Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

Thursday and the Comet

Saturday, January 13th, 2007

I’m still shooting Roll2006.12 (400 film, Kodak HD4 “High Definition”). On Thursday night, i had my first chance to shoot Comet McNaught. On one of the hills that used to be the Mountain View dump, over-looking Google World Headquarters, i watched the sky dim. It’s not even the highest vantage point, but the view is quite pleasant. The Belt of Venus became more and more inclined against the horizon as Earth shadowed more of the atmosphere. A little before 5:28, the planet Venus became visible. Christine arrived, just as i’d found the planet, and she scanned the area over the Santa Cruz mountains with binoculars as i scanned with the telephoto and bare eyes. She found the comet first, only barely visible without magnification. It was lovely in the telephoto lens, but i fear wind gusts and my own cold hands will have blurred the shots, even with timer & tripod to help.

37° 25′ 33″ , 122°04′ 28″

I’ll finish up this roll sooner or later…..

Some photo development notes

Sunday, November 26th, 2006

Roll2006.06, Kodak TMAX 100 (TMX 135-36) , shots of Yosemite and James Fitzgerald Marine Reserve tide pools, developed in the last few weeks by Wolf and digitized. $10.78

Roll2006.07, very old Kodak Select Royal Gold 200, 24 exp, shots of James Fitzgerald Marine Reserve tide pools, developed and printed in NC at Wolf, digitized by Wolf locally (same CD as rolls 8 & 9)

Roll2006.08 and Roll2006.09, new 400 speed film, shots of Bath County, Virgina, 2006-10-28, developed and printed in NC at Wolf, digitized by Wolf locally (same CD as roll 7)

Roll2006.09, new 400 speed film, shots of Big Basin, developed and digitized by Wolf this weekend. $11.68

Roll2006.10, new 400 speed film — same film purchase as 8-10 — Big Basin and still in camera. I need to make sure to get the film make noted before developing this roll!

Fun Ideas for Photography Site

Friday, May 19th, 2006

http://www.photojojo.com/content/

I like the ideas of using CD cases as photo frames — and what seems like it might be a cool idea is using CD cases to make a mural.

That site links to two which offer the service of turning a photo into a sketch:
http://sketch-it.blogspot.com/
http://www.mydavinci.com/j/home.jsp

Oddly, there’s also a link to this tutorial which shows “pop art” portraits in a style that is also offered by the My da Vinci bunch.

Found Composition II

Monday, February 20th, 2006

Found Composition II

Originally uploaded by Elaine with Grey Cats.

Christine had remarked on how interesting was the haphazard arrangement on the easel. I photographed the arrangement, full and this detail. I must say i like this detail best.

Moonday, Monday

Tuesday, February 7th, 2006

Photography

Christine took Roll2006.02 to Wolf for developing & had a CD made. This seems a happy solution to scanning issues. The photos i took of the crescent moon were quite blurry and could stand a remote shutter trigger. Christine took photos of the half moon in daylight that were quite beautiful. Of the bird photos I took on Saturday, many of the ones i was most excited about (a kite and a buteo) have the small distant bird surrounded by the huge frame of the image. I suspect i could get a fairly reasonable image of the bird from scanning the negative at a high resolution. The shots of the Green Winged Teal, taken with the tripod in the side bag of my bike, turned out quite well from one point of view — the bird wasn’t really in a good profile.

Again, i find myself less than pleased with the results.

Painting

Christine and i had a discussion about whether my style was surreal or not. I was tempted by a Surrealist group on Flickr, but she cited Breton and said she was confident i was an Expressionist. I find it interesting Klee is Experessionist and Miro Surrealist. (Is there a Mediterranean vs European culture distinction in that?)

Surfing … well Mail

The Artistamp mail list was very active today, distressingly so, in some ways. After several days, weeks of lovely chat of aesthetics and philosophy, there’s been a bit of a rant about the Artistamp Album. It’s a little hard to read someone trying to defend my thoughts as an artist when I don’t need defense. And then there’s the issue of the erotic art which distressed the organizer of the album. It’s kind of playful erotic art, but it’s definitely “male gaze” erotic art. I can appreciate being an organizer and worried about the ages of the participants in the swap and whether there’d be an issue with angry parents. And, while i don’t think i’d be needing to cover it up, i can understand why some folks might. Yes, that might be prudish, but when a work calls itself erotic art i think there’s some recognition that it’s in an area that’s past the bounds of some folks.

The tone got a bit heated. I’m not sure why i find it so hard to let go.

Other posts included a comment on some techniques for embossing paper by Jenny Groat:

One of the things we did was to cut a pattern out of mat board, then use a good paper (such as Arches 90# or 180# HP), sometimes dampened slightly, to press onto our matboard design with some kind of small but not sharp tool. We could “deemboss” this way, too. Some excellent results could come out of this.

Finally a call to participate in a se-tenant sheet, $45. I think my participation in the omnibus will have to forestall my participation here.

I need to remind myself that participating in big collective things isn’t nearly as rewarding as reaching out to individual artists without a “swap.”

Bike mount

Monday, February 6th, 2006

This How to make a bike camera mount tempts me, but i need something MUCH more flexible. This past weekend i took the large telephoto lens out to the baylands with the tripod in the side bag. When i wanted to get a quick photo of a green winged teal, i left the tripod in the bag and it seemed fairly steady.

The features i want are
⊗ a reasonable height off the ground,
⊗ tilt and pan
⊗ quick release (because no way am i leaving that lens mounted while i’m riding!)

It seems like it should be possible. The Quantaray – QSX 2001 UT Tripod at $20 should be a reasonable tripod to hack. Now to ponder how to mount it to the back rack.

What a fun Monday — totally by accident….

Monday, January 30th, 2006

Photography

Picked up Roll2005.06 at Wolf. 37 shots of B&W goodness to scan in.
Inspired, and sighting the delicate new moon, ushering in the Year of the Dawg, i loaded Roll2006.01 (OLD film, “07/2002 3715804″, Kodak Select Royal Gold, 24 exp, ISO 200/24° C-41 RB135-24, CAT 129 8041).

I shot three shots: the first two were some thing like 30 second exposures, the third was 1/2 s. I forgotten how to use the timer as well. Ah well.

060201: Spaceweather.com has a photo like the one i was trying to shoot at swpod2006/31jan06/joye1.jpg. Their write up links to an explanation of earthshine or the “Da Vinci Glow”. It will be a while before i get mine developed….

Mail art — from the Mail Box

Received the Altered Photos ATC swap (LMAO2005.08) from nervousness. Ironic, because Christine (aka greycat) hasn’t received hers, but hers arrived at the swap first — even though they were mailed together. Last out, first in?


Top row L-R: “Shine” from Supersunshine , “neon” from Iowa-art-teacher , “Evolution” ATC #73 . Bottom row L-R: “The Barrens, Co. Clare, Ireland” from Penny Miles, “Wisconsin Trees” by Carl.

Crochet

Working on the Nord/ette’s blanket (CR2006.04)– have a 3″ square worked “in the round” of mainly hdc with the 2.55mm hook. It’s something like 7 rows. Sometimes i doe the hdc in the back loop and sometimes i don’t creating this occasional ridge. I figured that out this evening and have only done both-loop hdc. It’s not exactly square by stitch count, but i think i have time to straighten that out. If every row adds two stitches at the end (i’ve been doing dc there in contrast to the hdc), i’ll say the next loop should have 18. Sides A & B add two, C adds one, and D none.
        A: 16 st
B: 16 st     D: 18 st
        C: 17 st

Surfing

⊗ Signing textile creations: A Grumperina tutorial. Requires iron on printer transfer stock and satin ribbon.
⊗ Hundreds of types of Crochet! Noticed in a Crochet Me forum and thought of the collection of stitch references that i began … and which seem to have been a victim of the site move. How odd. (Also, it seems many of the topics and author identities went away.)

Dealing with developed film

Saturday, January 21st, 2006

Lesson 1. The scanner (Epson Perfection 3200 PHOTO) accepts six frames on a strip. Best to initially cut the negatives to six frames each. The first frame does need to be trimmed as close as all the other frames.

I usually use the Silverfast driver, but the recently installed version of Photoshop Elements doesn’t have it in the menu. No problem, i’ll try the Epson driver. Turns out it will automatically recognizes the frames of the 35 mm. So, i reset the driver settings to se what it would do. In “Auto” mode, it thought i had 12 color transparencies. So i switched to pro mode and toggled to b&w film transparencies. It scanned the images in roughly 400 x 300 pixels. I then ran the contact sheet function and produced a fine 8×10 inch sheet.

Lesson 2: For the quick scan of all 12: Black & white film output to 8 bit greyscale, with the “large” thumbnail option, producing 400 x 300 pixel images for contact sheet.

Last day of the year

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

Created MA2006.CBTI.Jan.01: Pine. A photo of a pine tree (probably Christine’s, from the photo drawer), vintage green velvet ribbon with gold back, cut into narrow strips and crocheted around the photo. Slip-stitched to a pale blue card stock margin for binding. Once i scanned it in, i added cork stamping along the card-stock margin in yellow and green.

PIF to “By The Sea,” with an added ATC2005.02.09 and a home-made envelope (greycat & mariposa artistamps). I was very pleased with the orange and purple colors in the stamps and addressing.

Packaged up LMAO2005.09 to send off in a 9years-9lives envelope.

Experimented with crochet and gift ribbon. Single crochet of wire ribbon sliced in half. (I was hoping for an eyelash effect, but i’d need to fringe it even more. Still — it’s a possibility.) Open stitch with curling ribbon. I can imagine making a recycled shopping bag from a collection of ribbon like that. Pretty neat.

Mid-day went to take photographs starting Roll2006.01 (TMX 135-36, 100 speed) through frame 19 at Crittenden trailhead & Crittenden marsh. Experimented with the lightweight tripod, which would fit in the new camera bag. The tripod is too short, too wobbly — more so than the aluminum yard-sale tripod. Fiddlesticks. Christine took some shots through frame 30 at La Avenida.

ATC2005.02

Saturday, December 31st, 2005

Two nervousness calls, one for Altered Photos (LMAO2005.08) and one for Trees(LMAO2005.09) inspired and informed this creation of photo ATCs. (More ATC will be added up to a total of 16.)

ATC2005.02.01: To be honest, i don’t recall now where this photo was shot. I thought it might be from the rolls we took around Morro Bay, but I don’t see it in the index prints. The technique was inspired by the works of a print artist who incised his works to show a different color underneath. Global Warming I (ATC-AVAILABLE)

ATC2005.02.02: This is one of the photos from the collage drawer. Hard to tell whether it was taken by Christine or I. I’m fairly certain it’s a NC landscape. The color print was so blah that i felt the sky needed a shot of energy. I tried a number of things to color it, roughening the print with an emory board. Finally tried calligraphy ink which gave a midnight blue sky. With a big star over the barn, all that was left was adding the “Last Motel: No Vacancy” sign. (I did add a sign post before mailing the image.) (LMAO2005.08)

ATC2005.02.03: (2005-12-21) The Grand Canyon and a waterfall, woven together, to illustrate the Geologic Truth. The photos were taken by Christine on our 1989 trip around the southwest. (LMAO2005.08)

ATC2005.02.04: a second attempt in the style of ATC2005.02.01. Morro Bay power plant photo taken 2005-11-19, Roll2005.02.07. Global Warming II (LMAO2005.08)

ATC2005.02.05: Christine’s photo of Kathy S’s cat from the mid 1980′s. (Kathy’s mother was cropped out in the making of this ATC.) Tinted with “ZIG PHOTO TWIN MARKERS.” Note the pink nose! (The green eyes amay simply be in my imagination, although i did tint them.) (LMAO2005.08)

ATC2005.02.06: Air show! I suspect this photo is circa early ’90s when Christine lived in Edenton, plus pine trees, also likely by Christine, circa late ’80s. The tissue paper collage is over a lousy attempt to use a transfer technique. (LMAO2005.08)

ATC2005.02.07: Trees I from the photo collage drawer, with a woven accent. (LMAO2005.09)
ATC2005.02.08: Pacific Grove branches from Roll2005.01 (LMAO2005.09)
ATC2005.02.09: Pacific Grove branches from Roll2005.01 (PIF to “By the Sea”)
ATC2005.02.10: Snow & Stone from the photo collage drawer, tiled (LMAO2005.09)