Come Fly with Me
September 2, 2010 by Kivus · View Comments
I have very rarely been harassed when taking pictures, but every so often I do get a strange look when I pull out my camera. I think that on an airplane might be one of those times when people just really don’t expect you to take out the camera, so I did get a few looks. Ultimately, I really don’t care.
This picture came from my flight to Maine, but the better shots would have been on my flight back from Maine. Unfortunately, I was on the wrong side of the plane (where the sun was setting), and I didn’t feel like dealing with asking 3 people if I could crawl over them to take a picture (especially when they had their shade drawn.) Maybe next time.
Bonding
August 31, 2010 by Kivus · View Comments
I was standing on a bridge in Maine, looking at out the coast lines. There were the rocky coasts, waves crashing against the rocks, and a few boats slowing crossing over the horizon. I took my camera off my eye for a minute to take a break and saw this father, walking with his daughter, down to the water. The father was holding his daughter’s hand and his daughter was wearing a little pink backpack, as they walked down to the edge of the water. To be honest, I was so busy, watching and smiling, that I almost forgot to bring my camera back up to take a picture.
The lens on my Nikon P6000 isn’t so great, so you only end up barely seeing the girl, and barely seeing her pink backpack. But, frankly, I don’t care, this picture just makes me feel good. (Oh, and yeah, I have no idea if it was really father / daughter, but in my story, that’s what they are.)
All Aboard the Appledore
August 29, 2010 by Kivus · View Comments
Since coming back from Maine, with hundreds of images on multiple memory cards, it has been a struggle not to just throw up all the images I took. I’d say that I have 3-4 that are portfolio worthy, another 50-60 that will eventually be put up as Snapshots. Some people, like Thomas Hawk, take so many photos that they can put up 20-30 a day on Flickr. I just don’t have that kind of picture volume even if I try to take at least a few pictures every day. I wouldn’t mind getting to that level, but for now, I’ve pretty much settled into a photo every other day pace.
In addition to editing photos, I’ve been sending a decent about of time on some new site features. The one new section that I’ve completed is reviews, which consolidates all the reviews I’ve done to date.
The Girl Who had Hair Like This
August 27, 2010 by Kivus · View Comments
The Scott Pilgrim comic series by Bryan Lee O’Malley is on the short list of my favorite comic series of all time. When it was announced they were making a movie out of the books, I was both excited and nervous.
At this point, the movie has been out for a couple of weeks, and there are number of stories about it’s particularly low box office (Vanity Fair even has a plea that you go see it this weekend). Personally, I don’t really care, since one of my favorite comic series was made into an unbelievably awesome movie.
The above picture is re-enactment of the party where Scott first meets Ramona, done with the newly available Scott and Ramona plushies.
Stand Up
August 25, 2010 by Kivus · View Comments
One of the major drawbacks of shooting with my Nikon P6000 is the speed at which I can take shots. It takes a bit to focus and then it takes about 5 seconds inbetween shots (when shooting in RAW) in order to get ready for the next shot. This means that I frequently have to anticipate what is going to happen. If it’s sports photography, it means I pre-focus on an area that I think something is going to happen in (which usually isn’t too hard since I’m pretty familiar with the flow of games). In this case, I saw a horse rolling around on the ground, looking ready to stand up. I focused my camera and waited. About 2 second later, I took this picture.
Quiet Night at the Clubhouse
August 21, 2010 by Kivus · View Comments
It was a quiet one night when I was walking by the Brier Creek clubhouse, and since there was still a decent amount of light out, I set down my tripod and took an HDR. They say photography is about compromises, and this is a perfect example. Photomatix handles lights in these kind of HDR shots better than any other program I’ve tried, but the Photomatix Aperture plugin’s ghosting correct is not up to par with Photoshop’s HDR Pro. So do I go for the cool lights with the ghosty flag or get the flag right and have slightly less than ideal lights? I decided the lights were more important in this shot.
Enter at your Own Risk
August 19, 2010 by Kivus · View Comments
The main reason for this snapshot posting is because I’m trying out the new Twitter Tools authentication system. Instead of standard username / password setup, it now uses full developer API integration. I guess that’s good if I ever decide I want to write my own twitter client on my website?
This particular photo comes from a trip I took to the Duke Gardens back during International HDR day. I thought this looked like some place that you’d walk into in a video game and then a cut scene would start and a boss battle would happen. Sadly, no one challenged me when I walked through it.
Outsourcing
August 17, 2010 by Kivus · View Comments
I’ve got major stuff on my plate from work and I’ve got a really cool photo spot that I’m taking Elyssa later this evening. Since I’m not sure I’ll have time to do any blog posting today, I decided to outsource those efforts.
I Hear Mars is Gorgeous this Time of Year [Concept Experiment]
August 15, 2010 by Kivus · View Comments
In order to take a bit of a brake from some of the cases I’m analyzing, I decided to take 20-30 minutes to go through and process some photos for upcoming snapshots on the site. I had taken an HDR image of dirt to test out something else I’ve been trying to experiment with, but the various shots of the reddish clay made me think “I wonder if I can make that look like a version of Mars”. With Nik Software‘s Color Efex Pro doing most of the heavy lifting, I ended up getting the image I was looking for.
A Chapel Hill Landmark
August 14, 2010 by Kivus · View Comments
One of the tips that Scott Bourne gives is in his Going Pro podcast is to try to market your photography to your local market. I guess it’s should not be surprising then that, as a North Carolina resident, I have sold more copies of my Old Well picture than any other of my images. I took some other shots of the Old Well that day, but my HDR technique at the time was lacking. I didn’t take dark enough exposures to get all the detail in the sky. Also, if I really wanted to make this image stronger, I would process it with software that has better anti-ghosting than the version of Photomatix. The Photomatix 4 Aperture plugin & new Nik Software HDR product cannot come soon enough.
Recent Photos
