Posts published in “Photography”

The Metric System Naïveté Second Party – 5/08/2009

May 15, 2009 |

The second Metric System party went off last Friday the 8th like gangbusters. It was a good time, maybe not as crazy as the first, but it felt more cohesive. So, good job, us. We kicked ass. Look for another party in 6 months!

Here’s the gallery! The Metric System Naïveté Second Party Gallery – 5/08/2009

Here is a selection of my favorites

I think this set of photos, overall, is pretty good, but not as good as my first one. I don’t know what the difference was. I guess sometimes I’m just not as on as others. Oh well. There are some definite keepers in this which is the whole point. I’ve really got to work on using my flash to better effect when there’s absolutely no other ambient light around, as was the case during this party. I’m not entirely sure what I could be doing better while maintaining the look. I’d like to have better control of the light in general and be faster at adjusting the flash output without resorting to bullshit auto-mode. E-TTL II my balls. What I need, I suppose, is practice. These events are good for learning, but I’ve got to figure out some better shit for next time. I also think it would be helpful to have another photographer JUST to cover the performances, someone equipped with a fast, long lens who could focus on the stage, while I wandered the crowd, telling people not to smile, with a fast, wide lens taking photos of people. I want this one, but I think it’s a little too expensive for my soon to be jobless situation.

Anyway, enjoy the photos. I have a backlog of stuff I’m still working through, so keep your RSS readers peeled for more.

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Portola Valley – 02/26/2009

May 7, 2009 |

Galleries and Photography

While at home this past February, Juli and I spent a couple afternoons wandering through the woods surrounding my folks’s house, since, sans auto, we were a little stranded in the cultural island that is Portola Valley. But, shit, what do you need to have a good time but a camera and a sunny day? Not much, I think.

I’ve made a gallery of the first and second sets. I will add a third set to it as soon as I get around to tidying it up.

Portola Valley Gallery – February, 2009

Here are some of my favorites.

I’ve been playing around with extracting as much texture and color from these sorts of photos without making them look like you would expect. I tend to err on the dark side, if indeed I am erring at all. I am interested in coaxing unearthly colors and feelings from totally earthly subject matter. I don’t know if I am being successful or not. Maybe I’m not taking these things far enough. I don’t know. Regardless, I’ve never been opposed to just making pretty pictures. That’s really all I do with my photography. I’m not exploring the human condition or documenting news or shooting edgy fashion spreads. I just want to capture the world in front of me and present it to people the way I see it, the way it makes me feel. I definitely feel like I’m getting better at doing just that, but that I have a long way to go.

My development experiments continue. I feel good about this slightly-off, slightly-too-dark thing I’ve been doing for the last few sets. I feel good about my progress with the local adjustment tools. Next up is making convincing black and whites. I always feel like making black and whites from my color photos is kind of cheating, in a way. Maybe I’m just so afflicted with demo love for the colors I see in the original RAW files (which are actually black and white) that I can’t bring myself to throw them out and work only in gray. I played with the black and white thing a little on the Richmond photos, but that was a cop out since the photos I made black and white were of the underside of a concrete overpass—essentially black and white already. Lame. I need to learn to see in black and white, what to bring from a color negative into a black and white world, and how to compose for a monochromatic universe. I think it will help my photography overall, color or black and white. Look for that, probably in the set after the next Metric System party.

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Belle Isle, Richmond, VA 04/26/2009

May 6, 2009 |

Galleries and Photography

Recently I was in Richmond, VA working with Livio Sanchez, an editor from our Santa Monica office, on a commercial for Canopy towels and sheets. We had been scheduled to work Sunday, but due to Livio’s skillful and expeditious editing, we were able to have Sunday off. Yay! We asked the guy at the desk in hotel lobby where we should cruise and he told us to go to Carrytown, which has lots of “quirky shops”.

Well that sounded like a fucking horrible way to spend a beautiful, hot Sunday. Instead we went to Belle Isle, which is the site of a notorious Civil War prison for Union soldiers and about 8 million times more interesting than shops. I can shop in fucking New York, man.

It was a beautiful stretch of land in the middle of the James River filled with people sunning themselves on the burning hot rocks in the middle of the rapids. There is a footbridge leading to the island suspended from the freeway overpass that sways when there are a lot of people on it. Tons of people were having trouble walking on it as it swayed, but I didn’t. I suppose standing on moving trains has helped me out there. This is a poorly written Black laser entry. Just look at the photos.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Here’s the whole gallery: Belle Isle, Richmond, VA Gallery – 04/26/2009

Count after this set: 2400/5000 (48.000%)

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2008 – The Year in Photographs

May 1, 2009 |

About Photography and Photography

The Big Picture, which I mentioned last week, put up a series of articles called 2008 The Year in Photographs. They are some of the best images of some of the most important events of last year (duh). I’m not even going to try and post my favorites. Just get over there and look.

2008 – The Year in Photographs, part 1 of 3

2008 – The Year in Photographs, part 2 of 3

2008 – The Year in Photographs, part 3 of 3

Some pretty incredible moments in there.

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Land’s End & Sutro Baths – 2/24/2009

April 15, 2009 |

Galleries and Photography

Juli and I went for a walk along Land’s End to the Sutro Baths while we were in California. It was a beautiful day, fresh and clean after heavy rains the day before. Also, if you find yourself at the Sutro Bath’s and hungry, go to Louis’s and get a chili burger. Though you’ll expect to get a burger with chili on, what you’ll get is chili with a burger underneath it. Wicked.

Here’s the gallery: Land’s End & Sutro Baths Gallery

Here are some of my favorites.

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Kicking it with one aspect of my family – 2/22/2009

April 9, 2009 |

Galleries and Photography

I was hanging out with Mike and Leah and Charlie and Juli and Sienna at Mike and Leah’s house and I decided to shoot some photos of my little niece. She is adorable, right? YOU HAD BETTER SAY YES.

Here are a few nice’ns, including a rare group shot of me and Juli.

Here are the rest – Kicking it with one aspect of my family Gallery – 2/22/2009

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Portola Valley – 2/16/2009

April 9, 2009 |

Galleries and Photography

Here’s some photos I shot while hanging out at my mom’s when I was in California. Nothing serious. There were more from this day, but they sucked BALLS, so I’m not going to share them. I shot a few more days wandering around town, but I haven’t had time to clean those up yet, so look out for one or two more posts of PV shots. I will make a gallery of all three sets when I am done. Fun times!

As much as I love my superduper 5D Mk II, it really has a hard time with skies. I think it is really ugly when the blue channel clips and you get this band of cyan around the horizon just before it goes full white. It’s really hard to fix if you’re even half a stop over and ruined a number of my photos completely. They had some detail left in the high highlights, but because the blue channel was clipped so far beyond the red or green channels, they photos were basically worthless. Ruined.

Maybe I’m being too picky, but I don’t think so. I have no problem with the idiosyncrasies of optics or noise in high ISO shots, but when I know highlight exposure can be and has been done better, I get a little frustrated. I envision one thing when I take the shot, and then another, worse thing is revealed when I try to make it look nice. It’s a characteristic of digital capture, true of audio and images alike, that once you hit the peak value the level clips HARD, resulting in noise and crud that no one likes.

It makes me long for the soft, organic clipping of highlights in a film exposure. One day we’ll have digital exposures where the high end rolls off smoothly like it has for the last hundred years on film, but we’re not there yet. I will post some examples of the bad clipping when I get home, but it almost makes me too mad to think. RAGE!

At least I got a handful of photos I liked from this day. The next two days of shooting were much more successful, so expect a better selection there.

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Isa in New York

March 25, 2009 |

Galleries and Photography

My sister Elizabeth came to visit me for a few days last week here in New York. It was her first time, so we did all the normal touristy stuff you do on your first trip to New York City: we hit Central Park, we went to Times Square, Juli and Isa walked around Soho and Chinatown, we ate at John’s of Bleeker Street, we ate cannolis, we took the Staten Island Ferry, we went to the gigantic candy store on Third Ave, we went to Motor City, we ate Polish food, we hit McCarren Park, we drank coffee, we ate, we hung out. It was a successful trip, overall, with Isa already planning her return trip this summer with her roommates in tow.

Of course, it was an opportunity for me to be out and make some pictures.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Here’s the whole gallery: Isa Visits New York Gallery

I spent a lot of time during the development of this set playing with spot adjustments in Lightroom. I typically don’t like the photos to look TOO processed, but I like a crunchy richness to the final photo. I found there is a fine line between looking processed and looking natural with the paintbrush and graduated filter tools, and while they can definitely help an image maintain its focal point, they can really make things look cheeseball if used inelegantly.

When I sit in a telecine session watching the colorist color film, I’m always in awe of the ease with which he makes adjustments to specific color ranges within a defined area. He throws a window on the image, tells it only to color a certain value of red, feathers that, and makes whatever adjustment he likes. Awesome. The local adjustment tools in Lightroom are a little like that, without all the super powerful masking tools. It’s like telecine light. I would love to have a comparable toolset within Lightroom. I know I can do all that stuff and more in Photoshop, but that means I have to start Photoshop and that can go to hell. Lightroom has certainly matured since its 1.0 version, but it can be even better.

Now I just need a computer that doesn’t choke to death on my raw files.

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