Irondequoit Bay again September 24, 2007
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , add a commentLike I mentioned yesterday, Joe and I went up to Irondequoit Bay and this time shot from the south end facing roughly north. We went back and forth for a bit before splitting up and shooting behind this boat dock/launch storage place. I’m not quite sure what it was, but when we were in the middle of shooting a couple pulled in to put their boat away and I was sure (based on past experiences) that we were going to get yelled at and shooed away. They ignored us and we ignored them, and nobody cared.
This first photo is one I shot on my own before Joe decided to join up with me and start shooting from the location I was at. There was a lot I liked about it, but I felt the light on the floaty thing (I really have no idea) in the immediate foreground could have been better. Of course, that was completely my fault since all the light came from my big flashlight. Oops.
After shooting that I shot a few other things and never really fell in love with what I got after checking them out in post, but I may look through a few of them again later. Eventually I went back and set up where I had been before and since Joe and I wanted to get creative with lights, we did some playing with extra light on top of the tall grass to the left.
Updates and delays
Posted by tcbp in : General , add a commentI can’t believe it’s been three weeks since I’ve posted anything. Having school start back up has really distracted me. I have only gone shooting twice between the last post and now. The first time, around the 13th of the month, nothing worthwhile came of the attempt. Yesterday though I got a few things worth keeping from Irondequoit Bay. The sky was a little plain but we made do… I’ll write more and post them tomorrow, for now I must sleep so I can work on lab reports.
A shot in the dark September 2, 2007
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , add a commentLater in the evening after the subway adventure we drove south a ways and decided to take some shots of the car and I insisted on trying to get some star traces. Since Joe and I had both picked up some 2 million candlepower spot lights we decided to do some painting with light too.
The ultimate result was a 20 minute exposure with three different applications of spotlight overkill with my colored gels I dug out of the closet. Two drained cameras, and two drained spotlights later I wound up with this:
Definitely not my favorite or most successful in my opinion but it was fun and definitely will help us set up correctly the next time. We kept having problems like airplanes, Joe flashing a camera or some other odd thing happening which is why after quite a few tries we had to quit due to dead batteries. Temperatures in the 50s weren’t helping the batteries much either, although perhaps they kept the noise levels of our cameras down a bit.
Subway revisit
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , add a commentJoe and I made another trip to the Rochester subway today. Unlike the last time we went there, nobody else was in the subway and there was also quite a bit more light since we went midday this time. Although the subway is interesting at night, I have to say that going during the day works out much better overall in terms of lighting.
One of the first things we shot was a part of the subway I had never noticed before. Under the entrance by Dinosaur BBQ there is a building rotting away that looks to have been home to quite a few people over the years. Neither of us felt particularly brave enough to venture within but maybe another time since that looks like it should make for some interesting shots.
I also took some other shots through the building an in a rare fit of playfulness made an HDR composite using Photomatix from five frames that I took (more or less for that purpose if I felt like trying it).
We continued in to the subway and continued to shoot. The “lake” under the library was rather full this time. The last time (and first time) I went to the subway it had been drained prior and wasn’t very interesting.
Finally we crossed over to the bridge section, under the Broad St. bridge. The lighting here is usually neat but hard to capture so I decided to try it HDR style again. I think I like this one pretty well, it has an eery mood and the variations in color balance from the lighting work well with it. The detail in the underside of the roadway above was something I wanted to capture, and I think it came across well in this photo.
Joe and I walked in to the dark section at the end of the bridge (visible in the above photo). It is dustier, smellier and from what I’ve heard, pitch black for a couple miles. We just looked around a bit and decided it might be worth checking out another time.
As far as the HDR images go, I think I like how they came out. I am definitely going to selectively choose to continue to shoot some scenes with HDR in mind. I bracket often anyway so that makes doing HDRs a natural continuation of that process.