A rainy day in NYC (photo gallery) October 28, 2008
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , 4 commentsAfter visiting the PhotoPlus expo the three of us headed back in the direction of Penn Station with the intention of finding food along the way before taking the subway in the general direction of Ground Zero.
We wound up at the Tick Tock diner for lunch which turned out to be a pretty amusing time. One of the waitresses decided to chat us up about our cameras and she played with a couple of ours (not mine, it was the smallest and least exciting looking of the bunch, I traveled light for this trip).
We left the diner and helped a lost tourist trying to find an open photo store (Adorama and B&H are both closed on Saturdays) when we were on our way from lunch to the subway. We debated briefly over which subway to take but apparently I chose correctly because we wound up right where we wanted to be. (more…)
2008 PDN PhotoPlus Expo
Posted by tcbp in : General, Photography , 1 comment so farThe trip this past weekend was over in a flash, but it was a fun time. I’ll go over our visit to the PDN PhotoPlus expo in this post and the rest of the trip in another.
Walking the abandoned Rochester subway (photo gallery) August 24, 2008
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , 1 comment so far
Yesterday I finally walked the length of the abandoned subway in Rochester from the west end all the way to the exit under Dinosaur BBQ. It was a pretty warm day but other than the dusty and sometimes smelly air, the subway was cooler and more comfortable than walking along above the streets.
From the west entrance to the east entrance the subway is over a mile long, and runs under Broad Street for a good deal of the distance but also passes under the Gannett building and the Library. Much of the subway is completely pitch black and the only light is from what we brought with us. By the time we reached the Broad Street bridge we had been in the subway for a little over an hour and were surprised to come upon a pretty big group of people. They were a group of martial artists and they were filming scenes for some martial arts movie.
Check after the jump to read more about the trip and see the photos (more…)
2008 Rochester International Air Show (photo gallery) July 30, 2008
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , 3 comments
The weather was generally pretty crummy with hazy skies making for a pretty dull background, some of the shots still came out looking pretty good.
Unfortunately, after reviewing the shots from the air show on Sunday and the gas engine festival on Saturday I have discovered that the shutter in my 1D Mark II is fritzing out when firing at shutter speeds around 1/1600 of a second and faster. I got a narrow light streak in some shots at one edge of the frame. Apparently this is a somewhat well known behavior of some MK IIs and rumor has it Canon sometimes replaces them for free, especially if the number of actuations is low like on mine. We’ll see though, otherwise I’m looking at a supposedly $300(ish) repair bill.
Check out more pics after the jump. (more…)
Pioneer gas engine festival July 29, 2008
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , add a commentOn Saturday, July 26th I went to the Pioneer gas engine festival in Marion, NY with family and friends. It was a very different festival from anything I had been before, but the tractor pulls were interesting to watch for a bit and the people were pretty interesting. I also got pretty sunburned while I was there!
I haven’t got much else to say about this one, so check out the gallery below:
Walking downtown July 16, 2008
Posted by tcbp in : Color Vision, Photography , add a commentYesterday Joe and I decided to wander downtown Rochester some. Our starting point was the soon to be demolished Midtown Plaza. This fabulously retro and dilapidated place was the first downtown mall in the country, and we both felt we had to take a visit there to see what it was all about. I have to admit while it was interesting to see, for the most part the overall space did nothing for me, photographically speaking. I focused on some details though and got a few shots. On top of that, getting the right color balance for that lighting was really tricky. Since I can’t tell when it looks right I just took a stab at trying to get a white balance reading off something hopefully neutral and lit by the right color of light.
After that we left, were blinded by the sunlight and headed a bit north, past the Liberty pole and to this empty shell of a church. All that is left standing of this church is the steeple and the side walls, which are all stone. Interesting, but I couldn’t really get anything out of it that interested me.
Finally we wandered back south to the abandoned Manhattan Square Park and eventually reached the Strong Museum where the big colorful walls are.
You can see the rest of that expedition in the gallery below. I will be going through more of the photos tonight and may pick a few more to put up, which will probably go in a new post.
Highland Park, June 30 July 4, 2008
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , add a commentI have been wanting to check out this park between here and downtown Rochester. It’s one of those parks everyone in Rochester knows about and goes to, but there are some parts I’ve never actually explored before. In particular I was curious about the Vietnam Veterans memorial.
After leaving campus a little early I drove down there with camera in tow and planned to check it out and see what was worth seeing. It’s pretty obvious from a couple of the pictures that I got rained on a bit while I was there, and the lighting was very flat due to the cloudy/overcast skies. I think it’s a place worth returning to, especially the Vietnam memorial because I think with some nice midafternoon harsh sunlight it would allow for some interesting play with shadows. I’m sure I’ll put a little more effort in and retake one or two shots I took while I was there this time, but at least I know what’s there now!
The right lens makes all the difference June 15, 2008
Posted by tcbp in : Photography , 1 comment so farI’ve never used a zoom that covered the middle range of focal lengths very much. I have a 17-40 and the common 70-200 in my collection, but in between the two ranges the only lens I use is my trusty 50 1.4. I once felt I had no need for some boring mid-range zoom to cover the gap between those two lenses with some overlap, that it’s a pointless range to spend my money on for what I tend to shoot. Over time I realized that for what I shoot, that’s the perfect range for a good zoom that is versatile as a walk-around lens that would require no tripod. Since most of my shooting is spent tripod-bound, for a long time I refused to recognize the opportunities the right lens would open up when I don’t feel like carrying a tripod and multiple lenses. I suppose I had become a bit of a tripod snob; but the more I shot handheld with lenses that are really tricky to use in lower light, the more I started to turn around on that opinion.
105mm with IS on, f/8, ISO 800, 1/8 second handheld
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.