It feels like it has been days since any of my contacts on Flickr have posted anything. It seems like since I started my project I have been more interested in what others are doing and as a result I have managed to get into a state where I am looking for new content before anyone has a chance to produce it. I look for new content to inspire me, or just to occupy my time. Lately my own photos have been boring me, I suspect it’s just because there are so many of them. I push myself to experiment on things each day, but somehow I am not being interested in the results as much as I should be. I like for others to look at my images and give me feedback, and I have not been getting that lately. Everyone will respond positive comments about the images when prompted, but that’s not what I am looking for, I want to know if I am making mistakes, I want to know if I am doing something compositionally stupid and I want to know if there is something that someone feels is absent in my images. I don’t publish my photos for people to stroke my ego and tell me how good things are, I have a boyfriend for that. I need to know the reality of my work. There are things that others can see in my images that I cannot, and that information is very important to my ability to improve as a photographer.
P365: Day 15
I am attempting to do some experimenting in this project, since anyone can decide to do the easy shots and post them. I have been working with various arrangements of the exposure triangle (aperture, shutter speed, ISO [sensitivity]) to attempt to get the best possible astrophotograph. It is worth visiting the Flickr page for the image (click the image) to see the notes left on the image by astrometry.net‘s robot.
P365: Day 14
P365: Day 13
Steel mesh covering wires and tubes. What is it?
Learning to Write (Again)
This evening I have had great fun with Microsoft Windows7 and a VisTablet. I wrote a blog entry on one of my other blogs entirely on the tablet and am attempting to do the same thing with this one. This is not the first time I have tried handwriting recognition with blogging, but it is the first time I have done so without becoming frustrated. I am doing this with no special software I just the Operating System and MS Word, but I could have chosen to use Firefox to directly input the entry into Movable Type. The utility for “pen based input” is far from perfect, but the interface for it is great. I can see what the app thinks I wrote almost the instant I write it , allowing for almost instant corrections, using “pen flicks”, a new gesture system. It is interesting how the software reads my handwriting, since most humans can not. It has been a long time Since I have written anything longer than a grocery list with a pen. It is most terrifying seeing my penmanship on a large screen. From my experience so far it seems like Windows is using the general gesture of the pen more so than the resulting characters to create its conversion. The context also seems relevant to the process.
I am not likely to use this method very often as it is much slower than typing, however I could see the advantage to a person that is more accustomed to writing. For my purpose I like using the tablet for anything that doesn’t involve a lot of writing, as it replaces both keyboard and mouse input methods. The hardest part of using then tablet is getting used to the technology itself, which means adapting to what is written appearing on screen, and not on the writing surface.
One last annoyance I will comment on is that after correctly translating what is written, the app will sometimes second guess itself and convert it incorrectly , which is more of a problem when it does it several words behind your active focus and you don’t realize that it has occurred.
P365: Day 12
I feel like I’m doing too much on black lately. Too many dark images. This is a fairly simple shot, just a simple pose on a black backdrop. This image would cover the category of personal goals for myself. I want to take this image from the depressing flabby white flesh that it is and turn it into something rock hard and maybe tan (likely to happen, since if I’m toned, I’ll wear appropriate shirts).
P365: Day 11
Two security officers on the UNC Charlotte campus take the state and national flags from their mast and fold them. Today was a quite dim and dreary day, cloudy with a mist of rain in the air.
Bad Photography
This is one of those things that really gets me bothered by the standards that are used to determine what is acceptable in media. This is the most awful group portrait I have ever seen. I think my family portrait came out better (and I wasn’t even behind the camera for it). The first thing that stands out to me is Associate Justice Ginsberg appears to have not received the memo about the placement of the camera. Thomas and Scalia seem to have not finished their conversation yet, and the rest of the front row seems bored. Alito in the back seems to be contemplating some great topic. Not a bad pose for an individual portrait, but not good for a group shot. The framing of the shot is also off, as the curtain runs out, just before the end of the frame on the right. I feel like the shot could be better composed and could be helped by a bit of cropping. Also, it is usually a good idea to inform someone you are taking their photo if you actually want them to look at you. Usually a red-eye reduction flash fire, or an actual flash fire a second before the shot will do this adequately and without much confusion (even the blind are likely to turn at the sound of the discharge/recharge sounds of the flash).
Packing the Bag
I have been delaying packing the toploading bag for the D90 because I really had no clue what to put in it when I was in the same room with the bag and all of the potential things to put in it. It is starting to seem a little clearer now that I am away from all of the things that I could possibly put in the bag.
1. Nikon D90 (main compartment)
2. Nikon AF-S 70-300mm f/3.5-5.6 lens (in side bag)
3. EL-EN3a Battery (pocket)
4. Nikon Moist Wipes
5. Nikon Lens Pen
6. Nikon Compact Micro-fiber Cleaning cloth
7. C-PL filter (once I buy it as 67mm)
8. Spare memory card
9. USB card reader
10. Nikon ML-L3 remote
That’s what I plan to keep in the bag full time. Other accessories that will need to go along from time to time will be things like the SB-600 flash and the Gorillapod. I have to find some way to attach both of these to the bag for those situations. The problem comes from the fact that there isn’t an existing system by which all of these things happily attach to the toploader, so I’m going to have to improvise and come up with my own attachment techniques.
Anybody see anything I missed that should be in the bag? Anything that seems out of place?
P365: Day 10
I wasn’t directly in a photographic mood today. The clouds and overall feeling of the day left me in kind of a 17% gray kind of mood. The only thing that inspired me at all today was the sky, and that was a long shot. I’m hoping tomorrow is better.