips around in its auto blending, and the fact that the wood floor has a tiny bit of give to it that causes the framing to shift ever so slightly whenever I move in my chair. But I do kinda like some of the things that are going on here.
Oh well.
If at first (or second, or third, or hundredth) you don’t succeed… and all that.
In other news, my social anxiety is in full effect. I’m about to take 4 pictures to a bar in Fort Worth for a one-night art show. I’m excited to show some pictures personally, but I’m deeply anxious about being around a bunch of people and a bunch of loud music all night. If I could drink a few beers, that would help, but I don’t drink. If I could just hang the stuff and leave, that would help too. But I think I pretty much have to stay as long as my pictures are up.
Wish me luck.
D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai, reversed, on ~50mm extension. 18 pictures shot at ISO400, 2 seconds (Ap mode), f/4 (I would’ve gone with a smaller aperture, but I start getting flare at f/5.6). Levels corrected and focus-blended in Photoshop.
Ok. I admit it. This was a mistake.
The Vivitar 70-210 is too long and too fat to get out of the way of the pop-up flash on the D7000. This didn’t cross my mind when I walked out the door with the camera and the intent to make a shot similar to this, one that I almost got yesterday of the yellows and golds and greens and purples in this fucsia rose.
But this mistake created an interesting effect that sorta (but not really) reminds me of some low-budget horror film posters from the early 1970s. Or like the alien bursting from what’shisname’s chest, maybe. Like an octopus lauching itself at the red shirt’s face even. I think you get the point.
Sometimes mistakes make for beauty, or for something interesting, anyway.
D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron). ISO400, 1/80th, f/16, pop-up in manual mode at 1/16th (if memory serves). About 3 minutes of processing in Aperture before reverting to original and adding back about 20 seconds of slider manipulation.
Well, today was the quarterly luncheon for the team I lead, so I ate a bunch of stuff that I don’t normally eat for lunch (or for any other meal, really). Guess what that means? As soon as digestion really got going, I developed a really bad mood: like an eff this, ima quit and move to the desert sorta mood.
And then I got to drive home, where the mood turned to one of futility, so that when I arrived home, I was mad at the world nothing in particular, yet simultaneously despairing of my self and my station.
I wonder if varying my diet some would help with these incidents? I also wonder if varying my diet would lead to more or less general peacefulness that I feel most of the time?
I don’t know.
Luckily, I don’t need to know, particularly, since I’m able to eat what I want and when I want about 95% of the time.
Also lucky: since I was bothered for most of the drive home, I didn’t have much time to psych myself out of going for a brief walk down the alley and back. I don’t like feeling wretched, but I do quite enjoy getting out with the camera, even briefly, since I so often am quite simply too afraid to set foot outside.
As to this picture, or the title, anyway: I’m thinking of Welcome to the Jungle, but performed as if Axl was acting as a second front man for Jethro Tull during a performance of Bungle in the Jungle, to the tune of the GnR classic, but with copious amounts of flute solo.
How magical would that be?
D7000. Tokina AT-X 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5, in Macro Mode. ISO125 (finger slip), 1/250th (AP mode), f/3.5 (ish, as I’m not quite sure where the lens was at the time). About 25 minutes of slider play in Aperture to take the background down a stop or two and help give some interest/nervousness to the bokeh.
So I’ve been wanting to shoot the grime on my windows for awhile, and what better opportunity than a Wednesday, especially since there’s a Window Wednesday theme over on G+?
I really went all out on this one, despite feeling as if I just phoned it in…
D7000. Tokina 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5 AT-X, in Macro Mode. 3 exposures, ISO800, 1/125th, 1/30th, 1/8th (APmode), f/4.5ish. Blended together in Photoshop Merge to HDR Pro (and for no good reason); warming and magenta filters added; and maybe 10 minutes of slider play in Aperture, also for no good reason.
I should really think about cleaning the windows one of these days…
Not much to say, except that I should really run the vacuum up the corners and along the upper edges of the walls around here one of these days, and it’s sad when the technical section is more interesting than the commentary…
D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO800, 1/250th, f/16, pop-up flash at 1/32nd, -1EV flash compensation. Roughly 3 minutes of slider play, mostly to remove the bright blue circle in the middle of the frame that appears anytime I shoot the Zomb-E at anything slower than about f/8 (and, in some cases even f/4).
Over on G+, this week’s #macromonday theme-within-a-theme is Texture, and I think this is well on its way to becoming a frame/texture for a square-format iPhoneography app. Do you see it too?
This is the top of one of the legs for the fancy desk I inherited from my stepdad. I think it looks really pretty. I thought about cropping it square, but I like the left 1/3rd too much to chop it off, so I left it as-is.
Good times.
D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO800, 1/2.5th (AP mode), f/3.5. Two minutes of slider play in Aperture, and a trip through the Photoshop Free Transform to square things up.
