Caught In The Whirlwind
Posts tagged photography
Been A While
Mar 4th 2011
It’s been quite a while since I’ve updated here. I’ve just been busy and haven’t felt like writing so much about myself.
General Life Update
The house that my roommates put in an offer for that I mentioned in my christmas post was accepted and they’ve gone all the way through the entire process to where they’re waiting for the closing date. The deadline in the contract is March 16th, so there will be a house by that date assuming all goes well. Just need to wait for the relevant people to get together to actually close. I’ve been spending time packing and such the past couple of weeks so that’s been fun. We’re moving out of this hell-hole of an apartment at the end of the month.
As it turns out, so is everybody else. Our downstairs neighbor moved out over the weekend and the people across the hall are looking to move too. Must be because of our neighbors from hell. Ugh. Anyway, it’ll soon be over with.
School Stuff
We’re in the middle of another school semester and as I think I may have mentioned here, I’m taking General Drawing this time out. It’s going about as well as expected considering I don’t really have any drawing skills to speak of. Half the class is perspective drawing and the other half is still life. The perspective stuff is a lot of fun for me since it’s all creating a composition, measuring and then drawing it out. I can do that sort of thing. Still life is…touch and go. Some weeks are better than others.
In other news, two of my photographs from last semester ended up being shown in the MVCC Faculty Select student art show.
I was hopeful that I could get something in but the deadline had unknowingly passed and the show was coming up. I spoke with my instructor and she managed to sneak these two into the show. If you’re local and want to swing by, it’s in the Information Technology and Theather building on the Utica Campus on the second floor. Tuesday-Friday 1pm to 6pm until April 7th. My roommate has a lot of stuff in there this year as well.
New Toy
And last, but not least, I have a new technological toy to play with! If you’ve seen my facebook status updates at all, you’ll probably know this already, but I’ve purchased a brand new Apple Macbook Pro.
My old laptop was the original Macbook Pro from 2006, bought a week or so after they first came out. It was still performing all right, especially in non game tasks but it was starting to fall apart and the wireless was REALLY spotty (aka, works fine one minute, next needs to be within 3 feet of the router in order to pick up a signal). It was time to put it out to pasture, as good of a laptop as it had been for me over the years. With Apple being rumored to update their laptop lineup relatively soon, I hunkered down and waited.
Finally the day came and I pounced on the store as soon as it came up and came away with an order for a new laptop. The spec bumps in the 15″ MacBook Pros were…incredibly impressive. I came away with a 15″ MacBook Pro with a 2.2ghz quad core sandy bridge i7, 4GB of RAM, an AMD Radeon 6750m with 1GB of memory, the 500GB 7200 RPM hard drive option and the high res (1680×1050) anti-glare display.
It was delivered on Wendsday and all I have to say is, OMG this thing is FAST. I haven’t been able to find anything I do that really taxes it yet and when I boot into windows for games…wow. I’m playing Half Life 2 with everything enabled at over 100+ FPS at 1680×1050. City of Heroes with ultra mode enabled for almost everything works silky smooth. I’m REALLY impressed by the graphics card they put into these as historically apple tends to skimp on graphics.
I’m VERY happy with my purchase. This thing should last me another 5 years. Sure they’re expensive laptops, but if I’m only getting a new one every 4-5 years, it works out pretty well.
WPC – Week 3 – Control
Jan 19th 2011
I realized I missed Week 2, but the subject was Joy and I was having a hard time grasping the concept last week. Moving on to this week’s subject, Control…well, this may be cheating a bit since the weather was so awful here this week I wasn’t able to get out and get a fresh shot of this one. But I took this in early December and didn’t use it for anything so it’ll have to do in a pinch:
I did this one in black and white because I think it helps to enhance the subject matter of something forbidden. I actually have one of this taken last year too (this is a favorite photo subject of mine apparently ;) ) but it looks much cooler now with the plant overgrowth. It was a lot cleaner last year.
WPC – Week 1 – Electricity
Jan 5th 2011
Like I mentioned before, I’m taking part in shutterboo’s Weekly Photo Challenge this year for as long as I can keep this going.
This week’s theme was Electricity. Took me a little bit to figure out what would be interesting to do (too bad I used up the high voltage sign at work on a class assignment) but I had some christmas lights from my little tree and thought it might be interesting to play around with taking a photo of them in the dark.
I’m only semi happy with how this turned out. It was my first time taking a photo pretty much in absolute darkness and I think I need a better lens to really get the look I was going for, but it is what it is. I am happy with how the focus ended up turning out though. I’m still getting a feel for depth of field and how I can play with it to get something cool.
Signs
Dec 7th 2010
I’ve been working today on getting my final assignment for my photography course done and I thought I’d share a couple of my final images. The assignment this time was signs. In a nutshell, finding interesting signs or interesting ways to photograph signs. The assignment also had to be done in duotone which is a technique that uses 2 colors of inks to create the final product. So these images are going to look a little different.
So..here we go then:
I liked how the angles of everything in this one pay off against each other. It also ends up lookings like something out of a video game, like Team Fortress 2-ish. I took this one at work, where we’ve got a big battery thingy in the back room. Hence the high voltage and the chain link fence.
And the other one I was working on today. I took this in Boston, where we happend upon a Shell station with a pretty interesting/unique looking sign. I took the colors all post-apocolyptic because the subject was more industrial and the sickly green kinda goes along with what our dependance on fossil fuels is doing to the environment and all that. I also took some of the gigantic Citgo sign (the one that’s visible over the fence at Fenway Park) but we were a little far away and it ended up turning into a skyline shot which I haven’t done any post-processing on yet.
Still need one more sign, but I’m hoping to grab that tomorrow and finish up the assignment by friday’s due date.
Speaking of which, I’m also submitting my final portfolio images too since the class is pretty much over with and I had to get some prints. I ended up settling on using a service called WHCC and they’ve been really great to work with so far. When you set up an account they make you get 5 free sample prints to make sure your monitor settings and their printers are acccurate. I had those 8×10 prints sitting on my desk today at work and my bosses wandered by and wanted to know if I had taken up a new hobby. Hopefully it’ll be a little more than a hobby someday. Everybody who ended up looking at them seemed impressed. So that was unexpectedly cool.
So this is the last assignment in this course. I mentioned (or not) that I’m going to be taking General Drawing next semester. I’m simultaneously looking forward to and dreading that course. I’ve wanted to see if I could improve my drawing skills for the longest time now, but…I’m pretty awful at it to start with so it’s going to be a bit of an uphill climb. I hope I can learn a little more though. This class feels a little more intimidating because I’m roommates with Wassy now who is EXTREMELY talented in the drawing department. Last time I took a drawing course I didn’t know her that well. We’ll see how it goes! Half of it is perspective drawing which I can do pretty well. Second half is more still life things which…I’m not so good at.
Random Landscape Photo
Oct 26th 2010
Just dropping this in here since I never actually posted it. It’s one of the pictures I took for my landscape photography assignment. I liked how it turned out:
Looking Forward and Back
Sep 28th 2010
I’m headed to Boston this weekend to see some friends and catch the Roger Waters concert on the 3rd, so needless to say I’m looking forward to the weekend right now. This stretch over the past few weeks has been pretty bad relatively, so I could definitely use a little mini-vacation right about now.
There’s just one potential problem on the horizon. Both of my roommates have come down with a nasty cold which means there’s almost no possible way I’m going to avoid getting it myself. My throat was bugging me a tad yesterday but that’s mostly gone now and I’ve got a very occasional cough. So I’m hoping this is one of those situations where they get something and I mostly avoid it because it would kinda be awful battling a cold.
This past weekend I went out to Keuka Lake (aka, wine country) in an attempt to get some landscape photos for my photography class. Sadly, it ended up being mostly cloudy all weekend. I went anyway to get out for a while and the only bits of sunlight I got was about 15 minutes when I was going down the Thruway and about 30 seconds here and there. I managed to get some shots that will work out but because of the lighting nothing spectacular. Blargh. And it’s going to be rainy all week which isn’t going to help me get photos for the assignment.
Ah well, just have to do what I can.
Shadow Photography
Sep 13th 2010
I mentioned briefly that I was taking a photography course this semester. Well, the first assignment has been completed, and my work turned in so I figured I’d post up some of the shots that I turned in over here in an effort to stop this from becoming the weekend recap blog. I’ll probably have some more over the next little bit as some of my shots weren’t exactly based on the topic but I got some good stuff anyway.
The subject was Light and Shadow, capturing how shadows and reflections can create interesting images. So here we go (Click on each image to get to flickr where you can see a larger version)
First up my favorite one I took:
I happened upon this early in the morning at one of the local parks. The shadows from the railing on the gazebo were just awesome. One of the shots I took here that I was praying a morning jogger wasn’t going to run by though. You look a little weird at 8 in the morning, laying flat on your stomach over the steps of a gazebo taking pictures.
Here’s another one from the same park. The assignment also dealt with reflections of light, and I came across this setup with the sun refelcting in the water of the little pond thingy they have, with the hard light shadows on the rocks.
Different park this time (and a different day). This particular town park has a big network of nature trails. This was taken morning as well. The sun at this time shines directly into the entrance of this path making the foliage on the trees kinda glow which looked pretty neat.
This one I didn’t end up submitting, but I kinda liked how it turned out anyway. We’re back at the second park, along the sandy “beach” area. This was another one of those “Please nobody come by” type photos due to how I had to situate myself to get it right.
Class
Aug 26th 2010
Well, another semester of college has started, and yet again I’m taking another course. This time it’s a Basic Photography course that’s web based, so I’m not going to actually have to visit campus much this semester. I’m still trying to figure out a way to go to school more but…it is what it is at this point.
I’ve been excited to take this course for a while now because, if you remember, I went off and got myself a Nikon D3000 earlier this year and, while I’ve played around with it some, I haven’t really gotten used to all of the manual mode settings and such how I wanted to. So now I’ll get to learn about proper technique and how to meter properly and all that good stuff.
Expect to see some more photographic output from me in the near future as I go through the class. The first assignment is light and shadow.
Adirondack Journey
Mar 1st 2010
Wassy and I have been eyeing a quick trip up to the Adirondack’s along some of the scenic roads for purposes of practicing photography and hopefully getting some cool landscape shots. The weather has been uncooperative recently, being totally overcast with lousy light. But yesterday, we lucked out and got a day with very changeable conditions. We got the sun peeking out from some clouds one minute and snow the next.
We decided to chance it and head north to see what we could see. And we ended up at Moose River which was a really cool area and had some great little spots to photograph, including a little nature trail thing (although kinda snowy at the moment). We think it’d be cool to, maybe next year outfit ourselves better for wandering through the wilderness in the winter and head down one of the trails for a bit to see what there is to be seen.
My shots turned out all right. I got a couple of good cloud type pictures. The clouds were really cool looking yesterday, so we lucked out on that one. Most of my shots, however, turned out a bit dark and I forgot to play with the white balance settings as I was shooting, which is something I’ll need to keep in mind in the future.
My favorite shot was totally accidental as it’s waaaaay darker than what I was actually trying to capture. But it turned a scene that was pretty cool looking into an ominous, foreboding scene, which turned out looking fairly cool all things considered:
That’s moose river, looking from the route 28 bridge, just before the apocalypse, apparently.
This one here is way more true to life (taken just north of Moose River) is probably my favorite of the cloud pictures I took:
The biggest thing I need to work on, I think, is trying to brighten things up a bit without getting them over exposed. I also need to figure out how to capture a very cool looking bright sky without totally drowning out the detail of the things on the ground.
Man On A Horse
Feb 12th 2010
Urgh. Today is shaping up to be…awful. I got caught in the hall right as I was walking in and told something bad happened to our web app that needed fixing. But the e-mail saying what was wrong was total gibberish to me (except for the phrase “the customers are demanding answers!!!!”). So that’s getting sorted out and I’m taking the lull in the morning to post here…
Over the past couple weeks I’ve been working on a project for my lone class this semester, as I’ve mentioned previously. It’s coming along pretty well, I think. It’s a composite image of two chess pieces playing a game of chess with little people as the pieces on the board. On Monday I was able to finally grab a good park bench type shot to act as the scene, so that was the last big hurdle.
During class Tuesday the professor mentioned how it would be cool if I could have a guy on a horse (to act as one of the knights) but he didn’t know if it would be possible to get the shot or not. Well, I happen to know a guy with a horse (my uncle) and they were able to provide some nice pictures to use which should really add to the quality of the piece. I’m kinda regretting not taking more pictures at the Renaissance Festival the last couple years I’ve went because they’d be extremely useful right about now.
I’m also going over to my grandmothers house this weekend hopefully to look through some of her black and white pictures for something that could have color added to it (as is our next assignment for the class).
I’m also starting to go all out on my 2010 City of Heroes FArt competition entry for this month. The theme is romance and I’ll be doing an advertising poster for a super hero oriented dating service. I’m trying to work out the copy on the poster right now (jotting down ideas as I think of them while I work). Oh, I just realized I never posted my entry for last month here! What If? The Rogue Isles Olympics. (Make sure you click the image to see the full sized view) You’re probably not going to get a the in-jokes unless you play City of Heroes, but I’m really happy with how that particular design turned out (still).
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