Category: Photography

I feel like I’m loosing touch with my blog and there isn’t really a lot going on right now, so mostly my updates are from the photographic side of things. Once again there are more photos I have taken available on my normal gallery at: http://www.disturbingthoughts.net/gallery2/v/album/2008-05-26/. They are a bit mix-and-match and most are a bit focused on one of my erotic interests, but they still have aesthetic value.

I was playing with my 15x macro lens that came with my wide angle adapter earlier and I was studying some flowers in the yard. I feel like I never get to photo living things, so it was fun following this ant across the flowers. I’ve never noticed how complex ants are. I am considering making an attempt at photographing ants in motion for one of my future assignments.

My second week assignment for Digital Photography is up. It was a slightly fun assignment involving exposure, noise and bracketing. Bracketing involves taking an image multiple times at different intervals away from the “normal” exposure. This is done by keeping the same ISO and shutter speed, but changing the F-Stop to a designated number of EVs (exposure values) above and below correct exposure. The noise assignment was to show the change in image quality when using ISO instead of shutter speed to compensate for a lack of light.
http://aux.livecurt.net/art390/main.php?g2_itemId=42

This morning my UPS driver brought me my new 10x macro lens and my close up filter kit. It is hard to describe what this means to my photography, so I encourage my readers to take a look at the following link to see it for themselves: http://www.disturbingthoughts.net/gallery2/v/album/20080520/.

Ever since my first roll of 110mm film I have always gotten my pictures developed at a pharmacy. I don’t know why, its just something I do. Maybe a little redneck, but if it is, then yeeehaw, somebody find me some nice leather boots, a saddle and some rope. Anyway, getting to the point of this already quickly derailing blog post, I had problems today with getting my photos from the pharmacist, or… lab technician, or confused old lady, whichever. Around 10PM last night (or 9PM, or 5:48PM, no one seems to know exactly when) I uploaded my pictures to the CVS Photo Store via Picasa. I received a full order confirmation, stating that my photos would be ready to pick up by 11am today. At 2PM I went into the store and very confidently asked the photo technician (who I think was busy reading her latest romance novel or something) “Ma’am, I am here to pick up my prints, my name is Kularski”. She then looked in the bins (under “C” at first) and couldn’t find it, she then asked me to spell it… she looked again, still… nothing. I handed her the paper confirmation and she began looking for the order… she found it…. as a failed download on the Kodak system. I figured it was no big deal and I conveyed that I was paitient and would wait for them to print. I assumed it wouldn’t take long, and that they would just have to be redownloaded or something. The photo technician called several people to find out if they had been printed or to figure out what happened. A few moments later a cranky shift superviser by the name of Vonnie came and explained the difference between 1-hour digital photo and 2-3 day service. This pissed me off a bit, because she stood there, less than 6 inches from me and insulted my intelligence. I reassured her that I did it the right method. Moments and many confused looks later, people were calling Kodak to find out what had happened. After 2 hours of me waiting and the photo tech pacing between computers to try to pull and print my order, it was determined that it was beyond the capabilities of the staff on hand to correct the issue and I was asked if it would be ok if the photos were sent to the lab for me to pick up in a few days. Reluctantly I agreed to the alternative, purchased the CR2032 I needed for my JP Jornada and then headed home.
Here I am, at home, with no pictures and wondering if this is what my summer prints will be like for all of the stuff I do. Will I have to go through this shit on a weekly basis? Currently I plan to go along with things as they are and then inform the store on Thursday when I pick up my prints of my plans and make sure they can handle me once a week.

Having no exciting digital photography assignments due anytime soon, I have decided to take the camera out for some playtime. I have uploaded some images to my standard gallery of this play.

http://www.disturbingthoughts.net/gallery2/v/album/20080518/

My instructor for Digital Photography asked the class to do an introduction picture… something very specific actually, he wanted us to take a mirror shot. Thats right, the typical lame frat-boy in a mirror type shot. I hate this picture. I did several and this one came out the best, but I still don’t like it.

Note: I’m doing this post directly from Flickr…

Today I went on a little mission. I woke up this morning and looked over my ad-related email (special account for that), and saw that Circuit City had the Nikon D40 available in store, and even locally at the Gastonia store, so I had to go check it out. When I got there, I was surprised to find that they not only had the D40, they also had the D60, D80 and D40X.
Upon touching the D80, I fell in love… and then I fell over from how unbalanced it was. The D60 on the other hand, was much more balanced and something that seemed to be a sensible camera. The thing I think I love most about SLR cameras is the ability to focus and zoom from the lens assembly itself. It just feels more natural than using a button to adjust such things. The weight of the SLR cameras is a bit intimidating, and the number of controls is absolutely insane, but still… they are very cool devices.
So… for a third time, I will revise my opinion of SLR cameras. I think they are great, and perhaps one of the best tools for artistic photography, but they have drawbacks in that their sensors and mirrors are easily exposed and that there are moving parts to them. On the upside, control is more absolute and there is a great amount of flexibility.
I personally don’t think I am ready to go pure SLR just yet, but I think one day I might be… depending on how much I like photography after my summer course.

http://aux.livecurt.net/ART390
I have posted a special gallery installation for use during the digital photography course. All of my assignments will be posted here first. Some for comment, some just to post.
I should have more to say about this… but I don’t, so there it is, have fun. BTW, like the subdomain?