One Lucky Shot

We were out for a walk Thursday afternoon. While waiting to cross the street I decided to take a shot of the Don't Walk sign against the backdrop of the tree. (There's a Complementary Colors themed competition at the Online Professional Visual Artists forum and I thought the red and green might work.)

As I pressed the shutter release I could see the "Don't Walk" part of the sign lit. The mirror flipped up for the shot, blocking my view, and when it flipped back down the "Walk" part was lit.

Curious, I took a look at the recorded image. What you see here is what I saw (with a little rotation and white balance adjustment.) Both parts of the sign were lit. The exposure was just 1/125 second. That was some close timing.

Of course I had to run with this for the competition. I cropped the image down to the sign and post. Since the green part of the sign was faded with age to the point of being basically pink, I recolored that part to a nice green. Will it win, place, or show? Who knows? I have other entries in, as do many very talented artists.

My Photography - Bookstore Conversation

I haven't posted any of my photography lately. I've been considering creating a separate blog dedicated to it, but haven't really had the time so I guess I'll toss in this latest one.

We were on our usual walk around town and stopped into this used book store. It has a lot of character and I love taking pictures there.

I was on a raised area toward the read of the store and was taking a shot of the stairs. Then I noticed the conversation going on among the folks at the front desk and shifted the shot to include them. I think it better captures the atmosphere of the place.

Prints and other items featuring this photo are available for purchase.
Bookstore Conversation Custom Framed Prints and Greeting Cards at imagekind.com
Bookstore Conversation Prints and Greeting Cards at redbubble.com

Ultrasound Results, Heavenly Bodies, and Off We Go A-Cruisin

Okay, I'm sorry this took so long, but we've been a bit busy.

The ultrasound, and accompanying blood tests, came out perfect. We went in with about a 1 in 100 chance of Downs and such, based on our age, and when the results were in we were at about 1 in 2000. We got some good views of the baby, though once again I was unable to be in the room. This is my fave: alien baby. I tell everybody it has my hairline.

Last night I lucked into getting some shots of the moon, Venus, and Jupiter in close proximity in the sky. I had read a few days ago about them being close, but the weather has been unfavorable. Luckily last evening it cleared up for a while and I was able to get a view around dusk. This shot was taken hand-held with a fast exposure to get some lunar surface detail and minimize halos. It came out okay, but I wish I'd had my tripod handy. If you got shots of this phenomenon too, post a comment with a link. Click it for a somewhat larger view.

Tomorrow we are leaving to go on a cruise in the Bahamas. It's a Disney cruise, perpetrated by my Disney-obsessed sister in law, so one of the ports-of-call will be their private island with its manufactured beach, scenery, and entertainments. I believe we'll be stopping at another island as well with real stuff to see. I'm not sure how the weather will be. We were signed up for snorkling and such but a bit of research has revealed an average water temperature in the mid 70s this time of year so we've canceled that. I guess we'll just do a bit of biking and lounging. In any case I'll try to take pictures, and if my phone miraculously works I may post one or two from there. We'll be back Monday.

My Photographs - Hot Rod Cafe

I haven't posted about a photo in a while, so here's one I did recently: Hot Rod Cafe.

We went downtown to get some lunch at a place that we hadn't tried before. On our way in from where we parked we crossed in front of this hot rod car parked across the street from it. I wanted to take some shots out there, but the traffic was a bit heavy and we were hungry so we scooted on across. While we waited for our food I got a few shots, framing the window & car in different ways, which took a few extra tries with the other traffic driving by.

Lunch was good. I had a fried shrimp po-boy. It wasn't made with proper crispy crusted New Orleans style French bread, but it had been so long since I'd had one at all it did just fine. We also tried French fried sweet potatoes for the first time. Good? Let's just say we've been back a couple times since.

After downloading the images I went over them and picked this one out as the best. I tweaked it a bit to bring out the darker areas, and applied a sepia tone to all but the car to make it pop out a bit and emphasize the age of the cafe. I think it came out pretty good, though since doing it I have learned a different method for masking the sepia which would be easier to edit later if I found any flaws.

Prints and other items featuring this photo are available for purchase.
Hot Rod Cafe Custom Framed Prints and Greeting Cards at imagekind.com
Hot Rod Cafe Posters and Greeting Cards at zazzle.com

My Photographs - Bistro Blues

We were eating at a local Italian bistro the other day, and a man was sitting outside playing an electric guitar. I took a few shots, but felt the cars parked on the near side of the street detracted from the scene. A couple shots had stray pedestrians looking in right at the camera. Later after we ate the nearby cars had driven off and I got up and moved over a bit to get this shot. It was the last shot I could get for the day as my memory card was full. Fortunately it was pretty much the shot I was hoping for.

It's a bit modified, obviously. I cropped the top down a bit to deemphasize the cars across the street, edited out the soft drink logo on the cup, adjusted the contrast a bit, and colored it a low-saturation blue. Came out nice, I think. I tipped him on the way out.

Prints and other items featuring this photo are available for purchase.
Bistro Blues Custom Framed Prints and Greeting Cards at imagekind.com
Bistro Blues Prints and Greeting Cards at redbubble.com

My Most-Modified Photo Thus Far - Veteran Vespa

This one took me a couple days, though mostly it was figuring out how to get the effect I wanted. (I'd call it photoshopping, but I did it with Paint Shop Pro 7.) The color insert is a full-resolution section of the original photo. (Click to see it full size.) I wanted to blur the background to emphasize the scooter, so I first made a mask by tracing a freehand selection around it. (I saved the mask to a separate grayscale image in case I needed it again, which turned out to be a very good move.)

Then I duplicated the image in a new layer, did a Gaussian blur, and applied the mask to it so the bike would be clear. It came out okay, but looked too artificial with the pavement blurred right under the in-focus wheel. I reworked the mask image, adding a couple gradients to bring the pavement partly back in focus as it approached the distance of the front wheel. That looked much better. I made a b/w version with a grain (I love grainy b/w images,) but then I noticed a flaw. The blur had pulled color from the scooter into the nearby surrounding background. You can see it in the middle inset.

I scrapped that and started over. This time I edited the duplicate layer before applying the blur, copying and pasting parts of the background over the scooter, erasing it and reconstructing the curb, barrel, etc. I applied the blur and mask, and was very disappointed to see the pasted blocks so plainly visible. Dang it.

I backed out of the mask and blur and made another layer copying the original, on top of the others. I applied the mask, sans gradients, to it, and tweaked it to get rid of the last little bits of scooter peeking out. I merged it with the erased scooter layer. Now I had an erased bike layer with the background intact pretty much right up to the edge of it. I did the blur, applied the mask with the gradients, made the b/w version, and there it is. The top insert is a detail of that version. Much better, I think.

By the way, if you know the model of this Vespa, please leave a comment identifying it. Thanks!

Prints and other items featuring this photo are available for purchase.
Veteran Vespa Custom Framed Prints and Greeting Cards at imagekind.com
Veteran Scooter Prints and Greeting Cards at redbubble.com

My Photographs - We Have The Negatives

I've been fiddling a bit with macro (physically close up) photography. I took this one of some old negatives this weekend. I'm calling it "We Have The Negatives" with the idea of evoking images of blackmail letters and spy photos of illicit acts. (The negatives are actually from our niece's 3rd birthday party.)

The strips were laid on a pad of white drawing paper, and lit by a closely positioned desk lamp with a helical compact fluorescent bulb. I white-balanced the camera with the back of a paper plate before the shoot.

Prints and other items featuring this photo are available for purchase.
We Have The Negatives (color & b/w) Custom Framed Prints and Greeting Cards at imagekind.com
We Have The Negatives (color & b/w) Prints and Greeting Cards at redbubble.com
We Have The Negatives Giftware and Stationery at cafepress.com

First Sign Of Spring

I was taking a few pictures in the yard today and spotted this beginning to grow alongside our driveway. I don't care what that groundhog says about his shadow, I say the first signs of spring are already upon us.

Some Of My Photos - IV - City In Motion

This is another shot from our trip to New York. The camera shook - we were on top of a tour bus - but I like how it came out. I think it gives it a real sense of motion, which fits New York well. Pretty cool, really.

This was taken in Manhattan on the city lights tour before we crossed over to Brooklyn where I took the skyline and Brooklyn Bridge pictures.

Prints of this photo are available for purchase.
City In Motion Custom Framed Prints and Greeting Cards at imagekind.com

Some Of My Photos - III - Brooklyn Bridge on A Cloudy Night

The Brooklyn Bridge under a cloudy city-lit December sky. I took this at the same time I took the previous picture of the New York skyline. I like it pretty well, except for the way the tower of the bridge lines up with that building.
In this full resolution close-up, the tower is more distinct from the building, and you can see that what looks in the other view like part of the lit-up sign on the building is actually an American flag flying on top of the bridge tower.

Prints and other items featuring this photo are available for purchase.
Brooklyn Bridge on A Cloudy Night Custom Framed Prints and Greeting Cards at imagekind.com
Brooklyn Bridge on A Cloudy Night Prints and Greeting Cards at redbubble.com
New York Night Giftware at cafepress.com
New York Night Giftware at zazzle.com

Some Of My Photos - II - New York Skyline on a Cloudy Night

The New York City skyline lights up the clouds on a cloudy December night. I took this on last year's trip to New York and Pennsylvania. We were on a city lights tour on one of those open-topped tour buses, and had stopped at a pier across the East River in Brooklyn. Shortly after this picture was taken it started raining, and on the way back over the bridge we rode through the worst of a thunderstorm. I had an all-weather coat which protected me and the camera well enough. My wife had a plastic poncho the tour guide gave out. It was a bit tattered by then end of the drive, and a fold had channeled a good bit of water onto our bag. Nothing was damaged, though.

Prints and other items featuring this photo are available for purchase.
New York Skyline on A Cloudy Night Custom Framed Prints and Cards at imagekind.com
New York Skyline on A Cloudy Night Prints and Cards at redbubble.com
New York Night T-shirts and Gifts at cafepress.com
New York Night T-shirts and Gifts at zazzle.com

Some Of My Photos - I - San Gervasio on Cozumel

One of the Mayan ruins at San Gervasio on the island of Cozumel off the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. San Gervasio was dedicated to the Mayan goddess Ixchel, goddess of midwifery, fertility, medicine and weaving. We visited on our honeymoon, which was of course when I took this picture. We didn't have a guide or anything, and my wife wasn't quite as interested in Precolumbian civilizations, or walking, as I was, so we mostly poked around the ruins nearest the parking area. I'd like to go back again some day, and I think my wife would be more up for exploring these days too.

Prints and other items featuring this photo are available for purchase.
San Gervasio Custom Framed Prints and Cards at imagekind.com
San Gervasio Posters and Gifts at cafepress.com

Another Outlet For My Genius

Okay, maybe that's overstating things a bit, but we all do have our moments of genius and near-genius, don't we? Well, I'm hoping one or two of mine will occur through the lens of a camera because I've signed onto another print-on-demand site. This time it's Imagekind.com, which is focused on high-quality art and photo prints with a large assortment of frame and mat choices. If you have image files big enough, you can get prints up to 60"x45". The size selections for each image are automatically limited by the resolution of the image.

It's pretty easy. You sign up, pick an account type (they range from free with a 1-gallery/200M/24 image limit, to $11.99/month or $94.99/year unlimited Platinum plan,) create & name your gallery(s), and upload photos to them or import from Flickr. After that you can set names & descriptions and tags (if you want your images to be found in the on-site search,) and set your markup if you want more or less than the default 10%. And of course you should set up your profile and payment information so you can get the checks they should eventually be sending out.

It's fun! You can find my stuff, currently a dozen photos, here.

Street Pizza

Well, my wife and I are still sick. Fortunately, that has nothing to do with this blog entry. This morning as we arrived at the shop we discovered a street pizza - or, more accurately, a parking lot pizza - right by our spot. That's the actual pizza, in situ, above. Note the tire tracks.

It got down into the mid 20s last night, so I guess the pizza got cold a little too fast for the taste of whatever kids were eating it.

Prints and other items featuring this photo are available for purchase.
Street Pizza Framed Prints and Cards at imagekind.com
Street Pizza Prints and Cards at redbubble.com
Street Pizza T-shirts and Gifts at cafepress.com
Street Pizza T-shirts and Gifts at printfection.com

Picture Day!

My wife and I attended a portrait party her sister hosted today. She had a professional photographer there taking pictures of us together, and with her family in various combinations. There were some of their friends there too. (I think my sister in law got a discount on her prints based on how many other sets were ordered.)

We usually don't go in for that kind of thing, so we weren't really looking forward to it. We really just did it for the family. Once we got into it, though, it was a lot of fun. We got a few poses and a lot of "candid" messing around shots. The shots with us and the kids were particularly fun. I ad-libbed some good poses & action there. Our younger nephew is a bit too well-trained by his mother to put on a smile for cameras, though, so I had to resort to tickling him a bit to get a real one out of him. (Parents - don't tell your kids to smile for pictures. Do something that will make them smile naturally or just take the picture of them doing whatever they're doing while paying no mind to the camera. Your pics will come out *so* much better!)

The proofs are supposed to be ready in a couple weeks. (I believe the photographer does a little editing & retouching work before showing the proofs.) *Maybe* I'll post one or two here. If they're really good, though, we may want to use one of them on an "about us" page on our retail site. In that case I'll likely not post them here, in order to better separate my professional and secret identities. I like to have this conduit to be candid with my views & opinions without risking offending any potential customers. (No, the nature of our business does not conflict with any of my views - I just like to keep it professional & neutral.)