My Top Five Photos I’ve Posted on Flickr
My first memory of photography is somewhere around the 3-4 year old range when my mother was heavily into photography. She took me with her into the darkroom and let me do photograms, and she’d let me slowly get into taking pictures with a wide array of cameras. I hit the darkroom throughout elementary school, high school, and a little bit in college before turning to digital.
So I’ve taken thousands of images over the years (boy that makes me sound old). No where near all of them have been digitized, and very few are posted… But nevertheless here’s a list of my five favorite images that I have posted on Flickr. Most of my Flickr images are relegated to the landscape and inanimate object variety, but that’s only because in this day and age I don’t like posting images of people without their 100% permission.
So the photos here may be my favorite for composition reasons, or because of the memories associated with the image. Regardless here’s the list as it sits now and could very well change with the weather.
5. untitled – 2007. That is the top of a willow tree up at my grandparents place in Angola Indiana. This is an infrared image, but the thing that makes me love this is light clouds in the sky. There’s nothing technically hard about this if you know basic infrared, but it just makes me happy for a reason that I can’t quite say now that I’m trying to.
4. Defender 110 and Neil on Pearl Pass – 1999. I love this image for what it shows and the time it takes be back to. The storm in the distance is a bit looming, but the sparse landscape shows you that there’s something different about where this image was taken. This was actually taken with my first digital camera. A Sony Mavica that only got up to 1024×768… That’s right, less than a single megapixel.
3. Smear over Silver Lake – 2008. This image was something I had to work for. This was the culmination of a few years of trying to learn High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. It’s not that I hadn’t produced HDR photos that I’d liked in that time, but this was the first one that came out in the way I really wanted to when I set out to learn HDR. Then again, it is one of those easy to take scenes, but the processing hoops I went through were pretty complicated. This image probably stopped what was my increasing frustration in getting what I wanted out of HDR.
2. Millennium Park – 2007. This is here mostly because it’s such a cool subject, and I was pretty happy with this being my first serious attempt at HDR. I’ve reprocessed it since and gotten a few things better, but not the intense blue gradients with no other people around. I actually shouldn’t have had time to take this because I was waiting for a group of people to get into Chicago, and they should have been there hours beforehand. While I was pissed that they were so late (completely within their control), I’m pretty happy I was able to go and get this and a few other images.
1. War Memorial – 2007. I just really dig the backlit thing going on in this. I was actually in the middle of doing a time lapse with my D200, but I had the D100 on hand to take quick one-offs like this. I’m glad I did. This was the best thing I got all night.
Honorable Mention:
holiday weekend gone by
So it was another thanksgiving gone by where a four day weekend didn’t really feel like there was any weekend in there at all. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time on the day and going up to see other family over the weekend, it’s just tiring and draining – and I don’t think it’s supposed to be.
But it’s all good. I did get to take a few images while up at my grandparent’s place. This is the first one I’ve posted. I’m really digging HDR (high dynamic range) photography. My wife thinks that they look more like paintings than photos. I just think they look cool. And if you have any desire to get into doing it yourself, don’t use the photoshop automation for HDR… Get the standalone Photomatix.
But I hope everyone had a great weekend and holiday fun.
Cincinnati for a Night
Took a quick trip to Cincy over the weekend. I’ve been there many times, but mostly as a kid going to Reds games. This was really the first time I’ve seen more of the city from driving and walking around.
A few observations. The zoo is overrated, too expensive, very little driving signage when it counts, lots of construction, and over crowded. The gorillas were cool though.
Had a dinner at Jeanro, a “french bistro”. Snotty hostess… So-so wait staff… I got hosed on the special, but Vic’s meal was good enough to give it another chance when we’re back.
The last thing was the Ikea, which was less nuts than the Chicago experience we’re used to.
It was a good weekend.
Congressional Balyhoo
yeah, I’m pissed… I’m pissed that I’m even in the position that a bailout is necessary…
Notice the part of the statement acknowledging that a bailout is in fact necessary.
F* the financial sector for screwing the pooch in so many bad ways… F* the government for letting it go down (both parties are responsible, but the party pulling for less regulation is more to blame)… And F* the congress for failing to do something quick when it’s obvious that it needs to get done NOW…
It makes me feel sick to my stomach…
Conjure
Just an image I took yesterday just before leaving work… I’m liking it more an more since then…
Little trip and United BS in DC
So we took a short 4-day, 3-night trip to Maine for my mother’s wedding last week, and it was wonderful… I have a set of images on Flickr where I’m putting things from time to time…
But my reason for writing is the completely ludicrous experience we had in the whole travel process. The whole nasty process both ways was through Washington DC… The way out through Reagan, and the way back through Dulles (you know – the one from Die Hard 2).
First the way out. Reagan airport is very new, and very shiny with lots of stores and inflated prices for a TGI Friday experience. The problem, because it was designed before 9/11, we had to exit one concourse and go through TSA again before arriving at our connecting gate. Complete and utter BS. It’s also here where I saw an airport badged employee wearing a shirt with the word mujahideen on it. While I don’t care that someone is wearing that, it just struck me as ironic given that someone working in an airport these days in DC would wear that…
The way back was the coup de gras… We were scheduled to leave Manchester, NH at 7:14 pm (boarding at 6:44) on a United flight to Dulles (DC). We get there at 5 to drop off rental car, check into the flight, go through TSA, and grab light dinner. We got to the gate at 5:40ish, and we were the second one there. Everything seemed normal.
As the time went on and I ploughed through my Grisham book my wife noticed that the incoming flight was delayed 20 minutes. Then 40 minutes. Then an hour. All the while our departure time stayed the same and “on time”. No United employee was at the gate to give us any information.
This was the case until 7:10, when another passenger went up to the board and changed 7:14 to 7:41 because it was blatently obvious that it wasn’t going as planned. At around 7:20, another person waiting got through to customer and explained the predicament. According to the service rep, everything was still fine because the computer stated that it was “on time” and computers don’t lie. The man had to spell it out that it was now 7:25 and since there was no plane at the gate and no united employee present that there was something wrong with what the computer was telling everyone.
Then a United person miraculously showed up before the plane arrived, and promptly got into a fight with a ticket holder while not giving any answers to the complete sham of an experience that a completely booked flight of people were experiencing.
We found out that somehow Dulles organization forced a delay. Our arrival in Dulles showed that type of moronic planning. While we should have had about 2 hours layover in DC, we sprinted to be the last persons on an overbooked flight to Indy that saw us get home around 1. I blame William Sadler?
keeping an eye on the south
We went on a spur of the moment photography outing last night. On a school night nonetheless…
A lot of things didn’t turn out as I’d hoped, but oh well. I did get some fun images here and there. This is the first one that I’ve posted to Flickr…
Oddly alone
I saw this while walking around downtown Asheville after seeing the Biltmore. It looked so odd to have a rather large building frontage with no windows above the first floor and the lone three letters that is the name of this company.
Usually the company has the work pharmacy and such afterwards, so this struck me as being very stark and minimal compared to what I’m used to.
On a photographic note, I was pleased with the amount of dynamic range I’ve been getting out of RAW files from my D200 and CS3. This image doesn’t show it as much because of the composition, but I’d usually not be able to have a bright sky and building in the shadows in nicely visible area.
A little Ominous in IR
This is the main attraction in Asheville for tourists. It’s also “the largest private residence” in America. It’s still owned and ran by the descendants of the Vanderbilt’s.
It’s quite a sight to see, and I recommend it if you’re in the area and have the time. It’s more than a little boggling to the mind to think about the kind of money that went into building it back then… and how much such a thing would cost now.
This image was taken in infrared, which treats things different based on its ability to reflect and absorb infrared light as opposed to visible light. The results can be in color, but I like the B&W result more. Blah, blah, blah… I’m a camera geek.
As seen on TV
This was on the way to Asheville on our road trip a few weeks ago. The first thing that I had to unpack the D200 to get an image of. The things inside will get posts all their own at some point.Just for some context, this outlet was attached to a filling station. The bathrooms in-between were such that my wife shudders when she thinks about them. Maybe not Trainspotting bad toilets, but nasty nonetheless.
