Light Spirals

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

I hung a little light from the ceiling, with an extra weight on the line, then spun them around, and took a photo from underneath. I've seen a lot of people achieve much better results from this sort of thing.

Pentax K-x - 20 sec - f/? - ISO 200 - ~15mm

Small LED light.

Used GIMP to adjust levels (dropping out the very dim light on the ceiling) and then used threshold to get rid of blue tinges on the edges of the narrower streaks. Cropped, scaled and watermarked.

It turned out to be harder than I'd expected. I frequently wound up with the light swinging backwards and forwards, rather than around, giving just a line, rather than a spiral. When it did swing nice and wide the light pointed too far out to the side and didn't get enough light on the camera. I think this could be fixed by adding a longish diffuser on the end of the light. These lines seem a bit bumpy, where others look smooth. Maybe I was launching with too much force, but I needed to to get it to swing wide. Maybe I shouldn't have been using such a wide lens.

Bicycle of Freedom

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

As I was parking my bicycle in the bike room I bumped the bike next to it, and that bike rolled forward with an unexpected smoothness. I realised that it wasn't chained up, and in a room stuffed full of bikes all chained up, this one bike seemed to be so free. It was like a symbol of open mindedness. Trusting and uninhibited. Is it naivete to leave your bike without locking it up, or is it a challenge to the defensive individualistic-ness of the other riders? "Value objects less!" it exclaims. "Trust others, and they will be trustworthy". There was something beautiful about this bike.

Canon A720 - 1/10 sec - f/2.8 - ISO 400 - ~38mm

Indoors, fluro strip lights.

Used GIMP to adjust levels, scale and watermark.

I found that if I used my flash, set to -2 stops compensation it didn't really show up, except that all the reflectors (red on the back, yellow on the spokes and pedals, white on bags) were highlighted. Worth remembering.

Moon

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

There was a full moon, and the way it was in the clouds made it look like the iris of an eye. Unfortunately there was also power poles in the way of the eye, and using my point and shoot didn't give great results on the moon itself. This photo is specifically taken with the intent of being able to later take a better one (you can't have a photo that is better, without having one that is worse).

Canon A720 - 1/1500 sec - f/5 - ISO 1600 - ~75mm

Lighting, strobist info.

Used GIMP to scale and watermark.

I probably could have shot with a lower ISO and slower shutter speed. That sky is pretty noisy. I'd like to try this again with my dSLR, a really narrow lens and a tripod.

New Park Stuff

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

When I was really little our school had an old version of this climbing thing. Wood and ordinary rope, where this one is metal and has plastic based rope. It got knocked down to make space for a sports hall, and for quite some time playgrounds seemed to be trending towards softer and less dangerous and mostly less fun. For whatever reason there's been a number of these appearing in both brisbane and auckland that I've seen. They're a lot of fun!

Nikon EM - f/1.8? - ISO 400 (expired) - ~50mm

Daylight.

Used GIMP to scale and watermark. Experimented with setting a transparency and adding some orange to make it look like my other light-leaked photos (such as this one), just for fun, but it just looked silly.

I've made mention of the light leaks I assume caused the white streaks in this other post.

Pixles II

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

Close up of the "insert movie" icon on blogger.

Pentax K-x - 1/30 sec - f/0 - ISO 3200 - ~ 200mm with 28mm lens in reverse

Lit by the backlight of the LCD screen.

Used GIMP to adjust levels, scale and watermark.

Bin Day II

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

This is a second try at my previous Bin Day photo, since I had an idea afterwards to try to improve the composition. I don't think its a big improvement, but there is a bit more compression, and a bit less distraction at the far end. I also like having the centre of the road straight, as it adds to the symmetry. Also, apparently the people who parked on the street on this particular day were a bit american.

Canon A720 - 1/125 sec - f/4 - ISO 200 - ~127mm

Morning daylight.

Used GIMP to adjust levels, crop, scale and watermark.

I had a lot of trouble picking a final crop for this image. When shooting I moved way back so that I'd have a lot of options for the crop. I went for a pretty tight crop, very similar to the first one (framing using the two overhanging trees). I had the option of a wider crop with more bins, and showing more interesting detail on the tops of the trees, but I felt that the framing added a lot to the shot. There's not a huge difference, but when you consider the changed aspect ration, there is a small amount of compression occuring, and there's definitely less of the fence at the end of the street, thanks to being higher up the hill.
I used my compact camera for the first shoot because I had it with me while I was waiting to be picked up for work, and had been expecting to take it with me and get a photo there. I think I might have a third crack at this image with my dSLR and a really narrow lens.
I actually shot a bunch of angles and compositions, and just as I was walking away thought "oh, I should check that I don't have some stupid setting on that I didn't realise". The ISO was still at 1600 from the stupid shoe shot. Fortunately I caught it this time, and went back and shot with a reasonable ISO.

Toolshed, Take 2

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

A wider angle approach to a toolshed which I tried to capture before.

Canon A720 - 1/320 sec - f/4 - ISO 1600 - ~38mm

Daylight.

Used GIMP to rotate, adjust levels, scale and watermark.

Firstly, I'm disappointed over the high ISO setting that I'd left on from my shoe photo. Secondly, I think this image shows the clutter better than the first, but there's less of a sense of toolshed. I think the two need to work together to really give the impression I got when I saw it. Maybe its a skill limitation, but maybe the ideas I had require more than one image.

Rifling

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

Looking down the barrel of a gun, son of a gun.

Pentax K-x - 1/160 sec - f/? - ISO 6400 - ~27mm

Daylight, indoors.

Used GIMP to crop, scale and watermark.

Its really quite abstract. Focusing on rifling is not easy. Even searching google images and flickr for "rifling" didn't turn up anything much better than what I was getting (flickr search was really bad actually, turning up stacks of rifles, but very few showing rifling). I'd be interested to try again with a tripod, a narrow lens, and a really tight apperture. Maybe even focal stacking? Perhaps that wouldn't actually make it better...
Oh, and that's not actually an eye in the middle. The bolt had been removed, and I was pointing the camera down-barrel toward a wall (I'd initally been shooting (camera angle, not the gun) out the screen door, which was giving a blown out center and interesting lighting on the rifling).

Subconscious Art

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

There's a short film called the Subconscious Art of Graffitti Removal which talks about these strange sorts of patterns.

Canon A720 - 1/2000 sec - f/8 - ISO 1600 - ~38mm

Daylight.

Used GIMP to rotate adjust levels, scale and watermark for web.

The whole set of photos taken at the bridge were taken at a ridiculously and unnecessarily high ISO. I'm really annoyed that I forgot to switch it back after the shoe photo.

Shoe

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

My shoe, sitting on the floor. I was busy that day, okay?

Canon Powershot A720 - 1/12 sec - f/3.5 - ISO 1600 - ~86mm

Tungsten balanced fluorescent bulbs.

Used GIMP to adjust levels on each of the different channels (I found out recently that the reason auto-adjust for levels never showed up the changes it made was because I was only ever looking at the "value" channel, which isn't really a channel, but a sort of derivative of the Red, Green and Blue channels. Not only have I since been able to properly understand what auto levels does, but I can even imitate its colour shifting tricks (something I couldn't do when I was only adjusting the value channel) but retain control over its overall brightness changes) to fix the colour cast without resulting in stacks of noise (which auto-adjust did). I then scaled and watermarked for the web.

Taking this photo I cranked the ISO way up. Particularly for a point and shoot, this ISO is very noisy. Not a problem when I'm taking a photo of a shoe on the ground that I didn't really care about. Particularly when it was really low light, and I needed to anyway. Unfortunately I forgot about this, and the high ISO setting was on during shooting for the 23rd and 25th and most of the 26th. I'm quite disappointed in the damage that this mistake did to photos which could have been a lot better.

Pixles

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

A close up of the LCD screen of my computer. The
red blue and green stripes are the individual parts that make up white. The out of focus region has been exaggerated, to show the colours mixing.

Pentax K-x - 1/125 sec - f/0 - ISO 800 - ~ Unknown focal length

Subject was backlit, because that's how LCD screens work.

Used GIMP to crash the computer repeatedly (old laptop) until I thought to scale for web before doing the computationally heavy filter and gradient. I adjusted levels (scaled), duplicated the layer, used Gaussian blur to exaggerate the already out of focus parts of the image. Added layermask, used radial gradient to make the middle section transparent, showing through to the in-focus, unblurred part of the original image. Finally, added the watermark.

I think I used a 28-80mm lens on the camera, with a 50mm lens held in reverse in front of it. This probably gave me between 1:1 and 1:2 times magnification. I think. I was trying different lenses for this, but judging by the size of the pixels, this is what I used for this picture. Because the two lenses weren't terribly well lined up (hand held) the plane of focus was rather shifty, and I couldn't get a photo with everything in focus. I learned later that the magnification achieved using one lens mounted, one lens reversed is Fm/Fr times, where Fm is the focal length of the mounted lens and Fr is the focal length of the reversed lens. So a narrow mounted lens, and a wide reversed lens gives higher magnification. Future work on this principle will involve higher magnifications and a more stable set up.

NB

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

I have a preference for this particular brand of notepad, and use a variety of sizes for different purposes.

Pentax K-x - 1/15 sec - f/? - ISO 200 - ~82mm

Achiever 300DX flash triggered manually. I used a laptop screen to block light to the background, and this is the time I've used this technique (lighting the subject with a flash and allowing the background to go completely dark). It was a pretty dark background to start with but max synch speed is not very high when you're using the test button and I'm going to count it.

Used GIMP to adjust levels (which blacked out the extremely dim remaining background) then scaled (so I wouldn't crash GIMP during the rest on my 5 year old laptop). I rotated, and cropped a piece of the cover to go over the bulldog clip that it was held up with. I used several different selection tools, selection moving, layer masking and generally practised techniques that are a bit more advanced than what I normally used.

I probably could have cropped closer at the top.

Bin Day

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

Had to get up early to get to work, and took this photo of the street while waiting for my lift.

Canon A720 - 1/40 sec - f/4.8 - ISO 100 - ~226mm

Early morning light.

Used GIMP to adjust levels, scale and watermark for web.

I think that the tree arch really helps the composition. I would have liked it better if it had had better symmetry (ie, without the car on the left) and if the end of the street had been a little better somehow, like another block worth perhaps. In retrospect, I may have been able to achieve this second improvement simply by walking back up the street further. I might try this again next bin day.

Toolshed

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

A toolshed at a school camp at which I was working.

Pentax K-x - 1/60 sec - f/4 - ISO 100 - ~38mm

Overcast daylight.

Used GIMP to adjust levels, crop, scale and watermark for web.

I felt like it was sort of interesting at the time, but I don't think I captured it in this photo.

Flouride is Poison

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

A creek, and concrete barrier I pass on my way to uni sometimes.

Canon A720 - 1/250 sec - f/4 - ISO 100 - ~41.6mm

Overcast daylight.

Used GIMP to adjust levels, partially desaturate yellow (for some reason desaturating green didn't effect the foliage nearly as much as desaturating yellow), scale and watermark for web.

I would have liked to have been able to emphasise the wall a bit more. This could have been done in post I guess, but didn't seem worth the time. Ideally, it would have been best to really explore different angles and compositions to achieve this, but again, it wasn't worth the time.

Corn / Art

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

An art exhibit at the uni gallery. Its a room filled to about ankle deep with corn. There's some pictures on the walls, possibly american indians? I didn't read the tags, I was too busy playing in the corn.

Canon A720 - 1/4 sec - f/2.8 - ISO 100 - ~38mm

Interior lighting.

Used GIMP to adjust levels, scale and watermark for web.

Not particularly pleased with my composition, but I was in a hurry.

Bikerack

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

Overcrowded bike racks on the university side of the bridge.

Pentax K-x - 1/125 sec - f/4 - ISO 100 - ~95mm

Daylight, partially shaded.

Used GIMP to try to even out the lighting. Scaled and watermarked for the web.

I'm bummed that the light was like this - the bright background detracts from the image, but the photos that only show the bikes lack context and meaning.

Old and New II

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

A second attempt at the film + flash memory still life photo.

Pentax K-x - 1/2 * 5 sec - f/? - ISO 200 - ~82mm

5 exposures using multiple exposure mode. Fired a flash each time, I think one missed. Each pop was from a manually triggered Achiever300DX. Two were bounced off a reflector (approx A4) from each side of the camera toward the subject. Two were aimed at the background with the reflector acting as a gobo to stop it directly hitting the subject.

Used GIMP to adjust levels, crop, scale and watermark for web.

It was fun to play with the K-x's multiple exposure mode. It'll be an interesting one to keep in mind.
I'd like to have yet another go with this shot. I feel I rather over did the background and underdid the subjects. Also, the lighting is really flat and boring.

Eleventh Hour

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

My watch, showing how near the end of the day was when I took this photo. I changed the zoom during the exposure to get this effect.

Pentax K-x - 1/4 sec - f/? - ISO 3200 - ~82mm

Pop up flash, gelled to match ambient light, two little LED torches, stationary in background to create streaks

Used GIMP to adjust levels, scale and watermark for web.

I would like to do this one again, and do it better. I also learned a lot.
Try after try of the zoom part just wouldn't come out like I wanted, so I think I need to go check the tutorials I read about this, to see if there's a trick that I'm missing.
Perhaps more point light sources in the background would help show the zoom effect better.
I also was planning on setting my watch forward so it read 23:59, but I was making so many attempts I would have been constantly re-adjusting it (also, it would have been awkward, as it was hanging by a thread).
I got to learn a bit more about the K-x's flash settings. Turns out that by default the white balance switches to auto when you pop up the flash. This meant that while I was expecting it to be tungsten balanced (and was gelling the flash to suit) it wasn't. Gelling the flash had about the opposite effect, and made me think that I was just really really bad at judging colour cast. I finally figured it out and changed the setting (easy enough - Menu, Custom 2, 8. WB When using flash, change to 2. Unchanged). I'm glad to have figured this out now, and I'm sure I'll be making plenty of use in future of these gels. Infact, I wonder if they've caused problems in the past without me even realising.

Polar-eyes-ed

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

Light from a polarised source (eg, laptop screen) will be blocked by a polarising filter, but if it passes through plastic on its way then stresses in the plastic will cause the light to de-polarise, with coloured bands showing areas of equal stress. Or something. The eyes are from a picture I put up on the laptop screen.

Pentax K-x - 1/15 sec - f/? - ISO 200 - ~105mm

Lit as described above.

Used GIMP to crop, adjust levels and scale for web.

Slacker

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

This activity is actually called slack lining, and is quite a challenge (I had a try, but didn't manage to go anywhere).

Pentax K-x - 1/180 sec - f/? - ISO 200 - ~15mm

Backlit by the sun, pop-up flash for fill.

Used GIMP to adjust curves, crop, scale and watermark for web.

I shot this with such a wide angle lens that my flash didn't even cover all of the subject (who only took up a small part of the frame). Have a look at his left hand. That, incidentally, is what the rest of him would have looked like if I hadn't used the flash. In future I'll be more aware of the limitations of flash when shooting wide, and maybe try to get the subject inside the flash zone (complicated by the fact that it isn't in the centre).

Cameras Are For Capturing Light

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

This camera has the same lens mount as my digital one. I'm hoping to sell off all my other film SLRs, but keep this one.

Pentax K-x - 2 sec - f/? - ISO 200 - ~40mm

Lit using an Achiever 300DX flash fired into the lens (and therefore, out the viewfinder). A small but powerful LED torch was used to 'paint' the camera itself during the rest of the exposure.

Used GIMP to adjust levels and black out background. Darkened some extraneous objects on the table. Scaled and watermarked for the web.

I really should have gotten stuff off the table for this, it was a pain to remove in post.

Piano

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

A wide shot of the piano that shares my room.

Pentax K-x - 1/20 sec - f/? - ISO 1600 - ~15mm

Window light, directly behind the piano (from the camera).

Used GIMP to adjust levels to darken the brick background (still there if you look really really hard), scaled then rotated (mostly just so that the watermark would fit in nicely) and added the watermark.

I don't know enough about pianos, but would a pianist be able to tell that it had been rotated? I know I've seen photos before of things I knew had been rotated. Is this a bad trend, adjusting my compositions by rotating or leaving space at the bottom to accommodate the watermark? If an image is important for more than just the p365 I usually save a copy between editing and scaling and watermarking, perhaps I should just make the compositional changes after the good copy is saved.

Colour

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

Four of my gels, with a neutral density gel under the lightest blue one.

Pentax K-x - 1/2 sec - f/? - ISO 200 - ~40mm

The gels were placed on a suspended frosted plastic cutting board and an Achiever 300DX flash was manually triggered during exposure, pointing at the white-ish floor underneath the cutting board.

Used GIMP to rotate and crop. Duplicated the layer and used levels to first push everything really bright (to easily select the white around the three darker gels) and then to push everything really dark (to select the lightest gel). I saved these two selections to channels and then inverted the one that represented the lightest gel, subtracted it from the one that represented the other three, and deleted. This gave the pure white surround them (the cutting board was not fully blown out, leaving scratches showing, as well as some of the support). I then adjusted the whitespace to taste, and added space below for a watermark. Scaled and watermarked for the web.

Not the most wonderful of compositions, and trying to balance the really light gel with the darker three wasn't great (and it still looks odd) but boy did I get to try some unusual stuff in GIMP.

Candy

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

Some sweets I purchased and then somewhat regretted.

Pentax K-x - 1/20 sec - f/? - ISO 400 - ~27mm

Used GIMP to rotate, adjust levels, increase saturation, crop, scale and watermark for web.

I found it looked unbalanced once I rotated it, but the shot was taken looking straight down. Is it because I had gotten used to seeing it in one orientation? Perhaps they'd been on the side previously.

Friends, on film

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

Some friends of mine that I spent the day with. Turns out my old film camera has some fun flaws.

Nikon EM - ISO 400 - ~50mm

Daylight

Used GIMP to scale and watermark.

It was exciting getting my film developed. I was quite disappointed to receive a call during the day telling me that my film was fogged. When I got it back I was pretty stoked though. A lot of the shots have these orange streaks, or even orange tinting. I spoke to the people at the photo lab, and they came to the conclusion that the camera (which I had with me) had light leaks. They pointed out the edges of the back part, where all that remains of the light-sealing foam is a bit of adhesive.
I think its great.

My First SLR

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

This picture is here in lieu of one taken with the camera in the photo. Once I get the film developed, if one of the resulting images from this day are acceptable, this photo will be replaced. It could be a while, I'm only 21 shots into the roll.

Pentax K-x - 1/2 sec - f/? - ISO 800 - ~82mm

Two differently balanced fluros.

Used GIMP to adjust levels, straighten, crop, scale and watermark for web.

I could have pushed the ISO all the way to 6400 and hand held it, rather than fussing around with a tripod. In the opposite direction, if I'd wanted a nicer image, I could have turned off one of the lights and used flash for fill.

Poke

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

A friend pokes at the camera.

Pentax K-x - 1/500 sec - f/? - ISO 6400 - ~15mm

Used GIMP to adjust levels, scale and watermark for the web.

I don't think his finger touched the glass (he knows how special lenses are) but it was inside the hood, because this lens is crazy wide.

Different Dog

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

A friend's dog.

Pentax K-x - 1/500 sec - f/? - ISO 800 - ~15mm

Daylight.

Used GIMP to crop, adjust levels, apply some blur to the fence and scale and watermark for the web.

This is one of the first shots with my ultra-wide-angle lens. I was almost touching the dog's face with the lens.

Bricks

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

The bricks that make up the wall of my room.

Pentax K-x - 1/25 sec - f/0 - ISO 400 - ~49mm

Windowlight on camera right, improvised reflector on camera left, aimed to give fill light on the bricks closest the camera, but not those further off.

Used GIMP to adjust levels, scale and watermark for web.

It was a bit of a last minute thing, but it was interesting to see the effects of using the reflector.

Rainy Day

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

A couple of friends playing in a large puddle after the rain.

Pentax K-x - 1/1600 sec - f/0 - ISO 400 - ~75mm

Overcast daylight.

Used GIMP to adjust levels, scale and watermark for web.

I used my kit lens for a bit, which worked well, but then switched to my old manual focus 50mm. It turns out its hard to hold an umbrella and manually focus on a pair of moving targets at the same time.

Dried Apricot

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

Simillar to the backlit onion image, this one is inspired by the tomato image. One of these days I'll get a tomato and do it properly.

Pentax K-x - 1/4 sec - f/? - ISO 800 - ~82mm

Lit using an Achiever 300DX flash held pointing at the (whitish) floor, to bounce up through a thin plastic chopping board (to diffuse light) to backlight the subject (which was about 40mm above the chopping board on a transparent plastic container). The flash was manually fired using the test button.

Used GIMP to duplicate the image as layers. Adjust the curve for the top layer to give high contrast (which turned it red) then desaturated the colours, and adjusted the brightness of red and yellow to match. This top layer was applied as Grain Merge (I'm learning, but I still don't know what that does), which accentuated the wrinkles, but preserved the colour, which was what I was trying to do.