As you might have guessed, I’m going through some adjustments to the site. This is a much more complicated, but ultimately nicer design than I have experience with in the past. So over the next week or so, you can watch me slowly evolve this site into its final product. The end result should be easier for me to update, and more enjoyable for others to view images and read blog posts. Till then…..
Gelareh and I arrived in Strasbourg, France yesterday after nearly 15 hours of traveling from Houston. (shorter than the time it takes to drive to WV…). We are essentially over our jetlag, and enjoying a pleasant stay with Gelareh’s family. I have already enjoyed some very nice local treats (food, cheese, wine, etc.), and am looking forward to one more day visiting before heading to Paris. It has already been a very nice break, from a very busy Houston.
I am currently updating my site, and going through some growing pains. I’m switching things over to predominantly a photo blog, but will still keep a written blog functionality on a separate page. This will probably take a couple days to get right, but should yield an ultimately better product.
Till then…
Its been a while since I have posted, as the month of September has basically been a blur. None the less, pictures have been on my mind. I decided to rework a few of my HDR shots from several different trips over the last couple years. I finally read a really good tutorial from a blog called “Stuck in Customs” that specializes in HDR. Although I have only implemented about half of the technique, the results are much improved over the previous versions. The first two are the classic Tunnel View shot at Yosemite national park. The next on is a shot of the Pacific Ocean from the beach just south of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. And the last shot is of a beautiful street in Bellagio Italy. The last shot looks a little over done. However, the street really does look like something out of a Thomas Kinkaid painting and is the sun going down behind the pink building that makes the shot look surreal. If anyone has any thoughts Id love to hear them.
Gelareh’s birthday is today, and we are about to dive into a baker’s dozen of tasty cupcakes from Sugarbaby’s. Tasty. The picture above is Gelareh bundling up for a night at ~30°F in Rocky Mountain National Park……she’s a trooper.
A few more fun pics with Sadie. The first is more playing with the 50 1.4, and another great expression from Sadie doin’ what she loves. The second is more playing with off camera flash, and taken with the 17-55 2.8, with and SB-800 directly behind Sadie with a full CTO gel. Both cool shots for different reasons.
For a long while now, I have lived with the 17-55 on my camera, and been hesitant to take it off. It’s just so easy to zoom around and stay in one place. I bought the 50mm for a reason, and over the last week I have rediscovered why. The shallow depth of field and extra focal length due to the D300 crop factor makes this lens the poor mans 85 1.4. Sadie modeled for me again, and gave me a couple really nice photos that will most likely end up on the wall somewhere. Both shots are wide open.
While visiting North Georgia this weekend our Inn had this wonderful barn on-site. I was fascinated by the structure, but really had a tough time getting a photo that did it justice. For now I will blame it on equipment, but that’s just me in denial. After giving up on the barn itself, I moved my beautiful wife inside the barn (maybe for the first time?) and set up two flashes. The first flash was my friend Jason’s SB-600, set off camera right at +0ev. The second is my SB-800, off camera left with a full cut of CTO to warm up the light to represent sunset (which is when this was taken). This was the best photo I got of the barn…..but it probably had more to do with Gelareh than it did the barn. It’s another example of off camera flash, and I think I could get hooked on this hobby all over again.
I have been searching for cool data visualization software for some time. A few months ago, National Geographic published a special edition magazine that focused on energy usage and made use of many very well made charts. It spurred me to email National Geographic and inquire about how they make their charts.
I received a very nice email back this morning! The respondent informed me that the author used Adobe Illustrator to make all of their graphs, but she urged me to look into an IBM project called Many Eyes. Although Illustrator may ultimately be more applicable to a wider data set, this a very neat Java based program and already has many data sets plotted and available to explore. This is a site very much worth exploring.
Lately I have been toying with off camera flash, and trying to learn a few new tricks. My trusty model has been working for milk bones, and as you can see is getting pretty good at working the camera. Here I am underexposing the background by a stop in order to gain some saturation, and then have a SB-800 off to camera right, pushed up one stop. Over the next few days I am going to post a few more images, and please tell me what you think.
We visited Smoky Mountain National Park over the Memorial Day Holiday, and I finally grabbed a few decent pictures of the area. The last time I had a real shot at some good pictures, I was very in-experienced with my first digital SLR, and shot the whole day at ISO 1600. I drove back to Atlanta only to find a bunch of grainy, underexposed shots of disappointment. This time I went back with a few more clicks under the belt, and a brand new tripod to help capture some of these stream shots. Have a look, and let me know what you think.
Hello all. I had to update WordPress this evening and have had to start over on a couple thing. Please bear with me, and I should have something more up shortly.
Cheers,
Raymond
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