Anthraquinoid Blue + Burnt Sienna

Thirds?

A little saturation added.

Aquarium

Guilty Pleasure

I love taking pictures even in the world of unreal :)
all pictures were taken by adjusting camera angle while pressing F13/screenshot function using the game interface
I do think there were a lot of beautiful scenery inside World of Warcraft

Head shots

I wasn't able to do the panning assignment because I was busy doing artist stuff all week . I did take some head shots of one of the singers so these will be my post for the week. I will do some panning shots soon.

Stereoscopic Worm's Eye view picture

Had a hard time setting my heavy D90 on my $15 tripod in worm's eye view angle :( guess it's time to upgrade, I had to hand held and took both pictures in the end. Surprisingly, the pictures still merged quite nicely. Here's the website again on how to view the stereoscopic picture in case you haven't seen it/don't know how

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mjpowell/Stereoscopic/Stereoscopic.htm

after seeing both picture merge, move your head left and right to see it dangled around.

Chewy

He wouldn't cooperate, but starting liking the camera.

Making other drivers freaked out - panning assignment

Although I did have a person who waved at me :)
Shutter speed 1/15

Ginger Panning

Only mildly successful with this one, I tried to keep the shots that her face was in focus, with the exception of the last one which I just thought was an interesting blurry mess.

Panning

f/23, 1/15sec. cropped all around. Levels in PS

f/23, 1/15sec. cropped bottom. Levels in PS

f/25, 1/15sec. cropped top and bottom. Levels in PS

Guilty Pleasure #3

Diet Coke + Mentos

Rotifera

My kids found a seep of water in the Highland Range Saturday while collecting chalcedony and red jasper. We put some of the water in a plastic bag and found this Rotifera wiggling around in it. The magnification is 400X.

Dirty Hands

I like to collect rocks, but sometimes I feel guilty about the time and resources I put into it.

Template Change?

I changed the blog template. Can't stand the old one any longer. We can change from this one if you guys want, but I refuse to go back to the previous look!!

WoW

Guilty Pleasure

I would have had to go buy another soccer ball to pull off my two soccer ball pose...so I settled with guilty pleasure #2 which is my love of fruity candy. Some love chocolate, I love the fruit!

Cake

Okay, my idea here was to kill two birds with one stone, since I missed last weeks assignment I decided to do my guilty pleasure from an ant's eye view.

cheers :)

Night Light

So I finally got out and took the light painting pictures I wanted to do two weekends ago. After work today I headed up to the Valley of Fire and fumbled around a bit in the dark. This is my first try at this type of picture and I like the results. I will definitely be taking more of these pictures in the future.

I used a light from four different locations (next to the camera, to the right of the buildings and inside both buildings). Running around in the dark made this a bit on the difficult side but I got it done. (I was moving in the dark because the shutter was open and any light would register.)

The biggest thing this shoot told me is that I really need to get some flashes and a remote triggering system.

D60, ISO 200, 50mm, f1.4, 66.7 seconds

Overall I think I like this first image the best. I really like the dark, brooding character and the uneven blue wash.

D60, ISO 200, 50mm, f1.4, 68.3 seconds

The lighting on the front wall is the best in this picture. The blue from the front and green from the side really brought out the texture. The green on the ground in front of the building is a bit hot and that detracts from the picture. With a little bit of effort I may be able to tone that down in Photoshop.

I also like the small wedge of white light in the foreground. (This was a light leak between my gel and the flashlight.)

D60, ISO 200, 50mm, f1.4, 84.7 seconds

This last image has a nice green fill, not nearly as intense as the second image. The red in the doorway is a little hot this time but I do like the blue edging on the stones inside the door.

Don't tread on me!

D70, 27mm, f3.8, 1/60, flash at -3 ev

Poor little ant can't seem to find a hiding spot. (Yeah, yeah, a bit late.)

Sun-Set

I wanted to try out the print services at Adorama Camera. I took the two sunset pictures from last week and put them on a 20x30 canvas. I adjusted it to 240 dpi so that the pictures fit without having to resize them.

Wednesday night I uploaded the image and placed the order. The web site indicated that it would take 2-5 days to process + shipping time. Even though I really wanted to see the print I decided not to rush the order. I figured it would show up sometime this week. Well the next day I got an email stating that it had already shipped and it showed up on Saturday. Three days to process the print and ship it across the country. Not bad.

So today I opened it up (it was well packaged) and took a look. The quality is outstanding. I will definitely be using them again.

I have the print at my desk if anybody would like to see the quality of their work.

New Weekly Challenge

Guilty Pleasures!!

Cubes

Small World Variation

drip

Giant doggy

Small World

Strange Plant

I know, I didn't do the assignment, I will still try to get it in. Will be a little late though.

Hottie on The Strip

In PS I saturated the colors a bit and dropped a Reduce Noise filter on it.

Photography gets wet

I found a deal on ebay that was too good to pass up. I got an Ikelite underwater housing for my D70 at a great price. Even better is that it came with a D70 body! One more body closer to my dream setup... I'm up to two D70s and a D60. Next one gets converted to IR. ;^)

Now I just need a port for the front. They are matched to the lens and don't normally come with the housings. Oh, then I need to get to Belize and do some diving. The sacrifices you have to make for the art! hehe

Light Painting Failure

So I knew what I wanted to do for the assignment. Instead of drawing an image I wanted to "paint" colors onto a scene. With that in mind I headed out to Nelson, NV in search of some old cars or mine equipment.

Unfortunately I didn't get out there eary enough in the day to scout out my locations. I wound up by the Colorado river close to sunset. By the time I finished up at that location nobody was around in the locations I wanted to shoot in. Not wanting to face a double barrel of buckshoot I headed home.

So enjoy the setting Sun in Nelson Nevada...

Just before sunset on the Colorado (D60, ISO 100, 50mm, f4, 5 image HDR, 1/500 - 1/80)

(D60, ISO 100, 50mm, f4, 5 image HDR, 1/160 - 1/25)

(D60, ISO 100, 50mm, f4, 5 image HDR, 1/60 - 1/10)


From the top of a boulder (D70, ISO data missing, 27mm, f6.3, 3 image HDR, 1/640 - 1/40)

Saturday's light painting venture was shot. OK, there are some neat stone cabins up at Red Rock. Sunday I headed up to Red Rock Canyon and guess what... I messed up again. It turns out the cabins I was thinking of are actually out at Valley of Fire. Oh well, more sunset pictures for your enjoyment...

(D60, ISO 100, 50mm, f4, 6 image HDR, 1/160 - 1/15)

The same view about 15 minutes later during the "blue hour." (D60, ISO 100, 50mm, f4, 7 image HDR, 1/30 - 1/2)

I love the look of those last two pictures. Other than minor adjustments while building the HDR image I did not change the colors of them. It is a dramatic example of how much of a difference 15 minutes can make. I was using a 1:1.4 50mm prime lens stoped down to f4 and it was pretty dark out by the time I took the second (blue) set. I just picked up the lens last week from Goodwill and I'm definitely happy with it.

Finally, as the Sun was setting a newlywed couple showed up for some wedding photos. I grabbed the D70 off of its perch and snapped a few shots. I didn't get the focus dialed in and the other photographers were in the way but here's my favorite shots:

(D70, 35mm, f4.1, 1/10)

(D70, 50mm, f4.5, 1/20)

(D70, 40mm, f4.5, 1/13)

Sorry for the long post, hope you enjoyed it. ;^)

New Weekly Challenge

"Birds eye View" and/or "Ants eye View"

Dacing Light

I didn't paint these myself but had fun trying different shutter speed capturing the random movement & types of my music visualizer as I'm listening to music, it was very interesting to see the end result, as you can see I went out of control :)

Nikon D90
Shutter Speed Range 1.5 ~ 10 Sec