Negatives in a Trash Can

In December I found a stack of negatives in a trash can. There was a half roll that was the exact-same-boring-shot of a wall. Then a half roll that was mostly ruined by poor developing. And then some other shots. Maybe they belonged in the trash, but here they are.


There was a half roll of this shot. A. Half. Roll.


This is about five stops overexposed.



These two are indicative of the ruined roll -- the negative wasn't loaded in the spiral correctly.





Sign is in focus. They must not have been speeding.

Ocean Wildlife

Two days ago I shared a number of cemetery photos. Well, I also had the opportunity to take a number of nature photos the same day. Here are some of them. Tomorrow we'll finish off the Point Arena blog entries with some foggy hike photos I took the day before these.


The night of the 4th my girlfriend saw this heron hanging out by the lighthouse. The morning of the 5th it was still there, so I grabbed my 400mm lens. 


It's a simply stunning bird and, unfortunately, I missed all the shots of it grabbing fish.


There were also harbor seals. And they noticed me and many looked up at me the first time I pointed the camera at them.


I was stunned and thrilled. Seals, in the wild. This was fantastic and amazing and such a rare thing, right?


Nope. Totally the most common seal around. And they hang out on these rocks all the time. People go there to photograph seals.


That afternoon my girlfriend and I hiked down to bowling ball beach. The bowling ball concretions were all underwater, but the tide had delivered a dead seal to the beach. Three turkey vultures feasted on it when I approached, but two had flown off before I was close enough to take good photos. The third hung around and didn't fly off until I was about thirty feet away.


When he did, he flew low and I managed a few shots in flight. I had an old manual focus Vivitar 135mm lens on my K3 so I didn't expect much of my tracking. But the bird flew in a fairly straight and predictable trajectory, so I managed a few good shots.


Having a camera that takes more than eight shots per second helped a lot.


Eventually it landed on a cliff overhead with three other turkey vultures. The seal had no head, which one of the local shop owners told me was very bad news for surfers.

Top Ten Tuesday -- Ten PHONEtography Apps

Sometimes, I think, people assume that because I use DSLRs and film cameras that I'm necessarily against phonetography. That's no true at all, though I see phonetography as more for fun than for serious and creative photography. But, in an effort to change my views on that, I started researching good and creative phonetography apps on my Galaxy SIII. Here are ten phonetography apps I like.

10- Aviary
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aviary.android.feather
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photo-editor-by-aviary/id527445936?mt=8

Aviary is a fun app and my favorite of the photography apps. It allows some editing (enhancements) to correct lighting and colors. These features are, in my mind, well laid out and pretty good for a phonetography app.

Aviary also features stock filters (effects), image frames (frames), and stamps (stickers). Note that some of the frames and stickers kits cost a couple bucks, so even though the base app is free some of the add-ons add up quickly.

Aviary has tons of features and to keep reciting them would make for a long list. In short, this is probably the best phonetography app out there and is definitely worth the free price tag for the basic features.

9- Otaku Camera
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.otakumode.otakucamera&hl=en
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/otaku-camera-mangatize-your/id577019752?mt=8

Another free app, this fun app adds manga-type borders to your photos. As an added bonus, the add-on frames, as of this writing, are free. This app is a close second in my mind to Aviary and serves an entirely different market. Were I to remove all my phonetography apps except two, I would keep Otaku as one of them.

8- Cymera
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cyworld.camera&hl=en
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cymera-camera-photo-editor/id553807264?mt=8

This may be the most expansive app I've used. This has a LOT of features and capabilities for improving photos. As an added bonus, the app doesn't, by default, like some, have garish filters as the default. Cymera is a legitimately useful and usable app.

7- Clone Camera
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hereyouare.clonecamera&hl=en
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clone-camera-pro/id557861125?mt=8

Clone camera requires that the user take two photos that line up nearly perfectly next to each other. On the plus side, you can put different foreground objects in each. It's a clever idea but a flawed implementation. It seems to work by taking a photo with a small portion of the sensor. Instead, it should take the full photo and then take it again and blend out the things that are the same. If you can master this app, it has a lot of potential for fun.

6- One Man with a Camera
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onemanwithcamera&hl=en

This is a fun app that lets you select the toy camera you'd like the app to imitate. It then takes a photo with a filter that simulates the camera you selected. And it does it well, having seen actual photos from many of the toy cameras that the app imitates. It's free, but you can remove ads for a buck.

5-Procapture
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.neaststudios.procapture&hl=en

$3.99 app as of this writing. There's a free version limited to 3.2 megapixels and with reduced capacity. And ads. Nope; an app maker that releases a limited-capacity free version is not interested in having me as a full-version customer. I uninstalled this one.

4- Multi-lens Camera
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tinypiece.android.mlc
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/multi-lens-camera/id483509194?mt=8

This is a nifty action sampler app. It benefits, compared to most action samplers, from having different frame shapes. It's definitely a fun and creative way to get your action sampler phoneography fix. If you're an action sampler fan, this is definitely worth checking out.

3- Smooth Camera
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.picoedit.smooth.camera&hl=en

This app advertises that it makes people's faces look smoother. In my experience, everything just looked like it went through Photoshop's pallet brush filter. Also, this app inundates you with full-page ads whenever you change screens and has banners on each page. Ads at startup, at close-down, and at EVERY other opportunity possible. I couldn't make it work and the sheer ad volume was highly off putting. I'd suggest skipping this one.

2- Vintage Camera
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wombatix.vintcam&hl=en

This is your standard-outta-the-box take-an-image-and-apply-filters app. It's nothing revolutionary, though I admit I like the interface.

1- Pinhole Camera Calculator
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pinhole

Technically, this doesn't take photos. That said, it's one of the most useful apps for me since I enjoy pinhole photography. If you'd like to make your own pinhole cameras or if you have a kit one and want to use it reliably, this app is a must-have. In addition, the information in it will help you learn more about pinhole photography and analog photography in general. This is a well designed and useful app with a good interface. I will not ever uninstall it.

Other important Phoneography apps:
- Massive Development Chart
Android
iPhone

- The Photographer's Ephemeris
Android

Gravestones

This week I'll wrap up my Point Arena images. The other week I had a sunset time-lapse followed by a cloud trails composite image. Those were, obviously, taken at the same time. The other two photos in the second post were also taken on the same day. Well, all the images from Point Arena that I share this week were also taken that same day. In short, it was a good day for photography.

On a whim, I stopped into a cemetery to take photos. At the exact same moment I stopped in, so did another guy. He had in tow two medium-format digital Hasselblads and lenses. In sum, the gear he had in his car was worth more than my entire camera collection. Stands to reason, he was tooling around in a decked-out Carrera. If I'd known being a professional photographer paid that well, I may have made different choices in college.

Anyway, I started with some establishing-type shots to simply get to know the place and get comfortable.


A number of the graves had stone borders or designs. Many also had raised dirt, fresh or not. I liked that. When I die, I want to be buried with bottled water, a flashlight, and a shotgun with lots of ammo. Why? Because when the dead rise from the grave that's zombies. I want to be well hydrated and capable of defending myself.



Many of the newer graves had concrete borders. I supposed that's for visitors.



This statue was next to a pastor's grave.


The pastor may have been a golfer.


Another statue in the cemetery. There were a number of statues, all about 18 inches tall or so. Many of them from different eras and clearly with different intents. This was my favorite of them.


Many of the graves has silk flowers. But some had come loose in time and littered the cemetery. Also, most of them were severely sun-faded, which actually made me sadder than the graves. It meant that no one had been by in a long time to tend to the graves.


This was a particularly sad grave -- a child who died after 57 days.



At one section, a number of children's graves were grouped together. Many had stuffed animals and toys adorning them. The adornments showed a lot of weathering and fading.



I almost didn't take photos of the children's graves as I was debating if it was disrespectful. In the end, I decided to do it because I wouldn't show any respect for the kids' short lives by simply walking past.