Just got back from a life nourishing vacation and here is one of my iPhone snaps from the trip. The camera on that sure is a lot of fun now a days. Hawaii if a pretty amazing place. More pics to come soon.
Hibernation
Winter rolls on here at pixelrust and slowly I am getting out of my winter funk / work busy period. Starting to feel the creative itch again. Set up a new bay for table top shooting so I no longer have to break it down to shoot green screen work related stuff. That means I have an area I can leave up and tinker with without work getting in the way. Excited about that. One of the things I always wanted was a table top zone I could just build things in. Here is something from almost 20 years ago I dug up while upgrading to Lightroom 3.
So fun stuff like this is in order I think. Don't have as much crap laying around as I did back then though... lol!
Meanwhile on the internet
Wikileaks gets suspended and Anon takes up the ball as a free speech issue. Visa and Mastercard taken down and Pay Pal releases all funds. Facebook and Twitter delete Anon's accounts. Get some popcorn.
Diptych after a morning walk.
Had some lovely fog here the other morning and I took a few of these which I thought worked really well together.
Wahclella Falls Oregon 11-07-2010
Been very busy as of late with work so being able to escape and get some shooting done this past weekend was very relaxing. I am exploring what it is like to shoot the same place time and time again. I believe that the only way to get to know an area, to truly photograph it, you have to spend a lot of time there so you can see it throughout the seasons and how it changes. On this hike there were 3-4 seasonal falls that were not there just 3 weeks before. I find that amazing myself. Speaking of, I have another series from here I shot in October which I am working on the editing now. Since this is later in the year I want to keep the groups separate. This one has a lot more fall colors in it and I think it is a bit stronger. The other one has more macro work in it though which is interesting to explore.
Click the thumbnails to make them bigger.
Enjoy.
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We should end Medicare, not tax Corporations!
The Tax Haven That's Saving Google Billions - BusinessWeek
The heart of Google's (GOOG) international operations is a silvery glass office building in central Dublin, a block from the city's Grand Canal. In 2009 the office, which houses roughly 2,000 Google employees, was credited with 88 percent of the search juggernaut's $12.5 billion in sales outside the U.S. Most of the profits, however, went to the tax haven of Bermuda.To reduce its overseas tax bill, Google uses a complicated legal structure that has saved it $3.1 billion since 2007 and boosted last year's overall earnings by 26 percent. While many multinationals use similar structures, Google has managed to lower its overseas tax rate more than its peers in the technology sector. Its rate since 2007 has been 2.4 percent.
When shooting landscapes
When shooting landscapes what I enjoy is that to do it right you have to frame up your shot then breath for about 15 seconds to take it in. See what else will show itself to you in the frame. Maybe it will change a bit and be better and maybe not. But it's a great time to stand still for 15 seconds and just take it all in none the less.
The live concert experience is a valuable thing now
Punk Pioneer Steve Albini on Music Festivals, The Future of Radio and Why He Wants GQ To Fail
The parallels between that and the Internet are quite obvious. Everyone said that radio would kill live music and kill the existing music industry because people wouldn't leave their houses because radio would bring the ballroom to them. It had exactly the opposite effect—it made people much more interested in music. The same thing happened with the Internet—people said access to music on the Internet was going to kill the music industry. What it killed was the record industry. The music industry—bands, concerts, things like that are doing great. The live concert experience is a valuable thing now.
Surfing in bullet time
8Bits Movie
Got to get me some of that.
Vital Signs - A Good Massage Brings Biological Changes, Too - NYTimes.com
Does a good massage do more than just relax your muscles?Volunteers who received Swedish massage experienced significant decreases in levels of the stress hormone cortisol in blood and saliva, and in arginine vasopressin, a hormone that can lead to increases in cortisol. They also had increases in the number of lymphocytes, white blood cells that are part of the immune system.
Volunteers who had the light massage experienced greater increases in oxytocin, a hormone associated with contentment, than the Swedish massage group, and bigger decreases in adrenal corticotropin hormone, which stimulates the adrenal glands to release cortisol.
Which reminds me....
Modern Lighting tip
Jill Greenberg lighting setup and lighting diagram | Lighting For Photo
David Bicho's tribute to Jill Greenberg, using her characteristic lighting setup. With a lighting diagram and a description. Nicely documented.
I want to believe?
U.S. Nuclear Weapons Have Been Compromised by Unidentified Aerial Objects | Reuters
Ex-military men say unknown intruders have monitored and even tampered with American nuclear missilesGroup to call on U.S. Government to reveal the facts
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Witness testimony from more than 120 former or retired military personnel points to an ongoing and alarming intervention by unidentified aerial objects at nuclear weapons sites, as recently as 2003. In some cases, several nuclear missiles simultaneously and inexplicably malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object silently hovered nearby. Six former U.S. Air Force officers and one former enlisted man will break their silence about these events at the National Press Club and urge the government to publicly confirm their reality.
One of them, ICBM launch officer Captain Robert Salas, was on duty during one missile disruption incident at Malmstrom Air Force Base and was ordered to never discuss it. Another participant, retired Col. Charles Halt, observed a disc-shaped object directing beams of light down into the RAF Bentwaters airbase in England and heard on the radio that they landed in the nuclear weapons storage area. Both men will provide stunning details about these events, and reveal how the U.S. military responded.
Bokeh and how to fake it.
Start with a 16-bit picture (8 will work too, but for mathematical reasons you’ll get better results with a raw image) with really sharp well-focused point sources of light (street-lamps, christmas lights, ferris wheel bulbs) and then run a “Filter->Shape Blur” on the part of the image that you want the custom bokeh effect to show up in.
Thoughts on Post production....
This always comes up that So and So relies too heavily on Post Production to make their images look good and it always gets under my skin. The darkroom and photography has been about manipulation since it's birth. Here is the master of manipulations himself, Ansel Adams.
Canon EF 100mm F2.8 L IS USM review from DPReview.
Canon 100mm F2.8 L IS USM Macro Lens Review: 6. Conclusion & samples: Digital Photography Review
There's little doubt that, all round, this is one of the very finest lenses we've seen - optically it's superb, and operationally it works very well too, with fast and positive autofocus, and one of the most effective image stabilization systems currently available. Throw in the high build quality, including dust- and splash-proofing, and it all adds up to a very desirable package indeed.
Sharpest lens out there. I have the older version, may be time for a upgrade...
Light Painting with an ipad
Hoo hoo HOOO!
Best song of 2010. Possibly ever. And if you think it's dedicated to you, from the deepest part of my heart, it probably is.
Jamie Kripke, GoLite campaign
I helped Jamie Kripke out with this campaign for GoLite which is shown over at The Denver Egoist.
Sukle Advertising & Design, Denver just finished up a new campaign for GoLite, highlighting the company's Spring/Summer ‘11 trail running, hiking and travel apparel. The images were shot by Jamie Kripke of Boulder. Here's what they had to say about the campaign.
"Since its beginning, GoLite has been all about lightweight gear made for the trail. Whether it’s an after-work out-the-backdoor loop, backpacking the Colorado Trail or connecting the dots on an overseas adventure – the more time we spend on the trail, the better we feel.
The insight for this campaign is about choices. The choices we make determine how much time we have for the trail. Do I choose to watch some reality TV or do I get off my ass and go for a run? Do I pack the blow-dryer, the curling iron, the straightener AND the krimper? [Or GoLite?]"
Really fun smooth project. Jamie has such a great eye for subtlety that taking his images to the next level is effortless. He is the example of a photographer who understands that this look does not entirely happen in Post and has everything to do with the photographer's eye. Many photographers just lean on the post way to heavily to achieve this look and it never gets to this level.
I should be posting the before and afters in the portfolio as soon as I get some free time.