Friday, February 27, 2009

Playing with Fire

Don't try this at home, kids!

Actually, this is more about playing with smoke. My friend Alain and I got together the other day to see what kinds of things we could do with smoke.


I thought this one cool, I call it "48". I just messed with the colors, the shape is natural.

I messed with everything on this one.

Monday, February 23, 2009

A Walk in the Park (Part 2)

We found this poor, lone mitten hanging in a twig. We tried to come up with something clever for the caption, something about being lonely makes you blue or something to do with being bent over, but couldn't get it to come out just right.



This cabin is beautiful, inside and out. It's owned by the city and is available to rent for parties and meetings or whatever. I've been in it a few times, but don't have any photos. Maybe someday.



Friday, February 20, 2009

A Walk in the Park

My wife and I went for a walk in a local park a few days ago. I took some pictures.



Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Yummy Trifle

My wonderful wife made this wonderful dessert. It was yummy!



Monday, February 16, 2009

Pinhole "Lens"

The Pinhole camera or Camera obscura is the most primitive camera, invented about a thousand years ago. It was a simple device, basically a light-proof box, big enough to sit inside, with a small hole to let light enter and project an image onto the opposite wall. At first, recording of the image was done by manually tracing the projected image. A less manual method of recording was not discovered for another 600 years.

I made a pinhole "lens" for my modern camera. Although it's not really a lens, because it has no glass. I took the lens mount from my extension tubes and cut out a piece of cardboard to fit snugly inside. Then I got a pin and made a hole in the middle and attached it to my camera. The smaller the hole the clearer the picture. My first attempt at a hole was too big, the pictures were quite blurry. The cardboard was too thick to make a good, small, clean-cut hole all the way through, so I removed a larger piece of the cardboard and then covered the space with aluminum foil, since it's very thin and blocks 100% of light. Then, with the cardboard laying flat on a table, stuck the pin in again. This way I got a hole that was only the size of the tip of the pin. The pictures are still a bit blurry, but good enough, I guess. The depth of view seems to be infinite, there's never a need to worry about focus. Objects near and far look the same. Due to the small amount of light, all these pictures needed a 20 - 30 second exposure. Below is the first attempt:


I'm not really sure if there's any point to all this. It makes for an interesting effect, although, you could probably get the same effect by editing the picture afterwards. I just thought it was a cool experiment, it makes you think a little bit about how light and cameras work and how easy it is to take a picture now compared to long ago.

Here's some with the smaller hole. For some reason the dust on my sensor becomes very visible when using the the pinhole lens, not really sure why. I've never cleaned my camera since I got it 3 or 4 months ago. I should learn how to do that sometime.





Friday, February 13, 2009

Candles

Here's some candles.


Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Snow

Well I finally made it outside again, although, I'm still stuck in macro mode. I was trying to get a really nice, well structured snowflake. These flakes are all a couple days old, I need to get out quicker then that, while it's still snowing, I think.




Monday, February 9, 2009

3D Experiments

I'm trying something new today. By taking two photos of the same scene at slightly different angles, focusing on the same spot in the middle of the frame, It should be possible to end up with a 3 dimensional image. Since our eyes are like two cameras that see the would at slightly different angles.

View MasterSo I gave it a try. Making the image isn't hard, but trying to see the depth in the pictures without special equipment, like a View-Master, is a different story. It is possible, however, with some practice. The trick is to get one of your eyes to look at one side while the other is looking at the other side. I'm not really sure how to explain how to do this. Try looking between the two images and slowly crossing your eyes. I find that everything goes blurry and then slowly, the two images drift together until it looks like there's three images. Now try to focus your vision on the center image. It takes some time to get use to. It's a similar technique to view Magic Eye images.

This seems to be the largest I can make the images while still being able to see the 3D effect. I think because the distance of an object in one image to the same object in the other image is roughly the same as the distance between my eyes, does that make sense?




Below are animations made from the same photos used above, fading from one to the other:



Friday, February 6, 2009

Coins

Nothing exciting here, just scrambling to find something to post. Here's some coins:




Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Random Macro

Here's a bunch of random macro shots.

This is some moss, an ornament, and the trunk of a Bonsai Tree.

Potpourri in a dish with a candle.

A sleigh bell.

An old grapefruit.

This one's obvious, I think.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Blast from the Past

Well not really. I didn't have much to post today so I found some random photos from before I started this blog, just after I got my SLR, which was Oct 2008.