My Morning Conversationalists

The Canadian tourists have flown away with the melting of the pond ice. The Residents remain.

24 hr short in 1 minute 50 seconds

Still annoyed at color differences from hdmi out to .mov to vimeo .mp4 to playback with "Standard" setting. It doesn't matter how much calibration is used. Every monitor looks different.

Meaning, this looks a bit less saturated than the way it was graded to look on the "calibrated" monitor. At least when played back in either the "Standard" or the "Movie" settings on an older Dell monitor.

Not that anybody cares...

Too Much Rain

YIKES! on Vimeo.

Nobody likes to be caught out in a downpour.

a video review

Since I was renting the camera - the Sony a7s that is - I figured I might as well record my thoughts on how well it worked with the Steadicam Pilot.

a7s on a Pilot from Man Made Wilderness on Vimeo.

last of the iris

I couldn't resist before they disappear for the year.

live! and on location

 Finally venturing out of the studio to find something other than tulips.

10 days later

Petals about to drop...

more bright-field

Using what I learned back here to preserve a rather stunning bunch of tulips.

moonlight 2

02:48 EST

november 5

The Japanese maple that refuses to photograph - that is photographed every year.

november 2

november 1

This morning's view.

a study

Possible location for the short film The Plan.

dark-field

during endSomewhat different than a straight dark field setup in that these were lit from the side with a pair of strobes in front of a dark background, rather than with a single strobe from behind the background. The exposure on the right has an additional small spotlight on the front of the mug in order to define the etching on the glass surface.

Interestingly, the exposure for the image on the left was an ordinary flash timing of 1/100 second @ f/14, whereas the image on the right was 13 seconds @ f/14. Because the light on the front of the mug was so insignificant in comparison to the flash, the subject is illuminated by the modelling lamps + the spot on the front of the mug.

Update on Saturday, January 19, 2013 at 05:07PM by KMW

There were several other iterations to this photograph. The one I spent the most time with was this one that uses a white reflector the exact size of the mug, which gives a consistent color to the liquid.

another during

bright-field

before afterEntirely too many How-To books around here. With enough time and dedication I'm going to become an expert at HTML, Javascript, Snow Leopard, video Color Correction/Grading, photographic lighting, motion picture lighting equipment, Cinematography, Soundtrack Pro, Final Cut Pro, CSS, Microstation, Autocad, etc. etc. Pretty much all of them are hard copy print editions, overflowing the shelves, only a few of them current.

Tellingly there are no Pop Psychology titles in the lot. DIY should not be confused with Self Help. I can't find a breakdown in the categories, but the Educational Book Publishing market in North America is worth something like $4-5 billion a year, most of that in secondary and university textbooks.

DIY is probably only a small fraction of that, but it seems I'm doing my part to keep publishers busy with new titles all the time. This work with "bright-field" strobe photography is from the inappropriately titled Light: Science & Magic - An Introduction to Photographic Lighting.

too much of a good thing

I haven't fallen, but I can get up.

Having too much fun with yet another Zeiss lens - the 35mm f/2 ZE - laying about in the sun after the bloody Briggs & Stratton 5 HP pull start engine wouldn't start.

testing...1, 2, 3

Not very rigorous, but I think this pretty effectively demonstrates the usefulness of the Mosaic Engineering Anti-Alias filter in the Canon 7D. Watch this fascinating video to see the difference between using the filter and NOT using the filter, with ordinary household objects.

another example of... oh, never mind

Last week's shoot involved some Time Travel. Much thanks to Ralph Williams for helping to construct the Machine, and Sallah Baloch for consulting on the design. See the Vimeo page for complete credits.

cast into the wilderness

The official Deck Before & After are still languishing somewhere in the archives. In the meantime, here's the immediate aftermath of 80 mph winds blowing through the area. This would be the new after.

looking up

Despite the pasel of images of the newly completed handrail - constructed at the insistance of insurance officials - here's what I've got to show.

Soon enough we'll get to project before & afters. It reminds me that I read, once upon a time when Andreas Gursky visited Brasilia, he took a picture of the carpet. The buildings didn't excite him much.