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Jeremy > April 27, 2009; Day 360. Don’t Try This at Home. My friend Dale saw my fisheye appliance photo series and liked it enough to write and encourage me to go further with appliance photography. He said, “Create the kind of photos you’d want customers to see on your website if you were in an appliance business.” I may be paraphrasing, but he was deliberately vague with the requirements. For now I’m looking at it as an assignment in creativity rather than a commission. Ostensibly, though, if the creativity matches anything he’s looking for, we could be in business. This is an attempt at appliance humor. “Leave the appliance repair to us!” “If you think you can do it yourself, you're brainwashed!” This is me modeling as a clueless but resourceful homeowner thinking that he can fix anything himself. With a quick change of clothes (something more like a uniform) and a generic logo on the toolbox, I could easily be the "you get what you pay for" low-bid appliance repair guy. And folks, if the closest part of your body to an ultra-wide lens is your butt, well, you asked for it. Raw: Color Temperature: 7250K; Tint: 0 Raw: Fill Light: 10 Raw: Saturation: +10 PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > April 24, 2009; Day 357. Don’t Go Into the Light, Carol Anne. They say that botulism is an argument for gun control that no conservative can refute. I daresay the delirium, fatigue, shivers, sweating, coughing, drooling, and possible fever of a runaway head cold is a close second. I hate being sick. I understand that it’s a good way for the body to get a fresh stock of antibodies, but it’s no fun. It’s also a good forced time-out from the things in life that give you stress. Sitting on the couch all day getting caught up on South Park and Nova was a nice change of pace. I did finally succumb and took some medicine which restored my mental state sufficiently to process another day’s worth of photos from the Vermont workshop, here. If I’m not well enough to do either of the planned activities I had lined up for tomorrow, I may be able to finish the set this weekend. I am relieved to notice that there isn't any gum stuck under the coffee table. Raw: Color Temperature: 4400K; Tint: -1 Raw: Recovery: 100 Raw: Fill Light: 10 Raw: Saturation: +8 PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > January 6, 2009; Day 249. Two Chins, Explained. Yes, I have a bit of excess holiday cheer that needs to be burned away. The plate of cookies is an example of my short term goals interfering with my long term goals. (Tonight's rationalization: I will only eat one. :~) This shot was shamelessly inspired by a recent posting from the Digital Photography School where they were displaying the fun you can have with slow sync flash. Here I am putting my own “spin” on the very first image in that blog entry. I am holding the D700 and 24-70mm lens by the barrel. This gets tiring after about 10 shots! I deliberately skipped the CTO filter on my flash so that the ambient lighting would be very warm. With motion like this, we don’t care that the background objects are the wrong color; only that the background color is pleasing. The rooms in my house are small, so to minimize the effect of the flash on the background (I only want me and the plate of cookies frozen), I set the flash exposure compensation to -1.0, then brought up the overall exposure in camera raw. Again, I am playing with new Photoshop actions. Today’s new action is called “Burn Corners 200” which selects the outer 200 pixels of the image as a separate layer, feathers the selection, deletes the selection, then blends the layers using “multiply.” The effect is not merely a dark border; it’s more of a creative vignetting. Raw: Exposure: +0.7 Raw: Recovery: +100 Raw: Saturation: +8 PS: Curves adjustment for Velvia effect PS: “Burn Corners 200” action (explained above) PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > September 22, 2008; Day 143. Rehabilitation. My friend Phil has worked with his hands most of his life, and therefore can take the knots out of your muscles without even concentrating. Tonight he helped remove some lingering soreness in my shoulders from being hunched over for so long during the ride. One thing I notice: Someone could lose a couple of pounds. The 2 months of training took me out of the gym and was less aerobically intense than what I’ve been used to. It’s showing here, even though the scale says I remained flat throughout. Probably some muscles atrophied while I was away. A little dieting might be a good idea too. So far, I haven’t yet seen any pictures of me on the bike but I expect them to start arriving this week. Raw: Color Temperature: 5250K Raw: Fill Light: +30 Raw: Exposure: +0.3 Raw: Saturation: +20 PS: Unsharp Mask: 10-30-0
Jeremy > September 2, 2008; Day 123. Bereft! Asian style cabbage or orange juice for supper tonight? I subscribe to a photography blog that sends me a tip every day. Today’s tip was how to be a curious photographer. The example shot for Don’t be held Captive ‘the Rules’ [sic] was not all that different from my shot above. I hope that I tell a better story, though. This continues my fisheye appliance series, but with a twist (it’s a self portrait this time). I resumed the 20-mile daily training rides tonight. My time is down to 61 minutes, but I’m going to have to forget the 20 m.p.h. holy grail. I’m losing a least a minute of daylight every day, making it more difficult to see the stones on the shoulder, and a high-speed crash wouldn’t be a good idea this close to the ride. Hopefully I won’t have to change any more flats this month but at least I’ve done it enough times that I a little bit proficient. Still no training opportunities in the rain. PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0
Jeremy > August 23, 2008; Day 113. Another day spent with the cell phone camera. From now on I will only use it in places where I cannot take the D80. Most of the pictures I took today would have been much, much better with the Nikon. Still, in a pinch, this camera does appear to be pretty good. This was a centerpiece at a potluck we attended today in West Alton, NH. I admit that I like the macro capability in the cell camera. It can focus even closer than this. This morning I increased my Saturday training to 71 miles in a single ride. This was the entire length of NH 106 and back. It took me about 4.5 hours to do. My speed is down but I’m stopping now for breaks and food. For the first time, my legs hurt more than my “seat.” Thus, I’m hardly ready for the ride, but I’ve still got about 4 weeks to go. I will find out on Monday whether continuing to train at this length is sufficient for the ride on September 20. PS: Rotate: 1 degree CCW PS: Crop: Clean up after rotation PS: Saturation: +20 PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0
Jeremy > July 26, 2008; Day 85. Tomorrow is the big fundraiser, so today I baked. 22 dozen cookies in all, in 8 batches, which took me 6 hours. You get into a rhythm, and you find you can fill the 13-minute per sheet baking time just perfectly after a while. Sadly, my brain got used to the aroma of freshly baked cookies and ignored it most of the day. Here are the first 5 batches cooling on the dining room table. This fundraiser takes a lot of energy which is why I wasn’t able to comment on many of your dailys. Tomorrow will be worse, but then I relax with a little mid-summer vacation. Thanks to the many of you who commented on my picture from yesterday (and every day!). Raw: Exposure: +0.6 Raw: Saturation: +20 PS: Color Balance: +10 Cyan to Red, +20 Yellow to Blue PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0 PS: Curves adjustment for even more contrast
Jeremy > July 17, 2008; Day 76. Printerless. Until today, this view of my office had been almost fully obstructed by my Xerox 8200 solid ink printer. Late last month it started to bang, and then it started to jam. (If it were a musical instrument, it would be rocking.) If I had waited another week, it might have taken up smoking. I took it to the very friendly Xerox repair place today. They told me it that it needed a $478 part and 2 hours of labor install it. Alternatively, I could trade it in for the fourth-generation replacement (Xerox 8560). The difference in price was about $150, so it didn’t take me long to decide. The new printer is cheaper than the old printer when it was new, and the ink is cheaper too. The sales guys promised me that it uses less ink too. The new printer may arrive as early as Monday. This won’t be in time to fulfill my monthly commitment to Brian Dustin, who relies on me to print his newsletter. Since his deadline is Monday, I’ll have to either use Peter’s inkjet or run to Kinko’s. There are two light sources here. At camera right and near the ceiling is a shaded lamp with a 75 watt incandescent bulb. Attached to my Gorillapod atop the TV is my SB-600, wearing a warming gel to balance the color. After playing in Photoshop, I liked this desaturated version best. This object in the foreground is the 500-sheet tray, which was not standard for the 8200DP model. Since it still works, I will try to sell it on eBay. Raw: Exposure: +0.7 PS: Crop: ~15% PS: Desaturate PS: Exposure: +0.5 PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0
Jeremy > July 16, 2008; Day 75. Peter came over tonight so I took advantage of him in order to practice the “Independence Day” portion of my Four Holidays project. I had just enough sky and mosquito tolerance to get through 8 sparklers. This image is flawed and will need to be re-shot. My analysis (feel free to add your own!): What I did right: Good sky. I managed to hold relatively still for the 4-second exposure. Good lighting on the face. Good lighting from the first-floor windows. What I need to fix: First, the nitpicks: Replace the GE Reveal bulb upstairs with a standard incandescent (too blue). The greenery is too dark at the left and the porch is too bright—this disrupts the balance I think. A well-placed strobe should throw a nice amount of light across the rhododendrons, and a weaker bulb on the porch might help too if still needed. Overall, the house is a little underexposed and I think turning up the ISO a little will help. Next, the bigger issue…does this look like Independence Day to you? Perhaps in the context of the other holidays it will, but I think a single sparkler doesn’t say much. Definitely there should be an American flag in here somewhere. For fun, I also tried painting with light. I like the resulting design very much but I’m a little dark. Peter also agreed to be photographed. Although he held still better than I did, he's holding the sparkler too far from his face. PS: Rotate 1 degree CCW PS: Crop out the black bars from the rotation
April 27, 2009; Day 360.

Don’t Try This at Home.

My friend Dale saw my fisheye appliance photo series and liked it enough to write and encourage me to go further with appliance photography. He said, “Create the kind of photos you’d want customers to see on your website if you were in an appliance business.” I may be paraphrasing, but he was deliberately vague with the requirements. For now I’m looking at it as an assignment in creativity rather than a commission. Ostensibly, though, if the creativity matches anything he’s looking for, we could be in business.

This is an attempt at appliance humor. “Leave the appliance repair to us!” “If you think you can do it yourself, you're brainwashed!” This is me modeling as a clueless but resourceful homeowner thinking that he can fix anything himself. With a quick change of clothes (something more like a uniform) and a generic logo on the toolbox, I could easily be the "you get what you pay for" low-bid appliance repair guy.

And folks, if the closest part of your body to an ultra-wide lens is your butt, well, you asked for it.

Raw: Color Temperature: 7250K; Tint: 0
Raw: Fill Light: 10
Raw: Saturation: 10
PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset
PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
Jeremy > April 27, 2009; Day 360. Don’t Try This at Home. My friend Dale saw my fisheye appliance photo series and liked it enough to write and encourage me to go further with appliance photography. He said, “Create the kind of photos you’d want customers to see on your website if you were in an appliance business.” I may be paraphrasing, but he was deliberately vague with the requirements. For now I’m looking at it as an assignment in creativity rather than a commission. Ostensibly, though, if the creativity matches anything he’s looking for, we could be in business. This is an attempt at appliance humor. “Leave the appliance repair to us!” “If you think you can do it yourself, you're brainwashed!” This is me modeling as a clueless but resourceful homeowner thinking that he can fix anything himself. With a quick change of clothes (something more like a uniform) and a generic logo on the toolbox, I could easily be the "you get what you pay for" low-bid appliance repair guy. And folks, if the closest part of your body to an ultra-wide lens is your butt, well, you asked for it. Raw: Color Temperature: 7250K; Tint: 0 Raw: Fill Light: 10 Raw: Saturation: +10 PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
April 27, 2009; Day 360.

Don’t Try This at Home.

My friend Dale saw my fisheye appliance photo series and liked it enough to write and encourage me to go further with appliance photography. He said, “Create the kind of photos you’d want customers to see on your website if you were in an appliance business.” I may be paraphrasing, but he was deliberately vague with the requirements. For now I’m looking at it as an assignment in creativity rather than a commission. Ostensibly, though, if the creativity matches anything he’s looking for, we could be in business.

This is an attempt at appliance humor. “Leave the appliance repair to us!” “If you think you can do it yourself, you're brainwashed!” This is me modeling as a clueless but resourceful homeowner thinking that he can fix anything himself. With a quick change of clothes (something more like a uniform) and a generic logo on the toolbox, I could easily be the "you get what you pay for" low-bid appliance repair guy.

And folks, if the closest part of your body to an ultra-wide lens is your butt, well, you asked for it.

Raw: Color Temperature: 7250K; Tint: 0
Raw: Fill Light: 10
Raw: Saturation: 10
PS: Curves: Linear Contrast preset
PS: Smart Sharpening: 180-1-Lens Blur
See photo in gallery
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