Photo Fun on the Web

It is always interesting to me to find out what what other people see in one of my pictures, especially the artsy abstractish stuff... For this shot from downtown Dallas, a fellow flickr member thought it looked like the one bolt was holding down the city.

My thought at the time was of adding the little bolt to the skyline of large buildings, so you really never know what will come through to another person's eyes.

Chris at ObviousInsight mentioned an upcoming National Geographic photography workshop in the Dallas area... I hope I can make it, but my lovely wife's birthday is on the 9th.

Chase Jarvis is a top-shelf photographer and has also made an art form of combining business with creative arts. If you haven't seen this already, take the time to get an interesting take on where media is headed, and for a good kick in the creative part of your brain.

Chase Jarvis Keynote Address hosted by Art Directors Club of Denver from R. J. Kern on Vimeo.

I am very excited about attending the Kelby Training Photoshop "Down and Dirty Tricks" training on Friday...

Football season starts this week for me... It will be great to shoot while there is still daylight.

Have a great rest of the week, and be sure to make some good pictures.

With slow shutter speeds, you can get some interesting effects quite by accident. In this case, the roof supports at the Reunion Arena demolition almost disappear, and it looks like the structure is floating..

Happy Shooting everyone...

don j.

New Toy Time... Gorillapod, Extension Tubes, Lensbaby

My wife kindly went to a camera store and bought me a lightweight knockoff of a Gorillapod, knowing that I would go pick out the one I really wanted. Very cool... today I made it over to Competitive Camera and walked out with a few new toys. Happy Birthday to me!

The real Gorillapod is very cool, and I think it will allow me to leave the "real" tripod at home on an international trip next month. I will review that later...

Gift #2 is a set of Kenko extension tubes... I enjoy Macro photography, but I do not do enough of it to justify a true macro lens. Extension tubes go between your lens and the camera body, allowing any lens to focus closer and become more macro-capable. You do lose some light, but not any sharpness as with a "close up" filter that screws on the front of the lens.

There are three extensions in the kit, 12mm, 20mm and 32mm... and you can use them in combination.

Quick test (full review after some use) says this is good!

There is very little downside to these. My quick test pics showed a great deal of potential, and this is very user-friendly.

For a quick comparison, here is an un-cropped shot with the Canon 5D, 24-70mm lens, set at 70mm.

Canon 5D, 24-70mm, f2.8, 1/60, iso 1000

(The lack of sharpness is because I was handholding these... yes, I could have used the Gorillapod!)

With all three extension tubes stacked on, (64mm of extension) I could barely fit the "F" into the frame.

Canon 5D, 24-70mm, extension tubes, f2.8, 1/5, iso 1600

Notice the exposure change... even bumping the iso up to 1600, the shutter still dropped to 1/5.

Also, the depth of field is very shallow at f2.8, but at least with this method, you can control the aperture and get some more depth if the light is available.

Present #3... Lensbaby Composer...

I have been wanting to try one of these for a while... a cheaper alternative to the tilt/shift lenses. It is difficult to explain the effect. Essentially, you get to pick a very specific point of focus in the frame, and everything else is wildly out of focus.

My quick take... it is painful for quick shooting. Manually changing aperture with the "aperture disks" and manual focus means you have to be very deliberate. It will take some time to really experiment and get the most out of this thing. If I keep it that long... tbd. I do want to try this at some football games, so who knows.

Here are some shots from Reunion to show the effect. All of these are shot on the 5D at f8.

I like the effect of making large things look like toys or a diorama...

More testing to come, but these are definitely fun gadgets, and very good for making you think creatively.

Happy Shooting,

don j.

Shoot Around

One fun excercise I enjoy is finding a subject and shooting around it with different backgrounds and camera settings. By doing this, then analyzing the results, you develop your ability to pre-visualize a photo and use the camera, light, subject and background to make it happen.

Back out at the Reunion Demolition site, I came upon some variety of sunflower growing in the parking lot. For all kinds of reasons, a flower at this place is a contrasting element, so it became a photo subject.

Here is a basic walk-up snapshot of the pretty flower and ugly demolition in progress.

Canon 5D, 24mm, f10, 1/200, iso100, -2/3 exposure to accommodate for the big dark spot in the middle.

Next up, shallow depth of field to knock the background into blurry goodness. I played with this on in LightRoom quite a bit to for some funky colors, just 'cuz I liked it.

Canon 5D, 32mm, f2.8, 1/1600, iso100

Now how about a family portrait with a nice cloudy sky background? hmmmm...

Canon 5D, 45mm, f5, 1/1600, iso 100

OK, and a close up?

Canon 5D, 65mm, f5, 1/500, iso 100

I'm really liking the blue sky in the background contrasting the yellow, so wide angle it is...

Canon 5D, f5, 1/1600, iso100

Sooooo, find something interesting and have some fun shooting it. Change settings, change angles, look for backgrounds... you will definitely learn something in the process if you take a little time to look at the results....

Happy Shooting,

don j.

Quick Pics - More Reunion Arena

Do you ever get sort of attached to a photo project a little more than you thought you would? I have no real affinity for Reunion Arena, but having watched it go from intact building to a mangled wreck, I now feel drawn to the place.

Of course, after a while, all of the photos start to look the same. The idea then, is to find new details and new angles to shoot from. (a full set of my Reunion shots here on Flickr)

Mangled twisted rebar... interesting...

Framing the shot within the photo is usually a nice touch. This has also been massively adjusted in Lightroom because I wanted the funky colors.

Walking farther than on previous visits gave me a shot of the arena with part of the skyline behind, and the Reunion Blvd. exit sign below.... I thought it was going to work better but it just turned out OK.

I thought this picture of the stairs would be neat, but after looking at it I think the broken glass and debris are what make it interesting.

Without any people to give scale to the size of the place, the machinery has to do the job. The area that looks like a ramp is a stairway covered in rubble. Where the equipment is sitting would have been blocked by the upper seating bowl.

I bought a used truck (new to me!) earlier in the week, so I wanted some tough looking truck shots... this was my favorite, with the sun doing some nice highlighting to pop it out from the background. You have to watch out for reflections in the shiny parts though...

Have a great weekend, everybody (and go make some pictures!)

Happy Shooting,

don J

Quick Pics - Reunion Arena

I mentioned a while back that I was occasionally taking photos as demolition of Reunion Arena progresses.  For those of you with lots of fond memories of events in this building, it may be sad.  For me, I have some good memories of a few Stars and Sidekicks games, and some concerts as well.  The building itself never really grew on me though.  It has a unique shape and is (soon to be was) a definite landmark, but it wasn't a building to fall in love with.  

As of this morning, it is down to a few seating supports, the roof, and a big hole in the ground.

The workday begins....

Photographic note...  having a person in a shot of something gives a sense of scale.  We can relate to the size of a person and feel how big or small something is.  

The wildlife don't seem to mind one way or the other about the building, as long as the trees remain.  

Happy Shooting,

don j

Photo Stuff from the Web

Hello folks... welcome to the first post from my new Mac. Still getting used to this funky keyboard, but the screen is a wonderful thing.

Quick note... the new iPhoto face recognition feature is crazy. Seriously... if face recognition is this good on a consumer computer, what does the government have? GPS tagging is pretty cool too, especially for the newer cameras that do this automatically.

Photo District News annual photo contest winners are worth a look here.

I especially like the portraits by Sumit Dayal.

A site dedicated to finding art, photography and design ripoffs.

Our taxes bought a really nice camera upgrade for the Hubble, about $132 million worth. See what you got here. I was in high school when they put the Hubble up there, and the images that come back have always amazed me. I will be a bit sad when it finally dies.

I have stopped by the demolition site that is Reunion Arena occasionally to take some photos. It is eerie with sounds of creaking metal and a view of the interior that isn't natural.

As of May 18, the lower seating bowl was a pit of rubble.

Reunion and a pay phone... seemed appropriate.

One more, having too much fun with lines. Which is a future blog post, aren't you excited?


Full set of Reunion shots (more will be added as time goes by) is over here.

Happy Shooting,

don j.