Location Lighting week three through six

So the last three weeks or so I have been completely swamped with school and work. It has been a great learning curve but I have been pretty exhausted come Friday. Since I haven't been able to update the blog as frequently as I wanted to I think I will do a couple of posts over the next week or so to give a total update of what I have been doing.


So my recent location shoot have used a Profoto 600B or Canon 580exII units for lighting. Pretty much every shoot from this point forward is going to use a 600B unless portability is going to be an issue, like in the shoot I did with Brianna. In that case I might have a couple of 580ex's but we were pretty much in the ocean shooting the images of her.

Other than that there isn't much to say about most of these images really. I been working on paying more attention to color and manipulating it to suit my needs through various different methods. Depending on how much I can figure out how to fine tune my current method I might end up doing some tutorials on it. Possibly a video tutorial so I can put my Yeti microphone to good use instead of just using it for bad league of legends videos.

Anyways the last two images are possibly going to be the last real shoots of my trusty ol' 50D. The first two images are from my new 6D. It is an amazing piece of equipment.

Summer Classes and Fall Ideas

So since my summer semester is finally over and I have had time do a bit more than just working, moving to a new place and practicing on league of legends. So over the summer I did a class about photographing people. Most of the assignments were about street photography and setting up the scene for the shot you are looking for so there is a lot of waiting involved. The bulk of what I was looking for came for when I was taking a long rest and just people watching.

Visulization Final Project

 So my final project in my Visualization class is going to be more graphic versions of my Vortographs. Utilizing the similar ideas of what I have done in the past but instead of making these more of an explosion of imagery I want them to be a bit more graphic. I feel like some of these have accomplished that. This body of work does need more work to it but I feel like it is on the right track to being completed.

Off The Grid - Food Truck Central

So last Thursday Brianna, Mahkayla and I went to Off The Grid for the first time after getting my new 85mm 1.8 lens, which my next post will be about. Anyways this was beyond amazing, I had Fuji apples and Huey had a day of fun before he got his balls removed. I had a sandwhich with rice as the bread. It was amazing, my current level of intoxication won't allow me to go into much other detail beyond sounding like a kid with downs since I am sleepy as well and my judgement might be impaired but it was DAMN GOOD. I really want to go again this Thursday to try out the curry truck, get a steamed bun and then have some southern comfort food.
Long Live The Food Trucks!

Oh yeah and the images are from the sx230, I should have tested the toy camera mode for it. Or at least shot these in black and white but these are conversions with the black and white filter and the hue and saturation layer for the different tones.

"iThai" Taking the Lumix GF2 for a spin

 So a couple nights ago I went out to iThai with Mahkayla and Brianna. The food was great,  I never had such wonderful curry before. Anyway this is to test out the higher iso range on my Lumix GF2. The video mode was impressive to say the least but the biggest issue I had was at iso 1600+ there was a bunch of digital noise. I shouldn't expect a camera of this quality to be the best at night but I did have a hope of it being better than the canon 50d. The 50d does have a better higher iso range for digital noise. The worst thing about the lumix is the kit lens! Which isn't all that bad actually. I am hoping to get the wide angle pancake lens for it.

Now the video quality on this beast is amazing. I don't have a lot of experience with DSLR, or compact system camera video but it is amazing from what I have been used to in the past.

The Brainwash Comedy Club

So Mahkayla and I headed off to The Brainwash this Friday night to watch some of the best local San Francisco comics out there. As much fun as I had this was my first time actually going to see live comedy and it was a blast. Of course there were some comics I wasn't too fond of because I either didn't share a similar experience with, or I never done drugs so when a whole act about drugs and drug experiences I don't find to be as funny but the event as a whole was very entertaining. I hope I can go every Thursday to the open mic nights and enjoy the area more as a whole.

I did shoot these images on the sx230, I was in the back of the club so the 14x optical zoom is one of my favorite features on this pocket sized powerhouse.

I am really tired right now and I am not sure where I am going with this blog post anymore but Mahkayla found a pretty awesome dog flyer that I am posting as well. I wish I could remember these comics names but I do have some of the acts on some short video.

Meanwhile down my street

 So apparently today there was a new years festival for the little Saigon district of San Francisco which is down the street from where I live. Mahkayla and I decided to visit it before I headed off to work and it was interesting to say the least. The first image I took was from my window. I am still impressed on the zoom on my sx230.  Beyond the mass amounts of people and delicious food.

So the entire street behind my house and the street Larkin which was near by house were closed off because of this event! It was huge, and the stage for the band was so loud it actually woke me up. I have no idea where this post is going anymore. I have lost track of what I was going to talk about and now I am going to eat some curry.

So soon the infrared tutorial-esk thing will be posted soon, hopefully before next week along with my continuation of the lensbaby project.

New Years with the Sx230

   So I decided to take my Canon Sx230 out for some low light testing with the annual fireworks display at the ferry building in San Francisco. Looking forward for the start of the new year here I figured it would be a good way to test my new camera and hang out with some of my friends. Now I knew the ferry building's fireworks were an annual thing, but I didn't realized how many people it pulled. It was like my first massive with out decent music and ravers. Over all it was a huge mess though, like any large public event.  The camera performed wonderfully in the low light circumstances considering it is just a point and shoot model. I try not to use the preset modes since I had manual but with the smaller body and having things like white balance and iso hidden from me in the menus I often forget about what iso and what white balance my camera settings are on. Often since I shoot indoors I will have it on tungsten and then when I go outside I won't notice the blue hue until later because of my slight color blindness.

Anyway this last year or so is the first year anniversary of my blog. I have been recording things I have been taking photos of for almost a year ( January 13th will be a full year). For the people who have actually read all of my stream of thought nonsense and look forward for my nonsensical ramblings about photography give yourself a pat on the back because I really have no idea what else I will put on this beyond cataloging my own growth. Which I think was the main idea anyway. I think 55 blog posts though out of the year was a pretty good indicator of what I was doing with everything. Forcing myself to sit down and thinking about what I have done has helped me as a photographer and to help keep me grounded. I know what I must accomplish and if I say something I better damn well do it!

 For other blog news, yes, I know, I haven't done the infrared tutorial and I haven't done any of the other photoshop tutorials I stated I would do. I have been working on a cool higher contrast black and white tutorial beyond the infrared, the issue is I can't figure out how to transcribe it on my blog with out sounding like a pretentious ass or mimicking someone else's tutorial style. So the two tutorials might take a while to get on but yes, I am working on them. Also there is a high chance that the next blog post will be about the toy camera function on the sx230 because I like toy cameras. I might do some comparisons to some of my older holga scans, but I am not sure how it will all work out yet. I would keep my eyes peeled, if I were you. There will be some great updates this year.

My Canon sx230

 Over the holiday season I acquired a canon powershot sx230, this nifty little camera has my favorite manual features like my 50D which is why instead of a horrible look of dismay I actually enjoy the small camera. For the people who don't know about it it has a 14x optical zoom from the 28mm lens. It also goes to ISO 3200 with an optical image stabilizer. It also has 1080p video all in one compact little body. This thing is great for taking out on the streets with out lugging my huge 50d around and the quality is stellar. The two images I brought along with this entry are taken from that camera.  Honestly I am impressed, the only thing I wish it did that it doesn't is high speed synch with it's flash but that shouldn't be expected out side of an external flash unit!

The camera also has a toy camera feature and a couple of other neat things on it that I will also make posts about examining them a bit further. The only huge downside is if I want to grab that underwater case that canon makes for it. Since that case is priced around 300 USD it might be quite some time before I take a camera underwater with me.  I might grab the case in the summer though if  the money and weather let me swim in the ocean.

Academy of Sciences

Well I went to the Academy of Sciences for the first time in Golden Gate Park and overall it was an enchanting experience. From the normal sciency stuff that I got to see and learn from the center I really enjoyed the aquarium. I am not sure why but they are always my favorite parts of zoo's and anything that has one really. There are a lot more images that might be posted in the near future but this was my little adventure on Christmas Eve. I have a couple of other things I need to post on the blog soon.

I have a couple of editing tutorials I need to finish. One that is very close to an Ansel Adams like contrast. The other is still the infrared tutorial, I did lose some of the images for my conversions but I might make some more of them. Anyways, Have a happy holiday season!

Getting Vortographic Part IV

    So I went to Haight to do the next part of my Vorographs and this is what has become of it. I have been getting a lot better with my current optic that I made to make these vortographs. I feel like I am getting more graphic in my design of these. In my first post, I just started to explore my options and range with the optic and I slowly began to understand the entire breadth of what the optic I made could do.

I have gotten a lot of comments about the optic while shooting, most people saying that is a freaky lens. Some wondering what it is doing, others just doing weird stares. I don't blame them for wondering but for something that cost me 2 dollars and a can of Pringles it is possibly the cheapest and most fun I have had with an optic I have ever bought for my camera.

Soon I will be making some more, with higher quality builds and showing them off but for now my prototype is doing a swell job. I am proud of it.

Strolling Through the City

So recently I went on a stroll with Mahkayla, Brianna and her new pup Huey. I did these while working on my other series of vortographs which is still in progress of being completed. Progress of being completed of course go along with my final grade, and not with my whole process of making vortographs. I do want to try out making a new style of optic for the vorotgraphs in the near future, but right now I need to stick with the formula I have now and carry on like a boss. Hopefully I will be able to have some pretty stellar finished optics by the time I am done with this vortograph series.

Since I am going to continue making the vortographs I figured I might as well draw up plans and get a finished final blueprint for them. I have a couple of ideas on how to draw them up since I took some engineering classes back in highschool but most of my plans look like a scribbles of a mad man. It is kind of entertaining to make them out. I don't want to post them online unfortunately but if everything goes well there is a possibility something might pop up for the first tool I used in the future.

Not that I am trying to hide how I make my images from my readers, I just would like to keep my test items a bit secluded. If everyone knows how to make them, then they won't be as magical and surreal. Sure the images look like they could be double, triple, or quad exposures but that is part of the fun.

ETD BlackOUT

 So last night was the first time I went to a San Francisco rave/club event and the lucky event was ETD Blackout. All of my images are posted on Plurlife. I did want to show three of some of my favorite images from the night and I did get to talk to a lot of neat people. I met Ross.fm who is had a killer set and Mars again. The last time I talked to him was at Mary X-Mas in July back in Phoenix.  Overall it was a pretty awesome night.

I did walk to the venue which was pretty awesome. It was about a mile walk in the rain to get to the venue and when leaving I was in the Muni underground. The Muni underground always is really creepy at night with the lack of people and all the windy tunnels. It always reminds me of monster movies or some kind of zombie attack.

Anyway ETD Blackout was a raging good time.

Vortographs the Third

     Well I sort of lied to you guys, my faithful readers. This entry will also be about my exploration in Vortographs. I am beginning to really love shooting like this and all of the editing you will see on the blog has been done in camera raw so nothing crazy. The infrared tutorial will happen this month. Probably this weekend but the next few entries will be on Vorotgraphs.


     Now some of you might wonder who invented the Vortograph? Well that is Alvin Langdon Coburn he did the series for about a year and some tried to replicate his style and his equipment used to make the images. Now I have an item I used that has a similar effect, but it isn't the same. It isn't suppose to be the same though, it is suppose to give me the abstracted qualities, but that is it. It does just that, and I am thankful when I took the leap into doing this project everything has been running smoothly with it.

   That being said I have tons of these images now. Between school and work I don't have a lot of time to study it a lot then work on it in bursts like I used to study things so now my study on Vortographs will hopefully extend into years. I would love to surpass Alvin Coburn in understanding how they work and in getting new and more exciting images from my riggings.

   All the images from my second post about Vortographs onwards are stuff I am working into a photoset and hopefully will be on another website that will be linked to after it is finished. It is going to be about abstracted details of San Francisco. The title is still in progress but it is going to focus on shape and color more than anything else. The Vortographs can alter the shapes and the reality around us. In a way it feels very cubist as a form of photography.



 

Vortographs Continued

The first attempted at seeing if the vortograph optic I made work is here. Now that I have a working optic I took it out on a walk from the Ferry building in San Francisco to my apartment a little over a mile or so away. So these images are for my final in PH100 none of these are finalized yet for the final product but they might be used in the project. These vortographs are a lot better than the first couple I did out front of my apartment window.

Now that should have been a given that the images would be better considering more effort had been put into making them but the first images were proof of concept that the optic worked!

So these are apart of a larger project called Details of the City. There will be a lot more images eventually because this is just the start of the entire project. This project will look at some of the details in a lot of the buildings and possibly streets of San Francisco. It all depends on how it plays out but there will be more things to come dealing with the project and some other projects.

Coming up will be some editing tutorials. Hopefully the next entry will be the Infrared tutorial.

Vortographs

Taking a quick break from building an infrared photoshop tutorial I realized that I needed to start getting my midterms done. So I breezed though my school work and then I remembered my assignment for PH100, I had to brainstorm and shoot some of my final. Well how can I make this interesting? I went through my simple idea list thinking this might be fun and then I realized I didn't want anything that could be easy, or simple, or semi fun to do.

My first idea was to go on and do light painting at tourist spots of San Francisco. The idea would have been great fun but I wanted to build a L.E.D. light stick and other strange things with RGB L.E.D. lights so that wasn't going to work out in my favor for my budget. Then I remembered about vortographs.

The images I shot have only been changed in tone, no other editing has been done to them. So these are a couple vortographs from outside my apartment window.