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Jeremy > April 18, 2009; Day 351. Second’s the Charm. Tonight’s pasta party was one of my more relaxed parties. I was relaxed because I had just had one two weeks ago and I remembered my mistakes and was sure not to repeat them. Thus I didn’t repeat those mistakes but instead made all new mistakes. One of the pastas was surprisingly undercooked. (I now know why…I depleted one pasta flour and the replacement had a different texture, and evidently needed longer cooking time.) Another was surprisingly under-seasoned. Since the pasta was the focal point of the party, I was nostalgic for the earlier mistakes! Still, a lot was eaten and this crowd had fun watching YouTube reactions to and re-enactments of an advertisement released recently by the National Organization for Marriage. This is strictly ambient light; there’s natural light coming in from the overcast sky outside and there’s four incandescent bulbs in the fixture overhead. Raw: Color Temperature: 2650K; Tint: 0 Raw: Recovery: 100 Raw: Fill Light: 15 Raw: Saturation: +8 PS: Linear Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > April 17, 2009; Day 350. Pasta Makers Do It In the Well. Tomorrow I’m hosting the second of my two pasta parties this year. I really wish I had time to host four. I could easily fill the house twice over and not have any repeat guests. Alas, I’m in two photography classes and it’ll soon be time to get biking and kayaking on the weekends. Yet hosting these have been important because Peter and I have been remiss in thanking the folks who have welcomed us into their lives so warmly. We also were quite overdue for a spring clean of the house. I’ve rather enjoyed the two week gap between the parties during which I must keep the house as pristine as possible. In this shot I’m about as close as I can get to the well of flour with my wide lens. The lens itself is actually casting a faint shadow making the flour look a little dirty. If I weren’t actually responsible for this pasta I’d have found a way to move this light source so that the lens was not in the way. This is the first of seven batches of pasta I made today. The flour mound is a cup of all-purpose flour and a cup of semolina pasta flour. In the well are 2 eggs, 1 egg yolk, ½ cup of fresh basil, sage, and chives minced in a coffee grinder, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and ½ teaspoon of salt. This will yield enough pasta to serve 3 adults. The cups at left contain the key ingredients for the remaining batches of pasta: a second herb batch, two batches made with coarsely-ground dried porcini mushrooms, and two batches each made with 4 cloves of severely crushed garlic in olive oil. The scent from the kneading of those batches is still on my hands 8 hours later. Yum. The seventh batch was a pasta without any special extra flavor added. Essentially, these are the same flavors I made two weeks ago. Tomorrow I’ll make essentially the same sauces. When your guest list completely turns over, your menu need not! Peter and I decided that the flavored pastas are fine but a bit of a hassle. Next year we may try mixing up the flours: regular, whole wheat, chestnut, cornmeal, and maybe buckwheat. Raw: Crop: 9.8MP Raw: Color Temperature: 3300K; Tint: 0 Raw: Exposure: +0.2 Raw: Recovery: +38 Raw: Blacks: 2 Raw: Brightness: +48 Raw: Contrast: +59 Raw: Saturation: +8 PS: Curves: Medium Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > April 15, 2009; Day 348. Valves at Sunrise. Sometimes the light just grabs you and makes you take notice. These valves are in my kitchen and I hadn’t paid them much attention until this morning when I noticed them in the glow of reflected golden sunlight. Right now the sun’s position is such that for a few minutes each morning, the light streams through the window on the east side of the kitchen and lights up the wallpaper on the west side. I was struck by the diffuse golden light and knew just what I had to do. I wasn’t expecting to like this angle best, so I didn’t worry this morning about the dark corner. This is probably the shadow of my toaster and there's also some of the kitchen countertop showing there. Cloning won't fix this. I could crop it into a squareish frame, I suppose, to the chagrin of 2x3 purists and/or pixel maximists. For now I’ll just live with it as a reminder to me to always examine everything in the viewfinder! If you'd like to see what the curves adjustment below is doing, you can compare it to the same shot processed with the much less intrusive "Linear Contrast" Curves preset, here. Kashaaf asked me why I didn’t just use a reflector rather than 2 flashes to light the lion on yesterday’s shot. Simple: I have some small amount of experience with a reflector, but I hadn’t yet tried commanding two flashes in the same shot before. With two flashes I have better control over the individual direction of the lights. I figured a reflector at the 5:00 position wouldn’t give me enough sidelighting to bring out the texture of the lion’s face. Did I at least try it? Of course I did! However, that was not taken with my normal reflector. I used a white napkin which worked fine. Still, I liked that I was able to create better texture with a more side-lit second flash. Raw: Color Temperature: 3250K; Tint: 0 Raw: Exposure: +0.3 Raw: Saturation: +6 PS: Lab a channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 50% opacity PS: Curves adjustment to give the effect of developing E4 slide film in C41 chemicals PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > March 26, 2009; Day 328. Moonlit Blender. Today I continued my pursuit of abstract art with a pastry blender. I thought it might work better if I had two of them, but I don’t. But I thought that I could pretend that I have two of them by reflecting the one off of a shiny surface. Sadly, mirrors are not great for this, because they reflect the image twice (once on the shiny mirror surface itself, and once off the layer of glass above the mirror). This leads to a ghosted reflection. I didn’t find anything that would give me a good reflection, but I did notice that the metal plate of my kitchen scale has the same type of metal as the blender. So I chose it to be my background. The light is coming solely from my flash. I’m manually firing it twice, once with a blue filter (Roscoe gel #83) and once with a red filter (Roscoe gel #27). For both firings, the flash is in the manual mode at 1/16 power. The shutter is set to the bulb setting because it takes time to replace the gels. Obviously, this was shot in near darkness to ensure that no ambient light got through. I don’t know if I’ll have time to create another composition for this, so one of these will likely be submitted to the class. PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > March 25, 2009; Day 327. Pastry Bridge. Week 3 of my close-up photography class is going to be a doozy. The first photo we are to submit is a kitchen abstract. You find one or more items from your kitchen and make an abstract image out of that. Bryan’s example photo was a cheese grater with a lot of colorful light reflecting from wrapping paper. Easy, right? I guess I’m forgetting the word “abstract” in this first attempt. Here I’m trying to turn a pastry blender into the steel girders of a bridge. I’m using a sheet of light blue paper for the river and some potted yellow geraniums as a field of flowers in the background. I’ve gelled my external flash with Roscoe color #27 (Medium Red) which is sitting just to the right of the frame. I won’t be submitting this to the class. Even if the assignment wasn’t for an abstract, the blue paper isn’t a convincing water, the red flash is spilling into the flowers, there’s a lot of blown out highlights, and that lavender “abutment” just looks silly. Also the flowers are so full of holes that I needed a lot of healing brush to repair the background. This was fun even if not very satisfying. I only spent an hour on it so I’m happy I got this much to show for it. Tomorrow I will try other things. I wonder if I have challenged myself too much by selecting such a porous kitchen implement. At least Bryan’s cheese grater always fills the frame. I shot this with my 50mm prime lens wearing a 20mm extension tube. I manually focused until the highlight areas on the arches were in focus. I don’t yet know who “Princess” is. There are many suspects. I hope he/she continues to comment! Raw: Color Temperature: 2650K; Tint: 0 Raw: Saturation: +8 PS: Healing Brush to cope with dark spots PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > February 26, 2009; Day 300. Inexorable. This hand-painted clock sits in my kitchen; it’s been in at least one daily already, although not this close. It keeps excellent time. It’s handy to have an analog clock to let you know how long the power has been out. Here I’m selecting a small aperture and a low ISO to maximize the movement in the minute hand. Since the second hand sweeps all the way around, it’s invisible except for the little red circle. I’m illuminating the clock by holding an LED flashlight positioned within the family of angles on the face of the clock; this adds a lot of texture to the shot. Every time I use my macro lens, I wish I’d have cleaned my subject first! Raw: Color Temperature: 5400K; Tint: 0 Raw: Exposure: +1.0 Raw: Recovery: +100 Raw: Saturation: +10 PS: Healing Brush to remove some dust PS: Lab a channel adjustment: “Soft light” at 50% opacity PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > February 19, 2009; Day 293. Construction in Style. I visited the home of my friend Scott for the first time today. He has spent the past few years converting an old mill building in downtown Manchester into a sweet living space. I was astonished at the beauty of the space and what he has done with it. I came to his house in order to photograph the construction’s half-way point, but after two hours I had covered less than half of the main living space on the top floor. The entire floor is a photographer’s dream come true. Subjects abound everywhere I looked, and I haven’t even seen the space in natural light yet. I will be back. This is an HDR composite of 3 exposures. Here’s the original scene at +1 EV for comparison. I posted additional photos from this shoot in this separate gallery. Camera: Fixed aperture: f/5.6; Fixed ISO: 200; Bracketed 5 exposures, whole stops between -2 and +2 EV. Selected the -2, 0, and +2 exposures (shutter speeds 1/3s, 1.3s, and 5s) to feed into Photomatix Photomatix: (Generate): Selected Ghost Removal set for Ripples and High detection; Selected “as shot” white balance Photomatix: (Tone Mapping): Strength: 90; Saturation: 5; Light Smoothing: High; Luminance: 1; White Point: 0.995; Black Point: 0.111 PS: Healing Brush to remove flare PS: Curves adjustment for additional contrast PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > February 2, 2009; Day 276. Bad Apple. My friend Dennis suggested that I start a “Death by Food” series. I love his artistic eye, his endless fountain of creative ideas. I instantly loved this idea, and have started practicing. I need to make the bite more prominent and my head should have been completely against the floor. Please forgive the macabre nature of this shot. Dennis will help me look beyond the light, I hope. Raw: Color Temperature: 4450K; Tint: -6 Raw: Exposure: +0.8 Raw: Saturation: +8 PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > September 17, 2008; Day 138. Final preparations. Last week Hillary featured a collection of objects as her daily, so I feel much more comfortable submitting one myself. :~) Tonight I picked the bike up from the shop and it was nice and tight and clean. It’s as ready as it will ever be, and hopefully the same can be said for me. It was very nice having some folks at the gym say that they missed me and was glad that I didn’t croak. While I was away, the gym replaced two of my favorite aerobic machines with a new kind of stair master; we’ll try that out tomorrow and see how it compares. This is everything I will need to do the ride: bike, helmet, tire pump, cell phone, Allen wrench set, spare tube, CO2 cartridge, cartridge adapter, tire pry bars, biking gloves, padded pants, shirt, socks, clip-in shoes, energy bar, and two bottles (water and electrolyte replacement). Also shown here is my Casio point-and-shoot camera, which I am planning to carry in my shirt pocket. The shirt shown here is actually a prop; I’ll be getting a rider jersey so we all look alike. Hopefully the jerseys have 3 pockets in back like this one does; I love how convenient that is and how you never notice that anything is back there, even bulky things like the tire pump. PS: Exposure: +0.5 PS: Saturation: +10 PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0
April 18, 2009; Day 351.

Second’s the Charm.

Tonight’s pasta party was one of my more relaxed parties. I was relaxed because I had just had one two weeks ago and I remembered my mistakes and was sure not to repeat them. Thus I didn’t repeat those mistakes but instead made all new mistakes. One of the pastas was surprisingly undercooked. (I now know why…I depleted one pasta flour and the replacement had a different texture, and evidently needed longer cooking time.) Another was surprisingly under-seasoned. Since the pasta was the focal point of the party, I was nostalgic for the earlier mistakes! Still, a lot was eaten and this crowd had fun watching YouTube reactions to and re-enactments of an advertisement released recently by the National Organization for Marriage.

This is strictly ambient light; there’s natural light coming in from the overcast sky outside and there’s four incandescent bulbs in the fixture overhead.

Raw: Color Temperature: 2650K; Tint: 0
Raw: Recovery: 100
Raw: Fill Light: 15
Raw: Saturation: 8
PS: Linear Contrast preset
PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > April 18, 2009; Day 351. Second’s the Charm. Tonight’s pasta party was one of my more relaxed parties. I was relaxed because I had just had one two weeks ago and I remembered my mistakes and was sure not to repeat them. Thus I didn’t repeat those mistakes but instead made all new mistakes. One of the pastas was surprisingly undercooked. (I now know why…I depleted one pasta flour and the replacement had a different texture, and evidently needed longer cooking time.) Another was surprisingly under-seasoned. Since the pasta was the focal point of the party, I was nostalgic for the earlier mistakes! Still, a lot was eaten and this crowd had fun watching YouTube reactions to and re-enactments of an advertisement released recently by the National Organization for Marriage. This is strictly ambient light; there’s natural light coming in from the overcast sky outside and there’s four incandescent bulbs in the fixture overhead. Raw: Color Temperature: 2650K; Tint: 0 Raw: Recovery: 100 Raw: Fill Light: 15 Raw: Saturation: +8 PS: Linear Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
April 18, 2009; Day 351.

Second’s the Charm.

Tonight’s pasta party was one of my more relaxed parties. I was relaxed because I had just had one two weeks ago and I remembered my mistakes and was sure not to repeat them. Thus I didn’t repeat those mistakes but instead made all new mistakes. One of the pastas was surprisingly undercooked. (I now know why…I depleted one pasta flour and the replacement had a different texture, and evidently needed longer cooking time.) Another was surprisingly under-seasoned. Since the pasta was the focal point of the party, I was nostalgic for the earlier mistakes! Still, a lot was eaten and this crowd had fun watching YouTube reactions to and re-enactments of an advertisement released recently by the National Organization for Marriage.

This is strictly ambient light; there’s natural light coming in from the overcast sky outside and there’s four incandescent bulbs in the fixture overhead.

Raw: Color Temperature: 2650K; Tint: 0
Raw: Recovery: 100
Raw: Fill Light: 15
Raw: Saturation: 8
PS: Linear Contrast preset
PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
See photo in gallery
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