Day 77: Fool on a Hill

Today is a fairly unexciting post. Not that that's anything new. It was an absolutely, completely, 100% gorgeous day outside today. Which meant, again, I'd rather have done other things than walk around taking photos. Once the newness of Spring wears off I'm sure I'll be able to get out and enjoy the weather for photographic purposes. As for now, I spent the day playing racquetball and golfing. And playing Red Dead (I'm really regretting this paper right now).

While I was on my way home from racquetball (and before golf), I got stuck towards the bottom of the hill leading into Elderton, PA. Stuck meaning in traffic, not breakdown stuck. So I snagged my camera and took these two photos while I was waiting there.

1/15 sec. exposure at F/5.6. ISO 100.
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1/125 sec. exposure at F/5. ISO 100.
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Obviously that first photo is overexposed. I took it as my car was slowly creeping forward which gave it the blur effect. It was completely accidental, but I kind of like how it came out, especially with the sun just peeking over the crest. The other one is evenly exposed, but I was hoping the sun would have been in that one too. Alas, I was too far under the hill at that point.

My pizza is reading (mmmmm.....Tofurkey). And I'm going to leave that sentence because it's funny. I meant to say, my pizza is ready. But my fingers are apparently faster than my brain right now. Off to Deliciousville!

Day 76: Greenless

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone. Even though I think it's a stupid holiday, I think that everyone else should be entitled to enjoy it. I'm not a big drinker (as you could see by my lightweight antics of last week), and I really hate crowds of drunk people. Those two qualifiers really prevent me from wanting to go outside at all on St. Patrick's Day.

But I did go outside! Not to take pictures, unfortunately. It was a beautiful day out today, but I was stuck at work all day long. So I wanted to actually enjoy the weather instead of just going out to take pictures. I went for a run instead. It's been a loooong time since my last run, but it was nice.

This is what I actually photographed. I set my camera up on my tripod and stood in front of my closet door.

1/4 sec. exposure at F/3.5. ISO 200.
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That's me. I didn't do anything to this one other than set it up and push the shutter button. It's a little on the yellow side, but I wanted to keep that this time. With the brown door and my brownish skin, I think it makes everything a little warmer. Sometimes I feel like I'm talking out of my butt with this stuff. Oh well. I need to get back to Red Dead Redemption. I have to present a paper on it next weekend (I know, right?!), but I need to finish playing through it again so I can get notes for my paper. I love the game, but it's tedious going through a game like this. I should have started playing again a while ago, but I had so much other stuff to do. Ugh.

Day 75: Stop Blaming Things on Terry Gilliam; Mr. Nolan's At Fault Too

Today's photos, if I may so myself, are pretty awesome. My friend Ben and I have been playing racquetball on a fairly regular basis, though with spring break last week we've been a little off. But we did play tonight, and I was on campus early to do some reading. So I got to the racquetball court a little earlier too. I set my camera up, using my racket and goggles to prop it up at an angle. The shots below are the result.

This first one was just me standing to get a test shot (so I knew where I'd be; to make sure I was in focus, etc.).

1/25 sec. exposure at F/7.1. ISO 800.
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The next few that I took were at the same settings, and the shutter speed was a little slow. Needless to say, I ended up a little blurry. Oh, I forgot to mention that I was leaping. As you can see in the next photo.

1/125 sec. exposure at F/3.5. ISO 800.
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And this one.

1/125 sec. exposure at F/3.5. ISO 800.
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And then two more.

1/80 sec. exposure at F/3.5. ISO 800.
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1/80 sec. exposure at F/3.5. ISO 800.
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They all came out a little dark, so I had to adjust them in Aperture. I needed a fast shutter speed to limit the blur, but that equals darker exposures. But I still think everything came out pretty cool. I'm glad I stuck with my plan to do these. I got the idea earlier in the day, but then I felt awkward doing it with people walking by. But then I went ahead and did it anyway. So there's that. And here's this: goodbye.

Day 74: Blame It On Mr. Gilliam, Part the Second

Sorry for the late post. Sorry for the lame post. We watched 12 Monkeys in class tonight, which capped off my three day Terry Gilliam-athon. I might actually watch Time Bandits tonight as a bit of an epilogue, but we'll see. It depends what else I find on Netflix. Anyway, since I couldn't think of anything to take pictures of today, I crawled into my closet, laid (lay?) down on the floor and took this, another Gilliam-esque perspective a la Sunday's post.

1 sec. exposure at F/7.1. ISO 800.
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I messed around with this one in Aperture, mostly out of boredom. And partly because it's a lame photo, so I figured I could try and give it some flair. Okay, yeah. I agree. It didn't work. But you can't fault a guy for trying.

That's all I have today. So....yeah. You can leave now. Unless you want to hang out and look at more of my photos. I'd be okay with that too. Maybe tell me which ones you like? Comments make me happy. You want me to be happy don't you? You don't? Oh. Well. Ummm....

Day 73: Head. Phone. Headphones.

Okay, I finally watched the trailer for Super and I wanted to share it on here. I already feel like this is going to be my favorite movie this year. It has everything I could possibly want in a movie: Slither writer/director James Gunn, Ellen Page, and Nathan Fillion. I cannot wait for this movie to come out. At least it's only a couple of weeks away (provided it comes to a theater near here). Then again, I'd be willing to drive to New York just to see this.

Okay. Sorry about that. I just really needed to get that out of my system. Now onto the photos. I wasn't sure what I'd take pictures of today, and then I was putting my clothes away today and saw how I had hung my headphones onto the mic stand. I really liked how it looked, so that's what I photographed. I set my camera on my tripod, turned off my bathroom light (that's where I record, which is why the mic stand and headphones are in there; it's the best acoustics in the house), and turned on the closet light. I set it for a longer exposure and this is how they came out.

25 sec. exposure at F/3.5. ISO 200.
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I messed with the white balance temperature settings and turned the contrast up on this one. Other than that it's as is.

8 sec. exposure at F/3.5. ISO 200.
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This one didn't have anything done to it in Aperture. It's as is as it is.















Okay. That's it for day 73. I kind of like these photos a little. They're not spectacular, but they're kind of fun in a simple way. Is anyone even listening? Hello?

Day 72: Blame It On Mr. Gilliam

Today's post title says it all. I've been watching a lot of Terry Gilliam movies lately. We're watching 12 Monkeys in class on Tuesday night, but after reading the chapter that was assigned to us, I've been thinking that I may do my final paper on something with his films. So I rewatched Tideland this afternoon, I rewatched Brazil a few days ago, and I'm about to start The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus again for who knows how many times. One of the aspects of Mr. Gilliam's brilliant filmmaking that I enjoy the most are his ultra-wide angle shots. The man fits so much into a single frame and it makes me ridiculous jealous (mostly because I really, really want to buy an ultra-wide lens, but they're pretty pricey). So today's post is my (very weak) attempt at some Gilliam-esque photos (wide angle, askew view, etc.)

I'm going to give all three photos and then I'll talk a bit about them underneath. Each shot is essentially the same; the only thing I changed (as you'll see in the caption below each photo) was the aperture setting and the exposure. I wanted to experiment with depth of field a little bit today.

1.3 sec. exposure at F/3.5. ISO 400.
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2.5 sec. exposure at F/5. ISO 400.
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5 sec. exposure at F/6.3. ISO 400.
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As you can see, increasing the f-stop number (thereby decreasing the aperture's size) increase how in focus I myself am. The only thing I did to any of these photos in Aperture (the software) was decrease the white balance temperature in each photo to 3900. I wanted all of the photos to have essentially the same things applied save for aperture and exposure settings to really emphasize the difference in focus and depth of field.

As far as lighting goes, I left my bedroom light on and opened the bathroom door just enough to let the light through (behind me). I also turned my closet light on and left that door wide open (to my right in the photo; left from the viewer's perspective). That's all the light that was used. I think that helped create a deeper scene as well. I just really wish I had a wider angle lens to get really crazy with the shot (i.e. more of the room and empty space to create a more isolated shot).

Well, I hope you guys liked my little experiment today. Like I said yesterday, I'm going to do some random shooting again this week. It's not that I don't like the themes that I've been doing, it's just that it gets monotonous and slightly boring after several days. Okay, peace out, g.

Day 71: Uptown, Downtown and Some Things In Between

Boy oh boy are you all in for a treat. I have six, count 'em SIX photos to share with you today! Well, two of them are different versions of the same shot, but it's still six photos. I felt bad that I haven't been shooting as much lately, so I took a stroll around town after work today.

The first photos, though, were taken from the roof of the Book Nook today during the parade. They are HDR composites, but the parade was really lame so there wasn't much to photograph.

Photo composited in Aperture using Photomatix HDR Plug-In.
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Photo composited in Aperture using Photomatix HDR Plug-In.
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I don't know why, but I like the sepia one. It's anachronistic. It looks like it should be an old photo, but it's full of very modern objects. They are the same HDR composite; I just made the second one into a sepia tone after it was composited.

The next one is of the same intersection, but from down on the corner after work. Also, it's pointed back towards where I was standing on the roof of the above shots.

Photo composited in Aperture using Photomatix HDR Plug-In.
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The clouds that started rolling in the late afternoon were amazing. Lots and lots of texture. I like how this photo came out too. The HDR really makes certain photos look much better. The clouds have a depth that wouldn't have been there otherwise.

The next two photos are of a church/steeple on 7th St. in Indiana. Same basic thing though; I really love the way the clouds looked this afternoon/early evening.

Photo composited in Aperture using Photomatix HDR Plug-In.
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Photo composited in Aperture using Photomatix HDR Plug-In.
Click image for larger version.

This last photo is not an HDR composite. As I was walking back to my car, I noticed a few birds up on a telephone wire. I got underneath and pointed up and took this shot.

1/40 sec. exposure at F/8. ISO 100.
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The clouds don't look as cool because it's not composited, but I like the small patch of blue near the birds. I also like that they were close enough to the transformers so that both the birds and the transformers could be in the shot. I brightened this up a bit in Aperture and I cropped it down some.

It's supposed to be a bit warmer, but mostly cloudy tomorrow so I don't know what I'll be getting myself into. I think I'm going to go back to some random shooting for the next week or so, mostly just to break up the monotony of shooting the same stuff over and over, but also to get back to shooting things that don't need to be tweaked in Aperture. I want to get some shots that turn out good just from the camera, to get better at actually shooting good photos, instead of making them look good with my computer. Stay tuned, listeners. I mean readers. Whatever.