Trick Photography

Just for fun today, another shot my K-7 took at Point Arena.

Stopping Time

Yesterday I shared a few photos the K-7 took just to show off a bit. Well, here's another.


Thirty Minutes of Sunset. This is the composite image created from the second time-lapse I shared yesterday. Personally, I think this may be the best photo I've ever taken. Sure there's some ghosting in the middle I'd wish could be removed, but that's a characteristic of the lens I used and its alignment to the sun. On the one hand, it's good to see the year start off so well. On the other, it's kind of sad to know that I may spend the rest of 2014 not taking any shots as good as this one.


This is a similar photo to the above only in black and white. The sky is the same but in the first photo I caopied in a different version of the bay to make it perfectly glass-like.


Here's a sepia version of the photo that contributed the bay in the first shot. It's hard to see, but the first shot has a choppier bay.

Yesterday I shared a moonset photo and time lapse. Between that shot and these ones, the K-7 had an all-nighter. Here is a star-trails shot it took as ocean fog rolled in.


My K-7 has decided not to go quietly into retirement, instead perferring to prove that anything the newer K-3 can do, the K-7 can do better.*

*Except video.

K-7 Unretierment

So, yes, my K-7 is officially pseudo-retired. Which explains why it came out of retirement for no reason other than to show up the newer, spiffier K-3.

The first weekend in January, I took my girlfriend to Point Arena to stay at the lighthouse. I brought my K-7, K-3, and 6X7 for film support. The shots will trickle in this month because there were a lot of them -- three cameras and three days. And it was a great weekend for my photography. I got to try a bunch of new tricks and took some shots that I'm very pleased with. Today, I'll focus on two shots.


I haven't really experimented with motion before. So I decided to make some animated gifs. I set the K-7 up to look southwest over the Pacific Ocean. This time-lapse covers 83 photos taken about two minutes apart. There are two little catches where strong winds moved the tripod slightly. Had it not been secured to the fence by its strap and with one tripod leg jammed through the fence rails, the camera may have fallen over. The photo below is a nine-frame composite of the above image meant to capture the whole time lapse in one frame.




I took this time-lapse image on our second night. This was our second sunset and it was stunning. The image that composites all of these frames will be in tomorrow's entry.

Pentax K-7 Pseudo-retirement

Shortly before buying my Pentax K-3, I took my K-7 out with my SMC-M 50mm 1:1.4 for some long-duration night photos. I figured it would be a fun way to say goodbye to the camera as my primary photographic tool. I didn't spend a long time outside, but a few photos turned out decently.

I'll miss having the K-7 as my primary camera. The K-7 and I took a LOT -- LOT -- of good photos together. It's old now, and has some dead pixels, and the sensor is approaching 90,000 actuations, so it's getting to the point where I can reasonably expect to need to replace the shutter at some point.

The K-7 will remain my reprographic camera and when I take my K-3 kit out will go, too, as I store them in the same Pelican box. But on a local day trip or for softball and bowling, the K-3 will be going with me now.

K-7, I'll always keep you and you'll always be used. Thank you for getting me back into photography and thank you for the amazing photos we've taken in the last two years.

Analog-Digital Abstracts

For my photo class final project, I decided to do a portfolio of abstract shots. Here are some digital renditions I captured the night I took my first film photos for the project. I captured these through the viewfinder of the camera I used to take the film photos.

I used a Repronar to take the film shots and my Pentax K-7 with Sigma 50mm macro lens to take these images.






To create the above images, I put generic cooking oil in a plastic tray. I then dropped Testors oil paint into the cooking oil. The reaction was different for each color. Here are three videos I made of the process.

The Repronar also has a magnifying glass to help with focusing. Here's a shot through that glass.

Oakland Car Show

Yesterday I shared some shots from an Indonesian dance performance last October. Here are some shots from a car show earlier that day.
























This pairing shows the powers of Photoshop's black and white conversion tool.


These guys were playing at the show. I didn't catch the band name, but they were great.

Indonesian Dance Performance

Last October (I'm WAY behind on my entries), the girlfriend and I took in an Oakland day with her folks. We saw a car show during the day and an Indonesian dance performance that evening. Here are shots from the Indonesian dance performance. These were taken with my Pentax K-7 and 77mm FA Limited.

I don't use flash very often. For performances, I will not ever use a flash if I'm there as an attendee. So all of these shots are using available light only.

































After the performance, we also caught a few minutes of a local performer playing in front of a nearby record store.

Abstract Psychaedlia

Last week I mentioned that I was working on abstracts for my photography class' final project. Here's one of two videos I made as part of an abstract experiment. Some of the shoot's actual images follow.

I started my abstract paint project with paint on wax paper. I made this one look kings like a bug. It may or may not be a bug that someone stepped on.


In time, I gave up on the shapes and simply began letting the paint do the work. The results proved much more unpredictable and interesting. 


In the video and for these I put store-brand vegetable oil in a plastic tray and placed drops of oil-based model paint in it.


The point moved through the oil like a bad idea through a mob -- quickly and unpredictably. When it touched, it would spread out along the oil's surface like a slick, but the paint's additives turned gummy in the oil. So the paint on the surface, which was gummy, stayed in place while the paint under the surface moved away from the surface paint.


Here are the other two videos in the series:

This post -- this is about how this week is going to go. There are a number of very strong abstract images this week.

Macro Abstracts

This semester I took an intro to photo class. I may have mentioned this before. My final project is going to be 10 abstract photos. The film shots are still at school, but here are the test shots I took with my DSLR. For this, I reverse-mounted a Nikon Series E 36-72mm zoom onto my Pentax K-7. This resulted in some fabulous image magnification. In fact, I did a video exploring different lenses for macro use. Here's that video:

I like the Series E 36-72 for reverse macros because the zoom allows some focus as well as a range of magnifications. However, though they did not show up on the digital images, on the film cameras I used for the project (Pentax H3V, Minolta SRT 102, and one other I'm blanking on right now) the lens showed three astigmatisms on each shot with lighting coming in from the upper left (such as the film versions of the next photo.)

Astigmatisms reveal themselves as two lines that don't touch arranged at a 90-degree angle. So tracing the lines paths reveals an intersection with a 90-degree angle, but the intersection itself is never directly visible. When I digitize the film photos, I'll share some with astigmatism lines.



How much of a macro is this? That's a a 6-24 screw.


That's an unfinished land development as seen from an airplane. Lots of boulevards and cul-de-sacs.


Actually, these two are both a leaf. Here the lighting shows leaf mold where the vein slipts off.

Morgan Fire Hike, Four of Four

To close this week's look at the Morgan Fire burn scar, here are some plants that fared well, are coming back quickly, and a bird that seems to be doing just fine. I was surprised that I saw no less life on this hike than I normally do -- lizards, birds, and numerous healthy plants.

I'm of the mind, and always have been, that fires are an important part of the natural cycle and should be controlled as they approach inhabited areas. However, fires in open spaces and wilderness remove fuel, provide opportunities for new life, and help restore an area. Yes, the side of Mount Diablo will be ugly for a year, maybe less. But that ugliness will yield to greener plant life next year, new growth which sequesters more carbon dioxide than old growth, and improved animal habitats.



A shrub protected by a rocky outcropping.



Grasses returning to a heavily burned area.



Macro of new grass.



I think this is a scrub jay, and it was doing just fine.