More light & color May 25, 2008
Posted by tcbp in : Color Vision, Photography , add a commentOften, when it’s late in the day and I’m tired or haven’t had the opportunity to think of anything good before-hand, I wind up wandering around with my camera trying to find something for the photo-a-day project. I often carry a flash and an off camera cord for it just in case it might be useful (and it often is). Several days ago I was doing just this, and found that with some bounce flash I could get some really interesting shapes and colors out of some glass mixing bowls.
For lack of a better name these have been unofficially dubbed Fiery Rings 1 and 2. I also did some variations in processing where I changed the color temperatures to make them turn blue, but I liked what looked (to me) like it had the color of fire. My trouble with color came up here again because I wanted them to have nice reds and oranges, and based on the RGB value I think I got to that point for the most part. Hopefully they still look that way to “color normal” observers. I am trying to balance the amount of color and saturation here; I don’t want it to go too far, but I certainly don’t want to desaturate it.
Pushing the white balance around is always interesting for these abstract things because I don’t really find there’s a right or wrong, and it eliminates the need to mess with colored gels on the flash when I’m shooting. If I want some color that’s not blue, red, yellow or somewhere along those lines though colored gels do tend to work better.
I fully intend to go back to these and not only try different colors, but try to get multiple colors to exist within one frame. That may be trickier, they may all just end up blending in to one color but I’m hoping it will work out.
New projects with color and light May 24, 2008
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , add a commentAs this daily photo project continues I have to keep trying to find new things to do to keep me interested. Some days, as always, are better than others but this past week I found a few things that have given me some new ideas which I intend to explore further.
Whenever I get something new I like to scrutinize it and think about what it might be if captured with unusual lighting angles and colors. Once again I returned to my fail-safe hot/cold color scheme where even I can see the difference and started playing with the composition and illumination angles. Overall the look of this vaguely reminds me of a sound board after a long night.
In addition to manipulating the lighting angles and composition changing focus is something I don’t think I try enough but it can make for some interesting variations. This time I focused towards the center of this object and I thought the result was somewhat interesting. I liked how the different red dots change in size as the eye moves from side to side.
Hopefully this is coherent, I will re-read it later once I’ve had a bit of time to wake up. I’ll be working on another post for a different set of photos for later today or tomorrow.
DGO bag inserts May 22, 2008
Posted by tcbp in : News & Rumors , add a commentDan has been working on his bags and now has some new information and a couple of new photos of the progress.
In addition to making bags with padded inserts, the inserts themselves will be available on their own so you can use them in your existing bags or make changes to your bag’s layout over time. At the moment he says “inserts range from $14-30, bags start at $40″ and you should be able to get a camera bag (that’s bag plus inserts) for under $100. Because of the nature of the inserts various configurations will be available when ordering bags. Custom inserts will be available too based on your needs; they can be designed to fit your equipment and the bag you will be using them in.
A website for the DGO bags is in the works, and I think we should expect to see something maybe as soon as next week.
If you don’t need the inserts for holding your equipment, you can always use the grid pattern as graph paper or to test lens distortion.
Things from all over May 17, 2008
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , add a commentSince I haven’t had time to post recently I’m just going to update on some recent events:
First, the Imagine RIT festival from May 3. I took a few shots but mostly wandered around. One of my favorites (just because of how weird it was) was of this guy all dressed up riding on his “Chariot.”
It seems the event went well overall, there was a fair amount of activity and they’re already talking about next years!
The other recent bit are the two following photos from what Joe calls the “barrel store” which I suspect was at one time a distributor for 55 gallon drums and other barrel. They seem to be out of business now. There were some interesting colors on them and they made for some neat shapes and shadows.
