Too many hobbies, too little time.

This bike is done, and it’s gorgeous (this picture is from the day I brought the frame home, which was probably four weeks ago. I finished building it about two weeks ago). Building it and riding it are two of the many things I’ve been doing instead of photography. I got back home Wednesday from a six day backpacking trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway area of western North Carolina (unfortunately, we were blown off Mt. Mitchell by a hailstorm, but nearby Linville Gorge is incredibly beautiful and has some of the most technical trails I’ve ever hiked), and spent that week surrounded by people who are enthusiastic about photography. This made me want to get back to shooting. Hopefully I will.

Apparently I’ve missed a few things since I’ve been, well, doing other things. I’m a bit of a gear nerd, and I’m working on catching up on the things I’ve missed. Most notable so far:

-Pentax’s K-x, which I can find precious little information about but has an impressive buzz (good for Pentax)

-Pentax’s K-7, which doesn’t seem that impressive to me (come on, Pentax, I thought a K#D would be a professional model, not a K20D with the zero dropped)

-Nikon’s D300s, which means my body of choice is now 1 1/2 iterations out of date

-Canon’s 7D, which is yet another violation of the number-of-digits-before-the-D-connotes-the-level rule (definitely not worth converting over)

I’m sure there’s plenty more that I’ve missed (unfortunately, this does not seem to include a $50 35mm f/1.2 Nikkor or a $75 10-20mm f/2.8, though I am still looking), but I’ll catch up eventually. For now, I need to start shooting again (and to get a Nikon lens that will go wider than 50mm. Or longer).

Nikon D200, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D, ancient Minolta strobe somewhere off camera.

This is some sort of large machine.

Doing a little work for a racing team, and came up with this for their newsletter. I like it a lot, but I think it’s much too dramatic for the purpose it was meant to serve. Could a brooding black and white really work on a white and navy newsletter? I’m going to try, but I’m not holding out much hope.

Nikon D200, Nikon 50mm f/1.8, Minolta strobe triggered by remote.

Does this count as “something different,” or is it still a photocliché?

One of the first things I shot with my 50mm f/1.8 was this collection of daffodils. Shot at f/1.8 and very close range, the depth of  field is almost nonexistent. While this is certainly a cliché, I tried to process it a little differently. Does it work?

My students developed their first rolls this week, with some success. Unfortunately, one of our cameras has serious meter problems and another has light leaks. This process has been a constant reminder of both how difficult and rewarding getting a working vintage setup can be.

Nikon D200, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8.

Sunday (7th) dawned earlier than usual for us, so after our complimentary continental breakfast (only until 9.30am, but considering we were the only ones in our unit, I’m sure it didn’t just disappear after that time), we headed down to the tourist information building to get some better maps and details about the waterfalls and walks.

Deciding to take it easy for the day, we headed to Stevenson Falls, up near Forrest, which was considered either a 20 minute or 1 hour easy walk, depending where you took the car. As we got up to the turn-off, we ended up on a narrow, almost gravel road, which caused initial panic, but became easier as the weekend went on.

As we came up to the carpark (a campsite), we could see that the road to the second carpark was open – which would mean a shorter walk – so we took it and without getting bogged, arrived in the carpark.

The walk was easy, and very nice, just as the brochure described! The path was pretty wet, but no rain was seen (yet), and we had no problems getting up to the waterfall.

The metal platform caused some problems, with the feet of my tripod slipping through! I still managed to get some shots (to come), and the area was simply beautiful. Travis let his adventurous side come through as he climbed over the other side of the river, then up onto the massive rocks in front of the waterfall. I could see it all ending in tears, but he’s home and we’re all fine! This was also the point where I noticed all the lichens and fungi growing – obviously, being a rainforest, the damp and dark conditions are perfect for it.

As we headed back to town, it was decided that I was getting fish and chips for lunch, to keep me happy and quiet. It was delicious, and there is nothing quite like eating fish and chips, on the coast, in winter while it drizzles!

Instead of heading to another waterfall (we’d seen two, we’d seen them all), we decided to take a look at Mait’s Rest walk – which takes you past a 300 year old myrtle beech tree. Again this was a very easy walk, which unfortunately meant there were lots of children, but the forest was so dense that you turned a corner and could barely hear them. It was stunning – although I’m disappointed they didn’t point out this specific tree; we’re left assuming that one of the many huge trees is 300 years old and the rest are only 200-and-something!

The rain was coming down quite steadily by this point; Kat kept pointing out that we’re in the rainforest in winter and I kept arguing that the rainforest could do without rain for a couple of days. While we were out in that direction, we decided that our last stop of the day would be the Cape Otway lighthouse.

Although I couldn’t see it from the carpark, the lady in the shop was adamant that it was just over the hill, so we paid our preposterous $15 and went through. The rain and wind was a little disruptive, but we skipped the communications museum and went straight up to the lighthouse. Grateful that we made the climb to the top, the views were amazing and the wind from up there just exhilarating. Looking out to the rough sea, it’s obvious why the lighthouse was necessary. Travis was only a little bit scared.

Coming back through, we also managed to buy discounted tickets for the Otway Fly, which would be one of the activities the next day. All that was left was getting home to dry out before dinner.

The gas heater turned out to be a godsend, as our jeans and shoes all went in front of it, as well as ourselves. Thankfully we managed to drag ourselves out to dinner, and we went to Cafe 153, which was slightly disappointing. The food was tasty but nothing special and the service was a bit of a let down, but at least I managed to get some seafood for the second time that day!

This is one of the many places I’ve been instead of here.

Starting to combine my interests in music and photography.

Nikon D200, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8, Minolta strobe triggered remotely bounced off the ceiling.

Photography and music are sort of related.

It’s true. Just look at Zack Arias. That guy can shoot as well as anyone on the planet, and the music industry is his thing (and really, his site is fantastic. Great photographers who share their knowledge are the greatest of all). I have been a musician for a lot longer than I’ve been a photographer, and I would love to unite the two.

This shoot would have worked a lot better with better equipment, but there are always resourceful ways to cheat. Things with lots of shiny surfaces (like very chromey guitars) don’t usually do well with hard light, but I still don’t have any umbrellas (because. . . I haven’t ordered them yet). So what do you do? Bounce one big flash cranked to mega power off of the (fortunately white) ceiling! Part of me feels like this would look better with a pure white background, but part of me likes the tones and the textures of the gray. I could have made it white (well, if i could have dug up a few more batteries), but I didn’t, partially because this shoot ended abruptly when my megaflashzilla decided that was as far as it wanted to go on my sort-of-mostly-charged AAs.

While the title and the instrument suggest country music, I can assure you mine is not of that persuasion. I just love Telecasters- something about that lipstick pickup in the bridge makes the sweetest tones. If you’ve played one, you know what I mean (though you may disagree. That’s why there are Les Paul players). Just like having a camera that’s more than you really need can make the experience sweeter, my guitar playing is not nearly up to the task of needing an American Standard Telecaster. But it plays like magic, and that’s fun. In a way, the Teelcaster is the K1000 of the guitar world (yeah, I have one of these too). It hasn’t changed much since a long time ago, it has an almost comical lack of features by modern standards, and it’s still awesome. Except you can still buy a new Telecaster.

For the record, I am still on hiatus . . .

Nikon D200, 50mm f/1.8 (but not at f/1.8 of course), one Minolta strobe on full power bounced off of my white ceiling, one perfect guitar.

As I’m currently looking for a new place, I’ve been trying to divide my time between doing that, work and taking/processing/editing photos. It’s a hard juggle!

So far no luck on the house-front, but am about to start looking with fellow housemate Kat for a two-bedroom place. It’s unlikely we’ll stay in East Melbourne, but we’ll hopefully stay in the inner suburbs as neither of us want too far to travel to work.

I rarely update about work, and that’s because I suppose there is little to update about. It’s the daily grind, which is rewarding and interesting enough to get me back there each day. As a colleague is leaving on maternity leave in a few months’ time, I will be taking over most of her work until we find a replacement. Although I’m not looking forward to the drastically increased workload, there are a few new skills and tasks to learn which should be interesting.

Photography, on the other hand, is getting interesting. I’ve just shot, processed and am now scanning my first ever roll of 120 film. I borrowed a friend’s Kershaw folding camera and shot a roll of Neopan 400, and processed in the DD-X I have at the moment. It’s come out relatively well, and despite high potential for light-leaks when it was taken out of the camera (it wound loosely), all was fine. Uploads to come.

Leading on from that, I used a small part of ‘Kev’s cash bonus’ (the $900 economic stimulus plan) to purchase my own medium format camera, a Dacora, which is also a folder. I only received it today, but with more manual settings I’m hoping to get some better results with it!

Since I’ve gotten into the swing of processing my own film, I’ve found myself to be shooting a lot more black and white just for the convenience of it. I have been quite ’snap happy’ with it, but I’m starting to settle and get more quality too.

Recently I also bought a 50mm f/1.8 lens for my 10D. I’ve only shot with it once, and apart from minor focusing issues, it’s a good buy (it was dirt cheap) and I’m glad to own my first (hopefully of many) prime.

This was from the shoot with the new 50mm. The video of Little Boris, created by the North Melbourne FC, provided great amusement for those of us who weren’t shocked and disgusted. Finding a rubber chicken in the following weeks was slightly difficult, but thankfully we managed and had a good shoot.

A toy panorama camera up the Rialto, with a roll of (ick) Tmax, is surely the best way to shoot cityscapes? I thought so at least.

分享第二卷负冲正片，这次用的是Fuji Provia，很青~
扫描4R照片，有一些颜色有点正常，可能是忘记告诉他们直接打印吧~
效果还满意~~~开心~~

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In an effort to push myself and create images outside my comfort zone, I’ve started to work on a series of black and white portraits. This is a personal project that I’m working on, for the sole purpose of challenging myself creatively. I’ve been working on the post processing quite a bit, toying with textures and experimenting with different B&W conversions. All of these shots were taken with a 50mm lens at f/1.8, to give them an extremely shallow depth of field.  Everything is coming together and I’m finally beginning to get the look I had envisioned. Please let me know what you think, as this is a work in progress and your feedback will only make the collective set of images stronger!

What wlil become of you?

I need to figure out what I’m doing with all of this film by making a longwinded rant about it. Though I am not ready to do that, I did get bored and set this up under my desk.

Nikon D200, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8, optical slave triggered ghetto Quantaray high just left of camera.

There are only a few ways to make money with a camera.

See it bigger here.

Having photographers’ block combined with days and days of rainy weather means I really have to be creative (or uncreative) with my shooting. After spending the last few days looking at various old Nikkors on eBay (which I know I’ve sworn off before), I decided to try my hand at an eBay-style product shoot. Quick, dirty, and cet up with a “borrowed” flash, an $11 optical slave, and printer paper.

Here’s another version with the original white background. What do you think? To me, it’s technically better but less interesting.

Nikon D200, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8

Which literary character does this remind you of?

This is sort of a soul sister to “434” in subject matter and processing terms. It’s strange to buy new equipment in the middle of a photographer’s block- it forces you to revisit your surroundings (which you’ve photographed thousands of times) to try to find new angles and interpretations. One of these days I’ll get a new idea and I’ll be off like a greyhound again.

See it larger here.

Nikon D200, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8.

You would not believe how quickly the blossoms come and go here in Japan. It only takes about 3-4 days to achieve full bloom and then you only have about 4-5 days before the bottom half of the tree loses its’ blossoms seemingly overnight. Then you have about a day left before the blossoms completely disappear from the rest of tree. This seem to be the natural cycle and a good rainstorm can shorten the time even more!

Last weekend we went out to Showa Kinen Park located in Tachikawa which is a short train ride from our place. Showa is a massive park surrounded by 14 kilometers of bike trail and full of beautiful flower gardens and blossoming trees. Since Hanami is in full swing in Japan, there was a massive line that had formed prior to the 9:30 opening. When the gates opened it was like the start of a 1,000 meter dash. Most of the locals will bring rolling luggage and carts full of picnic supplies and within hours of opening the massive grass areas are overtaken by blankets, tarps, and card board. The smells of BBQ food and the flower garden are inescapable.

The day we went to the park, I had an adverse reaction to some stupid mediation I had just started that day which hit me when I came home. It made my heart race for about 18 hours and this entire week I feel like I climbed Mt. Fuji just walking across our apartment! Needlessly to say, I have completely ignored my photos until now. So far I am not impressed with my cherry blossom photos. I think I may have to steal some of wifey’s photos and post them up instead. I feel a lot better now, so I will try and get some cherry blossom photos up shortly.

It isn’t often that I add a new category to my “categories.”

One of my goals (and the way I’m justifying the expense of digital gear) for this year is to become a confident portrait photographer. I don’t need to be Zack Arias (whose work is fantastic), but I want to feel like I know what I’m doing. Fortunately, I have roommates to drag to my bedroom-turned-studio for impromptu self-education sessions. I am fairly happy with the light here considering my constraints (one undiffused light, limited space and backdrop options),  and I know where I need to work. More of these may appear from time to time.

Nikon D200, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8, strobe that was free.

New equipment doesn’t provide new things to shoot at.

The sign on the door:

“KEEWAYDIN COMPUTERS and KEEWAYDIN AQUATICS We are undergoing an upgrade in our facilities and cannot operate our business here temporarily. Please call 237-5560 for further information. Deliveries remain here as usual.”

Nikon D200, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 (which really is a razor at f/4).

Time to party now…hahahaha. Barusan saya lihat di jalan ada selembaran ukuran amplop yang tersebar di jalanan waktu saya mau pergi kuliah siang tadi. Pas di perempatan lampu lalu lintas gitu. wah… saya kira cuma selembaran biasa, tapi lihat selembaran yang salah satunya ada di bawah motor saya itu, saya penasaran, apa sih tuh ??? kok kayaknya poto nya nggak asing.

Eh ternyata, setelah saya pelototin bener-bener, ternyata….pengumuman buat kampanye partai GERINDRA di Alun-alun utara, jam 9 – 4 sore. Buhset dah. Padahal tahu nggak teman – teman, hari ini tuh Jogja puanashe bukan kepayang dah. Nggak kebayang mereka yang pada kampanye di sana. Dan yang paling dahsyat adalah, Partai yang diketuai Prabowo Subianto itu mengundang 3 DIVA !!!!! buhseeeeetttt !!!! Sehari sebelumnya, PKS juga ngadain rapat akbar di sini (Jogja), di stadion Mandala Krida. Mereka mengundang GIGI coba…wew…mungkin GIGI di sana nyanyi lagu di album religinya kali ya??? hahahahaha. PKS gitu loh. Islami..hahahaha…

Well…tinggal kurang dari sebulan lagi pesta politik segera dihelat..hmm…tentukan pilihan masing – masing. Tapi, saya mau tanya, ada nggak sih, acara serupa seperti Gerindra / PKS yang saya ceritain di daerah teman – teman ???

Wow, what a hectic week it has been. The last few days the workload has just piled up and up. I have been very wrapped up in Geography and DT coursework last few days, so I have neglected my blogging duties.

So, my last post was a *teensie* bit random, and it failed to fill in some gaps.

First off, not necessarily the most important, but whatever, the results from my test roll off the AE-1 came back. I’ll admit to being surprised and pleased. 

Okay, so maybe I had to iron a few things out; the fact i accidentally left the lens set to f/22 instead of Auto meant many turned out dark. Problem number two was a hair trapped in front of the shutter curtain, which took me ages to get to the root of. Here’s an example (sorry for the quality, havent got a film scanner yet):

As you can see, quality of the scanner is not great. Really need to get a film scanner . Well, you can obviously see the hair (yes, it is on the negative, it’s a recurring issue). However, the quality of the image is excellent, the AE-1 really takes remarkably sharp images. Really pleased with quality from it.

This will be an unusual post; not only is it quite long but I am putting a SECOND image in! I know!

This time, its from my highly sought after 50mm f/1.8 Mk I. Its hidden now, as it is a birthday present for me, but I managed to get some idea of the quality of the lens from a few candid images of my cat:

I was absolutely blown away by it. The fantastic smoothness of it is stunning, and sharp areas are literally <i> razor </i> sharp. Albeit, even my older metal version feels like a toy. Its so light and <s> tiny </s>, I picked up the box it was posted in and said “I hope there’s something in this”. Yes, that is how light it is.

So, all I have to do now is finish the XP2 inside the AE-1 and maybe squeeze out a few shots from the 40D. But right now, having been made to wait over 50 minutes for the bus, all I want to do is chill out in front of the TV for a few hours, then go to bed.

When in doubt, desaturate.. Japan seems to lend itself very well to a desaturated/selective desaturated look; or at least I should say that it appeals to me. Whenever I have a shot that I am not quite sure how to process, I usually play with the saturation color sliders in Lightroom. Quick and dirty; usually I am happy with the result such as this one taken at Matsumoto Castle.