iPhone Panoramas -- AutoStitch app

Thought this was cool.  There is app for iPhone called AutoStitch -- allows you to take images on iPhone and then will stitch them together on the iPhone to create a panorama.  Dead simple to use.  Here's the first one -- pano of the messy home office -- as I was learning about it online.

Below is a photomerge using the same app, just some snaps I had on my iPhone from Disney -- all shots had Tower of Terror in them, just from slightly different angles and content.

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Rediscovered the Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens

I was tidying up studio, and in a moment of cognitive drift I started playing around with the Canon 50mm prime f/1.4 lens. At $350, this is probably one of the best bang-for-your-buck lenses that Canon has. It soaks up light, makes hand-held indoor no-flash shots a reality, and the bokah is pretty good too. I can't explain why it was on the shelf and not in my camera bag.

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Food Recursion 2010

I felt like documenting the beginning of the decade.

For future reference, this is 21MP Canon SLR taking photo of 1080P LCD Sony tuned to the Food Network which has a dude holding up some sort of camera/smart phone with a photo of people eating a Seti's Polish Boy in Cleavland Ohio.

A Happy 2010 New Year to all.

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Holiday Spirits

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Curves Practice

After resisting for so long, am now learning photoshop photography basics, things like using curves for contrast and toning. Here's a couple of curve-manipulated photos from the desert. It's gonna take a lot of practice I believe.

After messing around with photos in the 'digital darkroom' -- I realized that I've got a few rolls of film that need to go down to the real darkroom -- gotta practice the atom-based stuff as well...



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Learning opps

Couple of quick learning opp notes. 1) Took a class at PPSOP with Cheryl Machat Dorskind -- the color class -- I thought her material was top notch compared to some of the other online classes (not bashing other classes at PPSOP, just saying that she jumped a really high bar). There is a bit of overlap with some of the other intro PPSOP courses, but that just means she's reinforcing the good techniques. In general, that class was a good kick in the butt and reason to get up and stretch the shooting routine and skills.

2) I read David Nightingale's chromasia blog, but never considered any of the tutorials -- they were always a bit too much on the the photoshop / digital manipulations side of things. However, I've come around a bit on photo manipulation / enhancement (the dangerous path of HDR leads here), so this type of stuff interests me a bit more lately. David's stuff is a bargain -- 5 pounds per tutorial -- for decent material pulled together in a single place. The real bargain to me is the lifetime subscription. Regularly 75 pounds, discounted to 67 pound now (about 107 US) for all his current and future tutorials seems like a really good deal for that type of training and continuing education.

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Synesthesia

Some people have synesthesia, the ability to experience senses of one type when another sense is stimulated. Good example would be hearing sound triggering perception of color, or language triggering perceptions of taste. If I am tired, loud sounds will give me flashes of purple, but I think that is more from fatigue than synesthesia. Anyway, thinking of the sound-color relationship set me off on a rainy night outdoor shoot with a hand-made musical note aperture for my LensBaby...


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Happy

I'm happy that they're happy. Photo shoot on white, transferred to peach toning for happiness.

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Pastel Sunset

Sunset. Joshua Tree National Park. 11-22-2009.

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Boomer

Boomer from Gears of War.

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iPhone Pics

I never think about taking serious photos with the iPhone, but I was at various DisneyWorld parks last weekend without a "real" camera and decided to give it a go. Turns out there are great photos you can take with an iPhone if you work on your composition and keep an eye out for the interesting. You don't have any control over depth of field or zoom, so you have to drop to the basics of line, color, shape, pattern, etc. Was trying to prove to myself that I could still make interesting stuff with a more basic tool.

Above's a montage of some of the more interesting iPhone captures. Also, below is an opportunistic bonus iPhone snap taken the last 15 minutes we were there...



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Joshua Tree Field

Morning on top of "geology tour road" in Joshua Tree Park.

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Mojave Ghost Town Shack

It appears that I will be taking a long time to go thru photos from the desert trip. I'm still working on stuff from Day 1. Presently, this is one of my favorites. It's a shack near the intersection of Cima and Kelso roads -- shot probably about 1.5-2 hours after sunrise. It's an HDR of 3 shots, but I think I might prefer one of the non-HDR shots -- they are both really rich in color and shadow.

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Goin' (lava) tubing...

Starting to dig into the 1000+ photos from the weekend jaunt to the Mojave Desert area. This one caught my eye while I was browsing -- this is inside a lava tube in some ancient volcanic cinder cones -- went down a hole and crawled on my belly with my tripod and gear. I had a 580EX flash that I used to light the floor and back wall -- the light from an overhead hole in the tube helped light the way as well. I could have kicked myself for not bringing any gels for the flash, could have played with some other effects while I was down there... I got a lucky bounce of light off the front wall -- looks 'lava-ish'. Can't wait to start posting some of the other photos....

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