On other news, my 50mm f/1.4 USM is being repaired at Canon in Irvine, CA. I lent the lens out and it ended up getting in an accident. Everything should be fine with it and I’ll have it back in about 2 weeks. Speaking of technology, I’m looking at getting a Time Capsule from Apple. I’m also trying to find out more information on the Time Capsule w/built in 802.11n Base Station.
Today was an alright day. Things have been slowly getting better around here–been feeling slightly more motivated to get out and do things around downtown. Today started off with a small walk down to Pioneer Square where Steve Arnston (Ai Professor)** played his concertina.
**Pictured is Steve Arnston**
After I was done shooting, a friend and myself headed back towards home to upload photos. I snagged another friend to head up towards Queen anne to a bicycle shop.
I had to return a BMX tube to a bike shop because they were the incorrect size. The bike mechanic at the strop proceeded to tell me that I was putting my tube in wrong at the shop–I’ve been riding bikes for almost 10 years! Even so, you can’t go wrong in putting a tube in a tire except pinch flats. The most annoying part of the whole thing is that it’s the only bike shop that carries any BMX accessories in all of downtown Seattle.
Anyways, now that the ranting is done, here are a few of tonight’s sunset images. Some of these will be available at my Imagekind.com account so if you want a print, you can order from there =).
**Pictured is Shandon Dyksterhouse**
Yesterday was quite the adventurous day. A couple friends and myself decided to walk over to Kerry Park on Queen Anne (Seattle) so I could grab a few shots for this weeks blog. It turned out to be a much longer walk because of the Queen Anne hills, but was worth it.
We had just walked up and I was setting my tripod up and a guy (Tyler) walks over and we get to talking and he asks if I would be kind enough to take photos of his proposal–I said yes of course. While waiting, I snagged a few other shots. I definitely felt a good feeling just by watching the couple. Tyler wanted it to be low key and a special moment. I definitely think they had that, minus the group of tourists that were in awe when it happend =).
Here are some of the photos as well as two portraits of a friend, Amanda.
Pictured: Amanda
Pictured: Amanda
Sam Kuhn and myself decided that we would pull out our bikes and head up towards the Amazon Headquarters on Beacon Hill to see what kind of shots we could get. The rain was coming down pretty hard but we managed to get a few breaks between drops. This was one of three panoramas that I shot.
To end our shooting, Sam and I met up with good friend Dave Kugler to grab a bite to eat. We ended up going to Mama’s Teriyaki on 3rd & Blanchard–excellent place for a decent price. Prints of these are available at Imagekind
Last night was an interesting night. There were loads and loads of people packed around the space needle to see the fireworks go off. I was surprised at how little fireworks were actually lit off. It was also good to see some of the Police Officers and Security Guards stop for a moment to enjoy what was going on. Here are a few photos of the space needle as well as some photos on the scene of a car chase.
The story as I heard goes like this: “…A green and white sports car was spinning donuts in the middle of the road repeatedly, tried to stop the car, but it continued to spin donuts and then took off, running from the police..”
Thats it for this blog, another coming soon! Happy New Years!
Here are some photos from an adventurous trip that Ian Matteson and myself made up to Lookout pass on the 23rd. Ian drove up from SLC to go board and visit family in Montana. When we got up to Lookout, it was snowing and had built up at least 2 feet of fresh powder. A lot of the runs were tracked up but most were fairly soft.
This week I have plenty of work cut out for me–updating the website and getting the new blog running. I do have more blog stuff for those of you who are reading this for the photos. To say a little something about last weeks Strobist/Flickr meet-up. There was quite a few people that showed up for this meet. It seemed like it was a fairly independent learning wise but everyone was definitely having a fun time and that’s all that matters! The photos below are weekly favorites. To see comments and settings check out my Flickr.
Last night was full of long adventures through the Seattle streets. Walking down the waterfront from the Space Needle all the way past the Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. I made it just in time to catch the last of the gorgeous sunset. This photo is taken from directly across the street looking at the entrance of Pike Place Market. Check out the full size image on Flickr.
This is one of the first shots I took when I got to Seattle. This city is immense! There is plenty of things to do and more photo opportunities than you can shake a stick at. There will be more to come here in a few days. This shot is a combination of several images stitched together to make a panorama. I used a Canon 50mm with a fairly small aperture to get a wider depth of field. There are 15 photos stitched together to make a 71 x 15 inch tall panorama.
Best viewed large Flickr.
Flash Light Lit. Say that 10 times fast. As of just recently I picked up one of Canon’s newest cameras, the EOS 40D. There were only a few at Picture Line in Utah so I figured it was either buy one now or be put on the waiting list with the rest of the crowd. I have only posted a few photos on Flickr from the camera.
These First two photos were lit using a hand held flashlight. I moved the light around constantly and watched the shadows to make sure enough light was wrapping around the objects.
Next up on my list of things to blog about will be the tshirts. As of the end of today, they should be done at Square One and being shipped sometime this week or early next week. I will be packaging and shipping shirts out by the 23rd of this month, so make sure that you let me know if you’d like one. The date for my relocation to Seattle will be the 23rd. There will be about a week in there that I may or may not be available. After that week I will be putting my new plans to work on some new projects.
For more photos visit Flickr.
Here are a few long exposures from last nights walk. I had gone up to Moscow to do some riding with a friend, Joey on Moscow Mountain. I’d never been up on the mountain, so it was definitely unknown to me. The ride turned out great and I found myself joking constantly about having to ride uphill to get to the downhill.
After the ride I finally got a chance to go on a mini-adventure with Laura. It seemed like there really weren’t that many people out last night. Of course it was 2AM, but usually people are out late anyhow. Anyways, here are some selectively picked photos. I sort of slapped the tripod down and fired these off. I wasn’t thrilled about firing off flashes because I didn’t want to hassle with security questioning what we were doing.
Got back from the “wisdom doctor” yesterday. They were afraid that my teeth were overly smart so they decided to inject me with some sort of relaxant, and they stole my smart teeth. This must be legal in Clarkston, Wa.
Or how about the real story…
You could know the true short story. Yesterday morning I went to the doctor in Clarkston and they pulled my wisdom teeth out. I guess they do it in stages–they first split the tooth down the center and pull each piece out instead of all at once. Sounded pretty gruesome but I didn’t notice it thankfully.
The torture is horrible…puddings, Jell-O, chicken noodle soup, tapioca, ice cream etc. I’m starting to wonder if I’m in heaven. Moving on…I purchased another Canon 430EX flash to compliment my current Canon 580EX in the mail and decided to play while I was down. I took a few shots to practice lighting subjects Strobist style. I didn’t bring out my snoot though–that will come out today.
Last night was interesting to say the least. Every night since Thursday, the city has been closing down the city park due to vandalism of some buildings. Kids have been spray painting on the buildings and in turn, ruins it for everyone who likes to lounge around down there after hours.
I ended up parking just in downtown Orofino and firing a few photos off. These were all taken on the same block around the construction in the Courthouse parking lot. I believe they’re putting in a new EyeCare building. All of these photos were long exposures ranging from 20 to 30 seconds.
There were a few events happening on the 4th–the raft race was one of them. I shot quite a few photos of the rafters for the tribune. This seemed to be their favorite. The photo was on the front page of last weeks tribune edition.
After shooting the photos I decided to go for a swim…well apparently I forgot that my cell phone was tagging along and it went in for a swim. When I realized that it was still in my pocket, I jumped out of the water and tossed it onto the shore. After I was done swimming, I headed to the house to upload the photos from my CF card and sat down with my phone and a jewelers screw driver to take it apart. The internals on the phone weren’t complicated and I cleaned it, put it back together and it finally worked. I guess I learned that you don’t take cell phones near the water. Most likely you won’t be as lucky as I was. I also doubt that the iPhone can go for long swims and still live to tell the tale.
I think I may start doing a weekly, maybe even daily, question and answer post. But for now here’s a question from Andy. He asks:
“What’s your typical digital work flow? From CF card to finished piece ready for print.”
I work on an Apple Mac Pro so my work flow is lean and mean to say the least. In the past I’ve been troubled by working on a PC but now that I’ve made the switch, I feel as if nothing really stands in the way of my work flow. Moving onto my process, I’ll run through some of my work flow steps briefly.
1. When I get to my station I tend to close all of my applications and pop the card into my SanDisk reader and open up Aperture. To import quickly I use the quick import shortcut (CTRL + I) to import the items directly into the library. I like to keep organized so I make a new album and continue importing.
2. Once all of the photos are fully imported, I’m ready to skim through and rate images. I rate the images from one star to five stars. One star being the good, five stars being the excellent. Once I’ve rated all of the images, I tell Aperture to select all of my five Star (sometimes 4 star) photos in a selection area for the next step in the process.
3. With a larger number of photos–sports–I like to organize them into groups/stacks (I.e. tackles, kicks, catches). With portraits I tend to organize by full, half or head shots. This is a huge way to cut down on time trying to decide which shots are best to use (time management).
4. After sorting, rating and stacking, I then begin color correction and other post work that might need to be done.
5. After post-processing is done, I can finally select the images to export at full quality TIFF’s or JPEG’s and designate the sizes for the printer. I just leave my PPI (Pixels Per Inch) at 300 for best print out quality.
Andy also asked me:
“What’s your preferred method of long term storage for your digital images?”
I would have to go with Hard drives. Even though its not the safest storage option, it is the most convenient for me. I backup all of my photos onto Aperture’s Vault system and maintain backups elsewhere. See my post about backing up your work.
The annual Carson Ianson Memorial Snowboard Jam went down last Friday and Saturday. We had plenty of video and photo coverage throughout the day. Mark Oliver and myself were shooting photos as well as doing some filming (I will post a few photos below this). My brother Eyler lent me his Super 8 Film camera. I’ve always wanted to film with it so this was my chance.
I purchased two rolls of film from B&H Photo and Video to start off. Each roll is two and a half minutes and 50 feet in length. I also had a Sony VX2000 3CCD video camera to shoot with as well. The bad news was that I’d been shooting all day long with this camera to find out later, that none of the footage had even recorded. Apparently this happens when the video heads are dirty and need to be serviced. I’m still bummed about the situation but I do still have the Super 8 footage to get processed. All in all the trip was great and I know the other videographers did get footage.
On another note, I just took a look at some of the entries for this weeks photo contest and there are two photos that pop out. Both are worth viewing so check them out at Our Weekly Photo Contest.
Here are some photos from a hike I took with some friends and my brother when they were over visiting. The water fall was 380ft tall (I didn’t have the wide angle to get the whole drop in the picture). I also attached a photo of a bird that wouldn’t fly. The cat had gotten a hold of it and had to make the it release the bird.
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