Category Archives: Still life

Thanks, Seven by Five!

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If you haven’t run across it yet, there’s a good online photo magazine out there called “Seven by Five.” Along with photographer profiles, and helpful how-to articles, they also have weekly and monthly photo contests based on contributions to their Flickr group.

This past week’s theme was “Money” — so I contributed one of my older shots (at the time, I’d had a DSLR for all of 7 months) called “Ka-ching!” In terms of technique, I could do a better job with this shot today — but I still like it a lot.

Ka-ching!

Anyway, lucky me — this shot was one of the 17 that they picked for their weekly shout out. Thanks, gang!

Above as below

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I saw this weathered old boat at Seattle’s Center for Wooden Boats, and since the water was still at the time (early morning), I just had to get this reflection shot:

Above as below

I’m still a bit puzzled at how the weathering on the paint (looks like vertical streaks on the boat’s hull) is so much more prominent in the reflection than in the direct view itself.

Still life with pinhole

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So yesterday, April 25, was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day — I thought I’d contribute a shot using my Lensbaby Composer and its pinhole / zone plate optic:

Still life with pinhole

This is a shot of some flowers on our dining room table — the exposure took forever (OK, 20 seconds) since the pinhole has an effective aperture of f/177. It also needed some serious noise filtering, since sensor artifacts really start showing up on long exposures like this. Still, I like the dreamy, abstract sort of look that it gives the shot.

Just for fun, I also used the zone plate (f/19) function of the optic on the same scene — far dreamier:

Zoneplate flowers

So which do you like better?

BTW, once it’s been reviewed by the powers-that-be, my pinhole submission will be on display as part of the WWPD 2010 gallery here.

Hilo patina

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If you’ve been following my Flickr stream, you’ve likely noticed that I’ve started a habit / tradition of uploading textures on Tuesdays — since I’ve used other peoples’ “free” (Creative Commons Licensed) textures for tinkering with layers in Photoshop, it’s my way of giving back to the community.

Hilo patina 1

Anyway, I normally upload quite a few more shots to Flickr than to this blog — the idea being that blog images are the ones with more interesting stories behind them.

Hilo patina 2

I haven’t really uploaded a texture shot with a good story before, so this is the first time I’ve put texture images on the blog (click on an image in this post to get to the respective full-size version on Flickr if you’d like to download one).

Hilo patina 3

As you’ve likely guessed from the post title, these shots come from Hilo, Hawaii. True enough. You might also recall the old advise that if you’re looking for a different perspective with a shot, or looking for something interesting that might surprise you, you need to look up and down? That’s precisely how I found these. Here:

The patina source

Look up!

D O’F

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While I was experimenting with stock-style photography, I turned my attention to my computer’s keyboard. It’s just sitting there, can’t run away, why not? “D” and “F” are right next to each other (pity the “O” is all the way over on the other side of the keyboard), so I thought they’d be the perfect subjects for a little bokeh / DOF shot:

D O'F

Green coloration added in PS Elements in honor of St. Patrick’s day…

Thanks for the memory

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A little stock-style photographic experimentation:

Thanks for the memory

This shot started with some techno-junk I had kicking around. An ancient ATA hard drive (get one just like it off eBay for about $5), and the motherboard of a defunct PC for an appropriately tech-flavored background. Throw in some flash bounced off the ceiling, and voila!

Next stop for the drive — platter removal (should make a nice wall-mount clock face!).

Taking it back

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Nature reclaiming what once was hers at the now-shuttered George Inlet cannery (near Ketchikan, Alaska):

Taking it back

The cannery was closed in 1957, but parts are still open for tours (fun if you like learning how things used to be done). It’ll be interesting to see how much of the cannery the current owners will leave to naturally decay…

Waiting for the season

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While we were driving around in Newfoundland, we saw something very foreign to U.S. eyes — the use of highway frontage for family storage (in some spots, gardens too). We didn’t see this in Novia Scotia, so maybe it’s a uniquely “newfie” thing?

Along one stretch of the highway on the west coast of Newfoundland, there were a few miles over which nearly all the dirt roads running off the highway were lined with idle lobster traps.

Waiting for the season

Apparently depletion of the local stocks means that the lobster season is very short — something like a week out of the year. As a result, people have to do something with the traps for 90+% of the time. Roadside seems to work…

It was a gray, overcast day — so the full-color version of this didn’t do much for me. I like the sepia, though. Brings out the texture in the weathered wood.