January 2009 Entries
Here is the second study with fire, the above photo was taken right after the flint was struck. You can see the sparks flying out of the top of the lighter. Shutter Speed 1/50 sec. Lens Aperture: F/5.6 Focal Length: 50mm With the below photo you can see the wax droplets wicking out of the end of the wick and glowing red.
Here are some candles, interesting in there own light. Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec. Lens Aperture: F/5.6 Focal Length: 50mm
Here’s some of Kings Street Station, some of the neglected parts. The cracked paint and rusting metal makes interesting photos. Shutter Speed: 1/2500 sec Lens Aperture: F/3.5 Focal Length: 18mm ISO: 800
The streets always hold something to photograph, if you just keep your camera ready. None of these would have been taken if I had left my camera at home on a day out on the city. Shutter Speed: 1/25 sec Lens Aperture: F/3.5 Focal Length: 18mm ISO: 100
The new Jordan Clarke release is worth a watch, I'm always a fan of his music videos. This one like all of the ones in his Vimeo profile is great. The variable speed, colors, and mirroring is neat. Vanilla Strawberry from Jordan Clarke on Vimeo.
Kings Street Station when I visited was a strange mixture of old style decedent train station and careful neglect, these photos are some of the redeeming parts. Shutter Speed: 1/30 sec Lens Aperture: F/3.5 Focal Length: 18mm ISO: 800
Here are some glass baubles I came across in a store on a day in Seattle. The clerks didn’t even get mad at me for taking pictures in the store. I was quick about it, but you never know if you’ll get yelled at.
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
Lens Aperture: F/10
Focal Length: 39mm
ISO: 800
There’s always something to see wherever you go, I try to keep my camera with me all the time. Shutter Speed: 1/50 sec Lens Aperture: F/5.6 Focal Length: 39mm ISO: 800
Here is the 2nd of 3 pieces in my Wood Block Art series. This one is more angular in form and design. The design wraps around some on all four edges. I like these because there completely independent no mounting extra protection is needed, works great on a desk. The first entry in this series is: Block Art 1: X
When taking continuous shots I've found an effective way of printing them is using Photoshop’s contact sheet batch process. While it’s not as effective as “real” video, it’s pretty cool. Another cool way to show video on paper is with flipbooks, I’ll try to post an example soon. Shutter Speed: 1/25 sec Lens Aperture: F/5.6 Focal Length: 50mm ISO: 1600 Frames per second: 1.5 Total Images: 151
Knowing when the magic hour is a handy thing to know as a photographer. If you are unfamiliar, the “magic hour” is the first and last hour of light in the day. It’s a great time of day to take photos because the angle of light from the sun and color makes almost any photo great. Yesterday’s image-a-day was also taken around the same time. The above photo was taken at the magic hour, you can tell because the light looks like it’s coming at an angle at the clouds. Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec ...
I love macros, why? I can’t tell you. This is one of my all time favorites, it’s got good contrast and color and I didn’t have to work to take it. It seems great pictures just happen sometimes, especially during the magic hour. Tune in tomorrow for a short write-up on the magic hour if your not familiar with it. Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec Focal Length: 20mm Lens Aperture: F/7.1 ISO: 100
Keeping with yesterdays entry on Canon Beach, here’s the famous Haystack rock, as seen in the movie Goonies. Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec Lens Aperture: F/14 Focal Length: 50mm ISO: 400
Every time I go to the beach I find something to photograph, as with most scenic locations the trouble it finding a interesting angle or something out of the ordinary. There’s not very many technical issues to try and get over so your free to find something good to take a picture of. Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec Lens Aperture: F/6.3 Focal Length: 18mm ISO: 100
Infrared shots are fun, I only wish that I could take them with out having a extremely long exposure. It would be cool to just be able to point and shoot. These images were taken with an Infrared filter and then I used Auto Color in Photoshop to shift it away from red. Since the grass appears white, it appears to reflect the most infrared light. Filter: Hoya R58 Shutter Speed: 30sec Lens Aperture: F/5.6 Focal Length: 18mm ISO: 100 ...
At my last house on a particularly windy night one of my neighbors had two tall fir trees fall on their house. Don’t worry, no one was hurt. Later that night the evening news came out and did a live news cast, it was a slow news day otherwise. Main Image: Shutter Speed: 1/60th sec Lens Aperture: F/4 Focal Length: 70 mm ISO-200
Here is another shot near my last house, the moon behind the trees makes a nice silhouette. This was a 30 second exposure on a tripod. Later that year two of those trees fell on a house, tomorrow’s image-a-day will have some photos of that. Focal Length: 26mm Shutter Speed: 30sec Lens Aperture: F/5 ISO: 100
This was taken right out my front door at my last house at 11 pm, This is a typical night in Oregon, wet and a little foggy. It goes to show you can find a photo anywhere. I took this photo with a tripod and remote, the shutter was open for a full 10 seconds to capture enough light at ISO100. Focal Length: 18mm Shutter Speed: 10 Seconds Lens Aperture: F/5 ISO: 100
I did a series of experiments with cutting cloth and felt, and done with some care you can make some cool stuff. Natural fiber cloths like cotton and wool felt cut well. Synthetic-based cloths like polyester and nylon just melt. The blue patterned cloth is a thin 100% cotton, it cuts extremely well, the edges are crisp and there is little to no scorching. The tan cloth is 60% wool, it cuts well with some scorching, but the result looks nice. There is some bunt-wool smell, but it’s not too bad. ...
Stones last a long time, this one was carved over a hundred years ago and the letters are still crisp and easy to read. This stone has been around 4 times longer then it’s owner lived. I’m sure you can find stones older then this one in your local graveyard. The thing that amazes me is the labor that must have been spent carving it, and how it must surely have been transported by train and/or horse. Oldsmobile started production in 1902, and Ford in 1914. (Wikipedia) Focal Length: 80mm Shutter...
When laser engraving plastics, all the laser does is evaporate material from it, so depending on the plastic, you could get many results. I just engraved a white DS lite, that version of the DS has a clear shell that is painted on the inside. The engraving is light but has a cool effect, It casts a shadow on painted inner shell and depending on the light it shows with varying effect.
A lazy photographer never gets the shot, especially with animals. If nature doesn't come to you, the best you can do is have a camera ready all the time. I got this photo mostly with luck, frogs usually don’t hang out in my back yard. Focal Length: 50mm Aperture: F9 Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec ISO: 400
This is a Kodak “Bullet Camera”, the lens screws in and out, I assume for zoom. The shutter is is a simple lever that doesn't appear to have any adjustments that can be made. The design is simplistic and functional. See the two images below for an example of the lens open and closed.
The upper photo is probably my favorite waterfall picture, I was standing so near the fall that water is splashing up on the lens and leaving those blurry smudges you can see everywhere on the image.
The problem with waterfall pictures is waterfalls are so cool in person that everyone takes a hundred pictures, also everyone has seen a hundred boring photos of waterfalls. So the challenge is getting something interesting, something different.
Okay, with only one false start I can officially say this is the 30th image-a-day. It’s a milestone but a poor one at that. Here’s a fig leaf in detail, being able to see the veins and leaf cells is pretty cool. The leaf is between a flash and a lighting umbrella, the flash is pointed towards the umbrella to get maximum light reflection on the back of the leaf, the white you see is the actual fabric of the umbrella.
I recently created a entry for the Spark Competition, go check it out and rate it highly. There’s 188 entries and the top 50 win a VIA Artigo Pico-ITX system which I’ve been excited to see since it’s release. I wrote a blog entry about it back in December. The Spark Competition is for Microsoft's new embedded development environment focused on the new .Net Micro framework. Microsoft's new framework is for lower-end microprocessors. While it is a Microsoft product it has some very interesting features like higher-level access to networking, interface, and data libraries. There...
We’ll I've managed to make it to 30 days of images, that’s 8.2 percent of the year. Time flies when your having fun.
Edit: I guess this is only 29, consider it the ramblings of a crazy man.
Here is another macro, this time of the circuit board of a video card.
These images are the result of a moderate light source with a very small aperture (f32) and a 30 second exposure.
Goode pictures are where you can find them, likely most pictures wont turn out, but I’m glad I had my camera ready the foggy morning I drove from Portland to San Francisco.
Taking pictures from a moving vehicle are also tricky business, you have to be ready at any moment to get that one in 50 that actually looks okay.
I find that at a 50mm zoom (about 2x) really helps cut out the ground blur on the things that are the closest to the car.
SparkFun just released an Arduino-compatible autopilot board designed by Chris Anderson and Jordi Muñoz of DIY Drones. I checked out Chris' board a while back and was under the impression that it was still under construction, though if SparkFun is manufacturing the board now it must be ready for the average hobbist.
For $85 you can have the brains and GPS for your own UAV.
Personally I've always wanted to create a boat UAV that autonomously roves the coast traveling to far away places with a cellular modem reporting back with pictures and charging with solar panels.
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8785
Everyone loves a good freshly baked desert, including myself. I took the super close up with a 50mm lens with a macro attachment, the two below were with the standard 50mm lens at f1.8.
If you ever decide to design something mechanical, eventually you’ll need some gears. I’ve been experimenting with laser-cutting gears.
The first thing I found out is that drawing gears is hard, they are complex in ways you might not realize at first. Gear teeth aren’t simple squares, or triangles, or a easy combination of the two. The teeth are angled based on the diameter of the gear and the pressure angle. See the two following images to compare a small diameter gear and a large diameter gear with the same size teeth (20px) and pressure angle (20).
Luckily there is a easy...
The human eye is infinitely interesting to me, it seems that the closer you look the more there is to see, especially in the detail of the iris. These photos were taken with a ring flash (you can see the refection in the eye), and it gives them a bleached, almost sterile appearance.
John Aho’s 2nd gallery is a large collection of images from PSCombine 1.5 with some real gems amidst the 159 image gallery, check it out over at flickr.
If you have generated any images that you would like to share, send me some by email, or upload them to flickr and...
There’s nothing like having a good knob or two around for some good tactile feedback, that’s why this analog style midi sequencer is one of my favorite instruments. If you are not familiar, it’s designed so that each slider is a note, and it runs though all the sliders to create a little melody that you can change while it’s playing.
Also the black on white styling reminds me of star wars.
The best part of this picture is the contrast of the smoke on the dark background. Smoke is a pretty difficult thing to photograph, though with a bright flash and a dark background you can get some great results. This picture was taken with the same poser board technique as image-a-day 22, but with a black poster board.
This is from one of my first attempts to use “real” photography lights and a white background in 2004, even though my photography and lighting techniques have improved quite a bit since then, I generally still use the same type of background. I use a semi-glossy poster board that curves from the table to the wall, it works well for small objects and is very inexpensive. Also. if you get the poster board dirty you can always toss it out and grab a new one for a dollar or two.
Description
This business card is a tri-folded laser cut card meant to look like a old school cassette tape.
The advantage this card has over other is that there's a zipper seal (like on UPS envelopes) on the back of the card that lets you open it like a tri-fold brochure so you can fit a mini-portfolio or a bunch of text on your usually too small business card.
This design gives you about 3.5 x 4in of space that you can't see when the card is folded and sealed.
It's possible to print the card on standard...
tchiseen from flickr also has a great set of images from PSCombine, like the other galleries they are also varied in many ways. The cool thing about PSCombine is the results are different in a myriad of ways, the source images are different, and the person who chooses the images had different criteria for for interests them. If you compare all three of the galleries I posted today you get a sense of that concept.
An open window or door brings the outside world in.