There is nothing better than starting off a post with a great panorama. This was shot down at Elliott Bay about 15 feet from Anthony’s Diner. Here is a photo from just three days before the I shot the pano.
See the water level in the second vs. the first? I’m not sure quite what was going on except that it may have been drained for the Cruise ship docked on the same pier. Moving on to the tech-side of this post…
Who would’ve thought that audio could be used on a Digital SLR camera? The EOS-1d Mark II has a built in voice recorder. This could come in handy when needing to remember names or locations of people or photos and also for blogging how well it works.
Went down to Lake Union last night to see the fireworks. It wasn’t a bad show but definitely was further away than I expected (I was on the south side of the Lake rather than planting myself amongst thousands of other people at Gasworks Park). After the show, a couple was dancing down the dock to a live band.
Today is my last day here in Idaho. It will be nice to be back in Seattle and finishing up work.
In the few days that I’ve been in Idaho, I have…
-Been a guest at a delicious barbecue
-Gone swimming
-Skateboarded
-Shot Photos (no brainer)
-Had a pistol fired repeatedly toward me by drunk rednecks
-Rode with a friend when they were pulled over by a police officer for speeding
Some of those things are far from thrilling, but it has been a fun-short visit.
Ok so Today is not the 28th but rather the First of July. In hopes to improve my blogging, I will post everyday that I’m here in Idaho. Here is a photo to start this post off along with a short timeline:
9:05 PM, Saturday
I’d suggest viewing that photo in the largest size if you want to get the full effect. The light was amazing at 9:05PM. The shot is a 17-image-panorama shot at 200mm up on Queen Anne at Kerry Park.
10:25 PM, Saturday
Decided to head to Idaho for a few days for fun. Started packing and grabbing a quick bite to eat before I leave.
11:14 PM, Saturday
Out of Seattle on I-5 on my way.
This is starting to look like the UPS tracking system minus the part where it says your package is going to be delayed.
4:15 AM, Sunday
Coming into Spokane and seeing a beautiful sunrise, but still half asleep and not willing to bring out the camera.
8:55 AM, Sunday
12:01 PM, Sunday
Keeping it cool
4:25 PM, Sunday
If you’re asking yourself if Shelby had a nap between 12:01 and 4:25, the answer is yes he did. These pictures are from a barbecue down the road at a neighbors house. Great time and great food Idaho style!
7:30 PM, Monday
I’ve had these guys in my playlist for a while and haven’t listened to them that much until now. They’re Data 80. Check out their old school video here.
Oh the long nights contemplating whether or not I should upgrade and I finally did it–I sold my 40D and purchased the Canon 1d Mark II. It truly has been one of the best purchases I’ve done relating to photography. The camera is amazing; 45 AutoFocus points, 8.5 Frames Per Second, full weathersealing…it is really a tool to have. There is a full review at dpreview if you’d like to read a little bit.
I’ve taken quite a few shots recently, testing the focus and noise comparison to the 40D. In my opinion, the 40D is much more forgiving if you incorrectly expose and need to adjust in post. The 1D MKII on the other hand, seems like you need to pinpoint the exposure in order to keep from getting grainy images. This of course is not a problem at all, but noticed it during my first few shots. Here is a 100% crop of an image showing that the files are fairly sharp:
Yesterday I went for a stroll along the waterfront/Olympic Sculpture Park to do some more testing. There were about 40-50 sailboats in a group going along the shore.
Come on Seattle weather, you can do better! These last two weeks, we’ve had beautiful weather, but more than lacking sunsets and clouds. Hopefully the weather heads in a more sunset-picture-friendly direction this week.
Here are some NSG (Not So Good) Clouds from Beacon Hill:
…And here are some very interesting clouds from today:
This is a follow up to the first Salt Lake post located here.
The last two days in Salt Lake City were great for shooting photos. The light was nice and had great weather to boot. I had two fun friends that modeled as well as another friend that skated so we could get some shots. All around, Salt Lake City was a fun time and will be heading back as soon as I can. Here are my top picks from the last two days in Salt Lake.
It’s Monday, May 26th and we just got back from a great concert. The show consisted of two amazing bands Death Cab for Cutie and Tegan & Sara. Both were very good live but were rushed by the Provo 10 P.M. curfew. One of the bands was not able to play due to technical difficulties that left us in waiting for a little over two hours. It was definitely worth the wait though.
Here are a snapshots from a friends camera of Death Cab from the concert. I also included a couple strobist photos from the same night.
Such a sunny bright morning so far, hopefully it stays this way. I have a few photos from these past two weeks. The first set is from Kerry Park. I was there last night to try to capture the sunset. I took a few of the pictures with the 70-200mm as well as the 17-40mm. The first panorama was taken with the 17-40, 3-stop GND Filter attached via a Cokin Holder. View Large for detail.
This photo will be available for prints on Imagekind tomorrow (5/17/08). If you would like prints of any other photo, please feel free to contact me.
Here is the second set of photos from last week.
Can you guess where these portraits were taken?
There were lots of people up there, mostly tourists and people shooting photos. One of which that I met was, Eric. His photostream is here: flickr.com/photos/seattleclick/. His photos of the sunset came out awesome as well.
This last week has been overly hectic–new projects and personal design adventures. This all has me wondering when the week begins and ends. One of the biggest problems with freelancing is that it takes up a lot of your time if you’re not careful and firm with your hours. Speaking of which, I read a short article tonight on freelance and noticed a few quote in it that I liked. The article is at Digital Dreamer, towards the bottom of the page.
Moving on…A few days ago a friend Josh and myself went down to the studio for some recording stuff and snagged a few portraits on the green screen. We went out again today up to the Space Needle. I have to say, even though I find myself scared of dangling over the edge of giant drops, I didn’t have a problem hanging over the fencing trying to snap a shot of downtown. Here is that photo:
South of Puget Sound/Seattle was hazy. Mount Rainier was visible but not by much.
There originally were going to be a few posts in a row with a couple different graphics, but I’ve narrowed it down into this one. Up first is a flyer done for a show in Philadelphia, PA. The show is for Marcus Eaton and his band. The show will be happening Wednesday, April, 23 (tomorrow). If you’re in the area check it out.
It looks as if more of this stuff will be coming soon as well as plenty more photos. I just purchased a new set of gadgets that I’ll blog about when I get them in the mail. For now I’ll leave it up in the air as to what it is.
Second on my list of things to blog about, are a few of the stock photos from the Sunday walk at the Olympic Sculpture park with Dave. Apparently both of us had stock photos in mind when we went out shooting. We both returned with very similar shots. Here are some of them. There are more on flickr that you can view:
This is a great week to do a photo blog. There has been nothing but camera talk all week between myself and friends. I believe it was Monday night and two of my friends decided to head out to try to get some portraits. They asked if I would come along to show them some flash work–so I did. After a few suggestions, I saw a shot that I wanted to do. Heres the shot below:
It only took a few minutes to get the shot. The trick to this photo was using long exposure and an external flash (Canon 430ex). I set the camera at four seconds with an f-stop of 8. This gave me enough time to run to the left of the camera and pop off some light. I only flashed once to give the model some definition but was careful to keep from ghosting. Simple enough? I think so.
The next series of photos that I’m posting are taken on slide film and have been in my film camera for a while now. By shooting with slide film and then cross processing, you get strangely over-saturated colors and color casts. You can vary the exposure + color by shooting 1 or 2 stops over exposed–raising your ISO/ASA also does a similar effect.
If you’d like to try cross processing, I’d recommend going to a Walmart or something very similar. They do a good job at processing it, and its cheap. I would not recommend going to RiteAid. They have a different setup there and sometimes their machines can’t read the film. I had a slight problem with them this time and had to take my film to another place to get prints from the negatives.
Today was the day of the huge Pillow Fight. All went well down there, minus the Seattle police patrolling the area. That certainly made heads turn and attracted people down into the area.
The whole purpose of this improv project was to get people to laugh and possibly spark interest to do more projects/events. I don’t have much else to say about this except that the police and the market maintenance workers were not pleased. If you’ve ever been in a pillow fight, you know that the feathers stick to everything–there were feathers everywhere in the street and on people.
We actually got some coverage in The Stranger-a Seattle Newspaper-for an HD video that friend Arzhang took at the Pillow Fight. I had a few repetitive words and a mini interview with a police officer–very funny.
Awesome! So psyched, my website has been down for a handful of days due to a horrible domain host–Joker.com. If you can avoid it, don’t register with these guys. They will gladly host your domain, but if you need to change your contacts, email or even have a small customer service problem they won’t respond back. I’d recommend going with Dreamhost; much more reliable and willing to help you out with problems.
A few weeks ago Universal was filming a few blocks down from where I live (Seattle, WA). I headed down there with the camera but nothing was happening. After a few minutes, the camera crew and whole set rolls up and sets up nearly on my lap. I took the opportunity to shoot a couple hundred photos just for good measure.
The film is titled ‘Traveling’ and is about a man whose book turns him into a best-selling self-help guru. On a business trip to Seattle, he meets a woman (Jennifer Aniston) who attends one of his seminars. The man (Eckhart) learns that he is not truly over his wife’s passing. It should be an interesting movie for sure. Here are a few of the shots.
As of recently, a few good friends from downtown, have been heading up to Capitol Hill every week to play soccer. There is a fantastic turf field across the street from Seattle Central Community College. Yesterday I decided to shoot a few shots while the weather hung in. I was going for a more journalistic/sports look with these shots and I feel I got it. Pictured in these photos is Jared Putnam.