View allAll Photos Tagged ambientimage
another of my sumatra coffee bean shots on fuji NPH 400, developed in coffee (caffenol C). i gotta use my nikon N80, which prolly hadn't run a roll for at least two or three years! since, usually i use my nikon F100 for 35mm film.
cheers.
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If you’d like to view my images larger… while I only allow my contacts to view my larger images (I generally upload at least 800px images on the long axis)…
a quick workaround I might suggest is to view my photostream as a slideshow. Works well for me. this is frequently how I view others’ ‘streams, and it will put a large image on black. just click the slideshow icon next to my stream or set. : )
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on 01 jan 2010, i began a new journey w/ a flickr 365 group that i formed, the idea is that i strive to push myself daily; by exploring techniques, ideas, and experiments.
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Installation of a residential wind turbine is filmed for an episode of the DIY network show "This New House". Bob Hayes of Prevailing Winds and his crew install a Dyocore SolAir 800 I wind turbine which integrates two small solar panels into its design and is capable of producing up to 800 Watts at 12 mph. The two solar panels produce up to 45watts. Redondo Beach, Ca, USA
a couple more scans from my first test of homemade redscale film using fuji NPH400.
i find the exposure latitude to be a lot less than shooting regular. i was metering for ISO 160 (+1 1/3 stops) and still some frames didn't come out at all.
plus, scanning is a bit problematic, because the colors are so shifted. but i think this frame represents an honest look at the redscale of this film stock. i think next i wanna try redscaling the DNP Centuria film... could be a real good one!
oh, BTW... this is part of the exterior of Danielle Steele's home. it is likely the most expensive mansion in all of san francisco. she's an author of romance novels, but i can honestly say that not a dime of her mortgage was paid for by me. LOL.
this home used to be owned by the Spreckels family, the sugar magnates. no idea how much it is worth, since it hasn't been on the market in years. but i'd guess $45-65 million. an old friend who is a special agent w/ the IRS argues it is probably worth at least $100 million. i disagree... but he does property seizures for a living, yeah... whatdoiknow?
cheers.
With Proposition B, in Los Angleles, the city's Department of Water and Power (DWP) will place solar photovoltaic systems throughout the city and connect them to the city's existing electrical grid. A roof mounted, grid tied Solar Voltaic solar panel array (10Kw) on top of the Santa Monica Library. The Library was built in 2005 by the architecture firm Moore Ruble Yudell (MRY) and is a LEEDS Certified building. Los Angeles County, California, USA
there was heavy purple fringing on his right side, (mostly) corrected in post. but I'm quickly finding this lens a fairly strong performer, especially at the price.
sooooo, $18 tele lens should fit in perfectly with my $150 camera (I figure the kit OSS lens is worth $100).
Trying to find some new (and hopefully interesting) ways to shoot some of the fire performers.
For anybody interested in viewing my fire images, please feel free to visit my "albums," I have a fire spinners album.
Zeiss Jena 80/2.8 on my Sony a3000. I definitely find ISO 3200 more noisy than my liking. I've read tons of reports/reviews on how well the new Sony's (like the a3000) handle high ISO. I'm fairly unimpressed. But the detail retention is fairly good, even with a fairly high amount of noise. So, it's kind of "workable" at ISO 3200. That's about it, IMO.
Thanks for looking. Cheers.
I'll probably explain this "new" M42 lens of mine tomorrow. Goodness, it offers some exciting opportunities for me. Lots of micro-contrast, resolution, sharpness... In a portrait lens.
Nobody wanted to venture a guess on this lens in my earlier bokeh image? : |
I think I mentioned sweet bokeh earlier. Tonal range, color rendition, shadow feathering & detail. Yup. An in-camera HDR here. Cheers.
Plastic bags and other debris catch onto railing of bike path after a big rain storm that raised the river water along Ballona Creek. Ballona Creek is a nine-mile waterway that drains the Los Angeles basin. Urban runoff carries an assortment of trash and debris from catch basins where a network of pipes and open channels create a pathway to the Ocean at Santa Monica Bay. Ballona Creek is designed to discharge to Santa Monica Bay approximately 71,400 cubic feet per second from a 50-year frequency storm event. Culver City, Los Angeles, California, USA
This Konica 40mm f/1.8 pancake lens is quite versatile. I'm happy to have it. The performers were really great and approachable. Helped me understand a bit more about shooting.
I'm really trying to learn how to shoot fire spinning better. Soon I should have a tripod, that will improve *everything*.
so, i've found out a bit more about this camera through careful research.
it is a Sears TLS SLR (prolly made in 1967) by Ricoh. a few links here, here, and here for any interested.
it has metering capabilities, no double exposure option, and some good exposure options (bulb to 1/1000 sec, and good ISO range).
this is from a test roll of Arista 100 b&w film, i've not ever shot this film stock before. and developed in my homemade Chai-lenol developer recipe.
yup, $25 isn't even the cheapest you may be able to find this for. but, consider, i dint pay any shipping or tax. and i did manage to get a lens cap included (no battery though).
oh, i figured out my prollem. no mental giant am i (i've not claimed otherwise! lol).
the film loading needs to go in on the near side of the take-up spool, and i had tried loading it all the way across to the far side. duh. i haven't used a camera that loads like this in ages. but i guess the manual film winder bar could've tipped me off if i was more saavy to notice. lol.
oh yeah, it appears this may be an old M42 lens mount, right? so, it can accept Leica glass? ha ha... seriously. dang.
cheers.
I was out strolling around after a pretty boring photo meetup on Wednesday. Here's one shot of the fireworks show after the last Giants home game at AT&T Park.
Too bad that the only fireworks Giants fans can view these days comes with a requisite safety expert. Nothing on the field.
When I'm walking around this area of Embarcadero, sometimes my mind wanders back to when I worked with Gap inside the Folger Building and helped launch Old Navy, way back when. The bay views from the Gap headquarters were fantastic.
This is Tamara de Jong from the HDR meetup group. I had an awesome time talking with her and Vince Byrd after our shoot. Good people. Isn't that a huge part of what meetups are all about?
Please visit their photo sites. Some of the most incredible images I've seen in a very, very, VERY long time. Yeah, I'm serious. Spectacular and truly inspiring. Please visit.
Hope to shoot with you both soon Your images are incredible!!! Cheers.
Walt Disney Concert Hall by Frank Gehry, Los Angeles Music Center, Grand Avenue, Downtown Los Angeles, California, USA
so, I just received this Vivitar (Tokina made) 200mm f/3.5 lens I bought for $16 on that big auction website. Konica AR mount, Fotga ($8) lens adapter to Sony E-mount.
Lens is like-new condition, adapter fits/works flawlessly. Manual focus only, using focus peaking.
I got free Giants baseball tickets for both today and tomorrow. it will be interesting to see how this lens performs there. Let's Go Giants!
Dream big. Dream GIANT.
Watering plants. School Children learn about and tend the vertical garden at the Downtown Value School, a charter school in downtown Los Angeles. The vertical garden is provided by Woolly Pocket and is part of their Woolly School Garden program. The Woolly Pocket hangers are created from 100% recycled materials. The school also has a flower and produce garden that goes around the school grounds, a small greenhouse and a worm compost bin that students collect for after each meal. Los Angeles, California, USA
I think this was shot at f/2.8. Here we see the subject (heart) and background lights are both middle ground and not very much separation. Interesting the distance to the top and bottom lights is a tiny bit further from the lens and throws them into a softer focus.
BTW, this was an OOC b&w JPEG, just re-sized to 2100px at 72 dpi, and put a 4px black edge on it. No post-processing at all.
School Children learn about and tend the vertical garden at the Downtown Value School, a charter school in downtown Los Angeles. The vertical garden is provided by Woolly Pocket and is part of their Woolly School Garden program. The Woolly Pocket hangers are created from 100% recycled materials. The school also has a flower and produce garden that goes around the school grounds, a small greenhouse and a worm compost bin that students collect for after each meal. Los Angeles, California, USA
First time I ever tried using in-camera HDR (Lv3) with on-camera flash. Background is quite pleasing, but also not the most difficult of scenes for bokeh to render. (The BG distance is offset enough to make this easier).
HDR automatically turned "off" when I popped the flash up. WB automatically was changed in-camera also. Oh well, in-camera HDR WITH flash would've been just too good... *sigh*
another of my rollei R3 film shots developed in coffee...
you might notice, i have a bit of a theme going here... estates of famous people. Dianne Feinstein, Chris Columbus, now Larry Ellison (co-founder and CEO of Oracle).
maybe i got motivated for this because this last week i had a lengthy conversation w/ a well known local photog, David Waldorf, who has taken some very recognizable images of celebs, including Larry Ellison and co-founders and flickr Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield.
Waldorf is a Time Magazine photog and among his many credits, he just recently got back from shooting an editorial piece for the African Development Bank Group in several African countries.
Cheers.
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I get a fair number of comments that peeps wish they could view images larger… while I maintain that only my contacts can view my large images (I generally upload at least 800px images on the long axis)… a quick workaround I might suggest is to view my photostream as a slideshow. Works well for me. this is frequently how I view others’ ‘streams, and it will put a large image on black. : )
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on 01 jan 2010, i began my journey w/ a new flickr group i've formed, ~365: experimental
the idea is that i strive to push myself daily; experiment, learn, & develop my photography skills further by exploring techniques, ideas, and experiments. hopefully, some of you might consider joining and we can work on our journey together!
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Javier Lopez could be considered the very best of the lefty specialists in Major League Baseball today. Without him, do the Giants have two recent World Series rings? Ask lefties like Josh Hamilton, Ryan Howard, Prince Fielder...
Glad he's "ours." Hope he sticks around after his playing days as a broadcaster for us. Great Giant.
Vivitar 200mm f/3.5 manual focus legacy lens w/ Fotga Konica AR-to-Sony E-mount adapter.
Decided to shoot this, to test mixing multiple Kelvin light temperatures: daylighted windows, bright white mercury(?) platform lamps, and the yellow floures
cent(?) lights on the BART train.
My conclusion is that red color casting looks terrible, my eyes are much more okay with yellow/golden color casting. But the riders look really RED skin-toned. Yikes.
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[cont'd]
Moral of my SFO airport story? Well, duh. Don't shoot anywhere near airports. Free country, my butt.
And the top reason police departments lose officers and struggle with hiring: morale. Officers like Cop #2 are ridiculous. Three others stood around and watched.
I get they need to take control of situations, be assertive to show authority, and whatever. But this isht wasn't cool. And it went on another 15 minutes before I was allowed to leave. Dang.
I just liked this. The sticker, the tag... and, oh yeah, the pose. It's the pose. Framed it to get various depths of bokeh. Well done, pancake!
[cont'd from previous] ... So, I stayed and talked w/ Matthew at Glass Key longer than I had ever expected. He is the owner, and he's awesome.
I can't believe how much used gear he carries/sells. Lenses, and lots of high quality film cameras. I had been trying to decide on a 75 to 135mm MF lens for my kit. He has 2 of my top-3 choices IN-STOCK right now.
He had an Oly OM Pen mount adapter to Sony E-mount and let me test shoot a 100/3.5 and 35/1.9(?) that were both fantastic and better priced than Keh, B&H used, or most instances on eBay. 4 copies of the beautiful Nikon 105/2.5 AI that range $100 or just over.
Please stop in and say hey at Matt at Glass Key Photo. He's awesome, the store is awesome. He sells film, developers (the chemical kind like Xtol, not the person kind like Peter at Gamma SF), Holgas (cameras, again not people), prints, paper, used medium/large format cameras/lenses, 35mm cameras/lenses, and lots of other good & delicious things.
Delicious? Don't believe me? Various brands of excellent root beer, bottom shelf of his film fridges.
Big Blue Bus Terminal, buses powered by Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). Santa Monica, Los Angeles, California, USA
Watering plants. School Children learn about and tend the vertical garden at the Downtown Value School, a charter school in downtown Los Angeles. The vertical garden is provided by Woolly Pocket and is part of their Woolly School Garden program. The Woolly Pocket hangers are created from 100% recycled materials. The school also has a flower and produce garden that goes around the school grounds, a small greenhouse and a worm compost bin that students collect for after each meal. Los Angeles, California, USA
this is a black-crowned night heron at the lake merritt bird convservatory. i guess this fabric covering over the patio is to reduce bird droppings there, i really don't know why else it would be there.
So, one of the two M42 lenses I got yesterday? Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 28mm f/3.5!
This lens is a *really* strong performer in shadow feathering with great color retention. The roll-off is much smoother, and doesn't go to a gray-ish cast like the Sony 18-55 OSS kit lens or Sony 20/2.8 pancake.
The micro-contrast can add a bit of "punch" that is often referred to as a "3D effect." Yeah, it is sharp, but it's truly the micro-contrast people are referring to most often. IMHO.
Waited for a shot... Where I'd get headlight streams, and cars from either side merging into tail lights. Kept checking the street light and merging traffic.
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[cont'd]
"Not that you're doing anything wrong, but I got a complaint that somebody was taking photographs. So, I've gotta check it out."
"Alright, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cause any concerns. As you can see I'm already leaving. I wasn't taking pictures of people, just liked the converging light streams of this intersection and this building has interesting light bars on it."
As I take a step away... "What's your name?"
"Um, officer? David. Am I free to go now? I apologize for making you come out, I meant no disrespect, I'm not drunk, I didn't intend to cause any problems."
Cop car #2 rolls up and blocks the intersection off.
Cop #2 gets out and starts into me: "WE DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE SORRY. WHY ARE YOU TALKING BACK?"
Captain Charles Moore, the man credited for first discovering the plastic soup in the Gyre over 10 years ago, showing plastic samples collected in the North Pacific Gyre. The ORV Alguita returns to Long beach after four months at sea sampling the waters of the ?great Pacific garbage patch in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG). The Algalita Marine Research Foundation has been studying and educating the public about the effects of oceanic micro-plastic pollution on the ocean's ecosystem and marine life for over ten years. Long Beach, California, USA.
Garbage accumulates in Trash Net boom at the mouth of the Ballona Creek after first rainfall of the year. Urban runoff from heavy rains carries an assortment of styrofoam cups, plastic bottles and bags and other trash that has built up on streets and catch basins since the last rains into the Ballona Creek, a nine-mile waterway that drains the Los Angeles basin. While the boom catches some of this trash, smaller particles and many other pollutants still empty into the Santa Monica Bay and Pacific Ocean. Culver City, Los Angeles, California, USA
this scan is the actual color i get from my fuji acros film negatives in Redinol formula 5. slight rosy pink-ish color casts, but still retains fairly good tonal values. and IMHO very good detail rendering.
cheers.
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My new photography blog has yummy ice cream you can download! And fuel additives you can add to your car to triple your mileage!
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If you’d like to view my images larger… While I only allow my contacts to view my larger images (I generally upload at least 800px images on the long axis)…
a quick workaround I might suggest is to view my photostream as a slideshow. Works well for me. This is frequently how I view others’ ‘streams, and it will put a large image on black. just click the projector screen icon next to the stream or set. : )
---------------------------
on 01 jan 2010, I began a new journey w/ a flickr 365 group that i formed. The idea is that I strive to push myself daily; by exploring techniques, ideas, and experiments.
-----------------------------
This is just a little thing, until it becomes a thing you have issues with... But notice that the details feather well into the bokeh with good resolve... Many "cheap" lenses would have doubling, especially of the number "5" and "8." Here they are smoothly softened and that's a wonderful thing. I notice things like this. Again, partly why I targeted this lens as my #1 choice.
There also aren't any of those awful/annoying "tiny" donut bokeh circles around the bright hotspots, like the top of the 1, 2, 3, and 6 keys. The top edge of the number "6" doesn't have one either.
Also, quite by accident I learned last week that I can use 6x or 13x magnification for focus peaking and critical focus on my MF lenses. Awesome! Sure helps on a scene like this. And I'm now using the EVF for these shots too.
Want circle bokeh? Here is some street traffic. I think I shot this at f/4. What? You don't see any street traffic? Maybe you're only focusing on the right-hand edge of the frame. Look around. lol.
Yeah, some blooming from the traffic signals. This is not good. And it gets worse at times; had terrible, ugly green flares in another shot- pointing the lens into bright street lights.
Don't know if I should keep posting more of this boring stuff. Personally, I'd rather not. But if my observations help others I will continue. Dunno. Feel free to let me know. Cheers.
Los Angeles skyline from Los Angeles State Historic Park. Field of Lupine and Desert Sunflowers in foreground. California, USA
These color variations were from changes in white balance, not post production. I always try to capture as much accurate in-camera as possible. Both Tam and I share this simple belief.
With Proposition B, in Los Angleles, the city's Department of Water and Power (DWP) will place solar photovoltaic systems throughout the city and connect them to the city's existing electrical grid. A roof mounted, grid tied Solar Voltaic solar panel array (10Kw) on top of the Santa Monica Library. The Library was built in 2005 by the architecture firm Moore Ruble Yudell (MRY) and is a LEEDS Certified building. Los Angeles County, California, USA
Judy Kirshner working in her garden. Urban Garden in front yard of home in upscale Hancock Park. Judy Kirshner started the garden 10 years ago. At the time, her neighbors did not approve, but the garden has become a popular spot over the years and attracts many visitors. The plot contains about 50 varieties of vegetables, 12 winter herbs, 9 kinds of flowers
and 12 fruit trees. Los Angeles, California, USA
This is a slightly colorized view of the same image I posted in its original b&w just a bit earlier. One of the more "complete" compositions IMO, with lots of depth and features throughout the entire frame.
My intention was to use a color palette inspired by Slot Canyon at sunset, but a tad softer to match the textures of the fogging here.