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From Life, Times, and Friends

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  • Louis Ave., near our house.
  • Single flower and single squirrel.
  • A small snowstorm...
  • Spontaneous still life on the beach at Andrew Molera in Big Sur.
  • I don't think the photogenic girl ever noticed though. Am I being creepy?
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  • Mah scooter!
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  • Amazing sunset from the patio.
  • Plums! From our plum tree(s)!
  • Day 14. July 22, 2010. Upon arriving home today, I noticed a sedentary bee on my car's windshield. Out came the camera and the 100mm macro, and I managed to get about 30 shots before the bee finally flew away. The yellow and green in the background is from the reflected sunlight filtered through a row of trees by the driveway. I rather like the effect.<br /> <br /> 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro. f/8.0. 1/13. ISO 800.
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  • Day 30. August 7, 2010. Molly made these amazing chocolate leaves by rubbing the leaves into the chocolate, or at least that's what I think she said. Originally, these were on aluminum foil, which made for interesting reflections, but as our house is seriously lacking in lighting right now--the workmen working on the remodeling probably severed the electrical line to all the lights in the front of the house--I used some artificial lighting which didn't do so well with super-reflective aluminum foil. Hence, the paper towel. The light was a flash bounced from the ceiling at 1/8 power.<br /> <br /> 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro. f/6.3. 1/40. ISO 200. Lighting: 580EX II on camera bounced from ceiling at 1/8 power. Increased black clipping in post-processing.
  • Day 35. August 12, 2010. See comments for previous photo.<br /> <br /> This was almost a discard since the smoke was blurred. But after transforming to b/w, this turned out really well. There's a little excess smoke in the top-left that I was thinking about cloning away, but decided to leave this completely without processing (besides converting to b/w).<br /> <br /> 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro @ f/11. 1/20s. ISO 100. 580EX II from camera left and above match tip, 1ft away, at 1/8 power.
  • Day 34. August 12, 2010. Wait a minute, you may be thinking to yourself. Isn't Day 33 supposed to be August 11? Err...yes. Yesterday ended up overflowing, so I just did an extra-awesome shoot today, and posted two pictures.<br /> <br /> I've always wanted to try smoke photography, so I did some reading online, and went for it. It was a lot easier than I though, but it did take patience and careful attention to detail. There's a picture of my setup here <a href="http://lekan.smugmug.com/gallery/11925214_AspKu/#968172745_2urEf">http://lekan.smugmug.com/gallery/11925214_AspKu/#968172745_2urEf</a>). I used my 100mm macro, and manually focused on a match tip held in place by a mic stand with a clip head. I hung a black cloth on a chair to use as a backdrop. Lighting was from camera right for the first few, then switched to camera left. For the smoke to be in focus, I had to stop down to f/11. Smoke also moves surprisingly quickly, so balancing the shutter speed with flash recycle speed with flash power was fun to juggle. Eventually, I settled at a 1/20 shutter, and just varied the flash power, usually between 1/32 and 1/8. Near the end of the shoot, I had enough experience predicting when an interesting smoke pattern would appear that I increased power to 1/4. In total, I used about 30 matches and 420 exposures, which resulted in 17 I developed. Here are my two quick favorites.<br /> <br /> (Update: OK. I'm not sure why smugmug does a terrible job of recompressing the dark areas on its jpg's. If you're interested in an image without all the ugly artifacts everywhere, just let me know and I'll email it to you.)<br /> <br /> 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro @ f/11. 1/20s. ISO 200. 580EX II from camera left and above match tip, 1ft away, at 1/4 power.
  • Day 41. August 18, 2010. Temptations laid out on the desk in my hotel room.<br /> <br /> EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 @ 16mm, f/4.0. 1/30s. ISO 400.
  • Day 49. August 26, 2010. While walking down Bryant St. in Downtown Palo Alto, I found this gorgeous leaf on the ground. By evening when I took this, it had already dried up somewhat, but it still retained most of its bright colors. I soaked it in water for about 5 minutes, then placed it on a black cloth. There's a weak, diffuse on-camera flash, and a moderate flash from behind the leaf to the right that shines through the leaf. Burned bottom right corner in post-processing, and sharpened.<br /> <br /> EF 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro @ f/3.5. 1/125s. ISO 100. 580EX II at 1/64 power, 430EX II from behind right at 1/16 power.
  • Day 59. September 5, 2010. (Where the streets have no name?) Alley next to the friend's house I'm staying at in DC. So many houses here have brick exteriors, which makes for amazing night scenes. Pretty straightforward shot. Only tricky part was balancing the ISO with the shutter speed to get just enough blur on myself.<br /> <br /> EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 @ 10mm, f/3.5. 0.6s. ISO 400.
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