As if Veronica and I don’t want to see Italy bad enough, I came across this awesome morning-to-night timelapse video of Venice!
(If you’re wondering why a lot of it looks almost fake or model-like, I bet the photographer used a tilt-shift lens for many of the images)
Time to empty my head of random thoughts bouncing around…
You would think that if we met a couple and fucked them not once but twice, they would recognize us, right?
You would be wrong.
Veronica and I have profiles on 2 different swingers sites. While we have different user names, it’s still us- many of the same pictures are used on both profiles and the text is damn-near identical. I really couldn’t do much except shake my head at the message we got the other day from Jack and Carla- we had met them thru Swappernet, this message was on Swinglifestyle.
“Hey there, couldn’t resist contacting you guys, we really like your profile and hope to hear back from you”
It’s only been 5 months, have they forgotten about fucking us already? Geez, I guess we didn’t make much of an impression…
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Here’s a scary game – is the quote from Rick Santorum or The Grand Ayatollah of Iran?
It’s surprisingly, and frighteningly, difficult.
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Are you a slut? A handy inter-active flowchart from Mother Jones
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Our beagle isn’t half as entertaining as this pup!
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Veronica and I are seriously thinking about taking a break from swinging for a while. I brought up the idea the other day, I’ve grown frustrated with trying to find couples. When we stopped to think about the last time we swapped with a couple and afterwards we both thought “wow, I can’t wait to see them again”. It’s been a year, there was one couple last August who were fun, but they turned out to be better at creating drama.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we delete both of our profiles soon and just fresh once we’re settled in Maryland later this year.
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The bloody bar photo from Monday? That wasn’t me, it was from someone else, but thanks for the concern!
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Photography stuff….
Motivation for my Project 365 comes and goes. I’m blaming winter, it just feels like there aren’t as many opportunities and now that I’m into year 3, I’ve taken enough photos inside my home, thankyouverymuch.
Speaking of which, this year should be a Project 366. Oops
Anyone care to help me figure out how to set up a sub-domain? I’ve been thinking about creating one for all of my photography, but I don’t have a clue where to start. I did some Googling and frankly I couldn’t understand half of what people were talking about.
I should write a post about my 2 weeks with a rented Nikon D700.
My participation in Wanton Wednesday and Sinful Sunday is sporadic. Some days I wonder what I’m doing and if people really want to see more of my naked_______.
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A happy thought to finish off this post-
It’s no secret that some camera gear can be expensive, and some of it can be REALLY expensive. Investing in a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens (which is at the top of my wish list!) would set someone back about $1900. Before spending that much money on a lens, it sure would be nice to take it for a test drive, so to speak.
How do you test drive camera equipment?
Rent it!
I’m aware of 3 companies that specialize in renting camera gear- Borrow Lenses, LensRentals, and LensProToGo. Despite their names, in addition to lenses all 3 rent cameras, lighting equipment and other accessories. I haven’t used Borrow Lenses (no particular reason, just haven’t), but I’ve used both LensRentals and LensProToGo on several occasions. In addition to the Nikon 24-70 f/2.8, I’ve also rented the Nikon and the Sigma versions of the 70-200mm f/2.8 (here and here) and the Nikon 105mm macro lens, back in late 2010 (here and here). If anyone knows of other places to rent camera equipment, feel free to tell us in the comments section!
How about this treat? For the month of February, rent any piece of equipment from LensProToGo for 1 week, get a 2nd week FOR FREE! I couldn’t find it on the website, but if you enter “7daysfree” in the coupon code field, it will apply the discount.
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Knowing that I like to experiment with different camera gear, my mom got me a gift certificate from LensProToGo for Christmas. Once I saw the email announcing their February special, I figured I could splurge a little bit.
Never mind a lens, I went big, to a full-frame camera, the Nikon D700 
taken with my iPhone
On the left, my Nikon D90, on the right, the full-frame sensor, $2700 D700. (I never wrote about sensor sizes and why they can matter, have I? Might have to do that sooner or later.) This is basically the same imaging system in the pro-level D3, D3s and (I think) the new D4, but in a smaller, slightly less feature-laden package.
Honestly, I have no need for a camera like this, and even if I had that much spare change to spend on camera equipment, I’d upgrade some of my lenses first.
But, for the next 2 weeks I’m going to have fun playing with it!
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Whether you’re a pro who needs a certain lens for an assignment, a semi-pro looking to test some gear before making the investment or an amateur looking to “test drive” your first digital SLR, I highly recommend considering rental the gear first.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some photos to take this weekend….
Whether it is for continuing a Project365 (damn, I need to remember to update my blogroll this weekend- let me know if you’re doing one and I don’t already know about it!) or just for improving your photography skills in general, looking at the work of others inspires me to get out and improve my skills.
Here are some images I found on Ned Hardy, the complete post on that site has 110 images in total, you should check it out!
This is right in my area, I need to get to Fenway Park before we move this summer!
The one place I missed when I was in Paris was the Eiffel Tower, I only saw it from a distance
I did go by the Louvre, but my shots were no where this nice!
Ah, Italy. Someday….
And a few other misc images from around the world…
Intro to Shutter Speed
Intro to Aperture
The third element of the exposure trinity is ISO, which is basically a term that is a holdover from the days of film photography and an indicator of how sensitive the film was to light. Now with digital sensors, the sensitivity can be adjusted from shot to shot. It’s not perfect, but returning to the eye analogy for cameras, the shutter speed is how long the “eye” is open, the aperture is how wide open the “iris” is, and the aperture is how sensitive the “rods and cones” are.
ISO is expressed in whole numbers, 100, 200, 400, etc. Similar to shutter speed and aperture, halving or doubling the ISO halves or doubles how sensitive the sensor is. For example at ISO 400 the sensor is twice as sensitive as ISO 200 (allowing for a faster shutter speed or smaller aperture).
So why not just always use a higher ISO? Image noise, or grain. Check out these 2 images, the first was taken at ISO 200 and required a 1.6 second shutter speed.
Contrast the above image with this one. I cranked the ISO all the way up to 6400, which is the maximum that my D90 is capable of. As a result the shutter speed was just 1/20 sec. See how grainy the figure is? [You may want to click on each photo and view full-sized in a new window.]
Now I will say that a high ISO isn’t always bad, and to some people that graininess isn’t noticeable or important enough to worry about. Here’s a vaguely general guide to selecting ISO
100-200 Daylight and bright indoor conditions
400-800 Indoor conditions
800+ Low-light conditions
High ISO performance is where a digital SLR will out-perform a point-and-shoot and a full-frame DSLR will out-perform a cropped sensor DSLR. Why? Pixel size. And this is why not all 12 megapixal cameras are created equal. A full-frame 12MP camera will have much larger individual pixels than a 12MP sensor in a point-and-shoot, which for technical reasons that are beyond my understanding will yield an image with less noise (and greater dynamic range), especially at high ISO settings. In fact, modern Nikon and Canon full-frame DSLRs are reported to be able to capture relatively noise-free images at ISO 12,800, 25,600 or even higher!
Next week I’ll (attempt to) integrate how to select the right combination of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO in order to properly expose an image AND achieve the artistic results you want. Wish me luck!
Comments, questions, thoughts? Don’t be shy, there’s a comments section for a reason!
I hope you don’t mind that I use photos of Veronica’s breasts to illustrate this effect
Bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or the part of the image outside of the depth of field. When trying to capture a photo with good bokeh, most photographers will tell you that a ‘fast’ aperture lens (ie with a low f/stop number) is necessary, or at least preferred, and they would be correct.
But there’s another, perhaps more important variable- the distance from the camera to whatever is being photographed. Rather try to explain further, here are 2 sample images. Both were taken with my 105mm macro lens at f/3.0.
In this image, I’m about 10-12 feet from Veronica. Try to take your gaze from her breasts and look at the background. Details are blurry but you can still make out what’s there.
Now check out this photo- same camera settings and Veronica hasn’t moved, but I’ve gotten much closer to her, I’m only about 2-3 feet away from her now. Again, never mind her breasts, look at the background and compare it to the photo above.
If how-to posts like this are appreciated and interesting, please let me know and I’ll try to come up with some others for future Photo Friday posts.
One of the benefits of a DSLR is the myriad ways you can adjust many many settings.
One of the drawbacks of a DSLR is the myriad ways you can adjust many many settings.
Because eventually you’ll take a photo, or a whole bunch of photos, and realize they look like crap because the camera settings were off. Here’s what I do to make sure my camera is ready
FYI, this isn’t just for DSLR owners, many point-and-shoot cameras have some degree of manual control.
- Set the white balance. Am I inside or out? Natural or artificial light? Cloudy or sunshine? For mixed light sources, I really need to learn how to use a gray card to set while balance manually.
- Set the ISO. The general rule is the lower the better in order to minimize grain and allow for the fastest possible shutter speed.
- I typically shoot in Aperture Priority mode, but I’ll check the mode selector wheel anyway and will also adjust the aperture if necessary, though I normally use the fastest aperture that the lens is capable of, unless I’m shooting landscapes or want a deeper depth of field.
- Occasionally I’ll change the file type. I normally shoot in RAW mode, but if I’m going to be using burst mode a lot, I may switch to JPG. RAW files are much larger than JPG files and my camera can only shoot about 4-5 pics in RAW mode before the frame rate slows down due to memory buffer issues. More on RAW vs JPG here.
- I’ll also double check metering mode, exposure compensation, shutter mode, and auto-focus area if I recently changed any of those, but I don’t change any of those very often.
Fortunately a DSLR battery will last quite a while, I’ll get 800+ shots between charges, so charging it once a month is usually enough. If I’m traveling I’ll make sure it’s fully charged before I leave.
Reading this, it may sound like a lot, but in practice it only takes me 10-15 sec to make sure my camera is ready, then it’s almost as simple as point-and-shoot when I see a shot I want to take.
Any of my photographer friends do anything differently?
I came across an excellent getting started guide from the people at National Geographic.
There is a free 22 page excerpt available, visit this page on PetaPixel to check it out and download if you like it.
If you really like it and want the full 400+ page book, it’s available from the National Geographic site. (I haven’t bought it, at least not yet, but I suspect that I will sooner or later.)
Maybe someday, armed with enough knowledge and practice, one of us might capture a photograph as beautiful as this!
Happy Shooting!
Seriously, that’s probably the best way to describe the contents of the “Pictures” folder on my computer.
As of tonight, there are 16,466 photos in that folder. Photos of the kids over the years, vacations, stuff from work, downloaded porn, HNT and Wanton Wednesday inspiration ideas. Oh yeah, and if you’re one of *those* friends who has shared images with me, those might be in there too.
Emmy pointed out to me that 16,000+ isn’t that bad, that she has 25,000 (or something like that, I don’t remember, but it was a lot!). And she’s right, I don’t really have that many photos. The problem is the organization, or the lack thereof.
Part of my collection is fairly well-organized, all of my Project365 photos since last December, actually ALL of my pictures since then, are organized in Lightroom. But…
Have I tagged photos to make it easy to find them? No
Have I created separate safe-for-family and not-safe-for-family libraries? No
Are then photos that I could delete and not miss in the least? Absolutely!
Do I share as many photos with extended family as I should? Unfortunately not
Never mind all of the photos taken or downloaded prior to December, that’s where the real clusterfuck is!
I remember reading something about one of the downsides of the digital photography era- people are taking more photos than ever, but we’re sharing less and less. When I was a young kid, I can remember family gatherings and someone pulling out the slide projector to show everyone from the latest vacation, birthday, or whatever. From the pre-digital era Veronica and I have probably a dozen photo albums on our shelves, if someone wants to look at them they’re right there.
Now? I have 1000s of images on my computer, disorganized and intermingled with photos I’d rather dear old Dad didn’t see. So what am I going to do about it?
- it’s time to ruthlessly delete images I don’t need to save
- I need to import everything into Lightroom and use tags and libraries to organize it all
- I need to create a SmugMug account to share images with family and friends
Now if only I could find the time…
Good cop? No, strike that, this guy is a GREAT cop. He’s on patrol and see’s a guy walking down the street carrying a pistol on his belt. As it turns out the individual is also videotapping the entire time, probably trying to make a cop look like an asshole, instead he’s the one who comes across as the asshole. Watch how the cop handles the situation, it’s perfect.
Now contrast the officer in that video with this guy, trampling on the rights of a citizen, in public, to record something happening in public. I saw somewhere that the charges against the photographer were dropped and the cop was being sent for “media sensitive training”.
