Rockbox and a polarizing filter

From photo project 2010

The Subject:
Visiting http://thegearpage.net is often a dangerous thing for my piggy bank. I'm too easily tempted by forum members trying to unload their gear, and last week, I caved in. This came in the mail yesterday - a Rockbox Boiling Point, standard is the custom marble paint job. I haven't played with too many overdrive pedals, but this one has an incredible tone, extremely dyynamic, and very versatile. I can go from a very soft, quiet non-distorted sound to a heavy distortion just by changing my picking and strumming intensity without fiddling with the knobs, or stomping on another pedal for more gain and drive. The unfortunate thing is that this pedal, like most pedals, don't sound very good unless the volume is turned up a bit. So with the incredible amount of gain on this, it may just make me deaf. I know my ears feel fatigued already after playing in a small room for 20 minutes.

The Shot:
This isn't the most interesting shot, but I did have to use a polarizing filter. On another post where I shot my pedal board, I stated that I had to use a polarizing filter. The mistake I made on that post was that I had turned the polarizing filter too far to the dark side, and I lost a lot of the detail that the natural light was highlighting. This time, I wised up and turned the filter only so that the reflection wasn't so strong that you couldn't see the marble paint job, but was light enough that you can see the highlight on the black knobs where light is bouncing off of them. If I had turned it too far to the dark side, the black knobs would've lost a lot of detail and highlight.

Sunset & Double Hung Windows

From photo project 2010

This was taken this past Monday. It was the first decent sunset I've seen from my house in a while. I missed a couple when my wife and I were out and about, so this was the first one I thought was worth taking a photo of. The beauty of our new windows is that they're all double hung. I spotted this while in the 3rd bedroom (a.k.a. computer room or home office), and opened the top panel window down without the screen - and snapped away. F stop at 22 while force focusing on the building so the sensors would calculate the shutter speed based on the darker portion of this shot, and not at the setting sun. Otherwise, the foreground of the building would've just been a big black silhouette.

Stairway to Heaven

From photo project 2010

Spotted a ladder on a water tower on the campus at work today. I had my camera with me so I took a few shots during lunch. I had a hard time getting the right angle - and actually the angle is still a little off here. May do a reshoot sometime.

Milk n' Cookies

From photo project 2010

Who doesn't like oreo cookies and milk? I was getting tired last night, and had a hard time coming up with an idea of what to shoot. I tried a few shots of different things around the house that just didn't work. Then before heading to bed, I decided to try shooting oreo cookies. I took a few of the three cookies fresh from the box. I wasn't too happy with them so I took a bite out of one and took a few more shots. Looking back at the photos today, I chuckled at this one - for reasons unknown to me. Photography intersects with the mundane life.

I tried framing this a bit differently than what I normally post. I decided to crop this into a square. Normally, you would refrain from a square frame composition unless you were shooting something more proportional, but I'm not sure if I like this or not. What do you guys think? Does a square frame work in this shot? I'd love to hear from other photographers. Leave a comment below!

Guitar Hero

From photo project 2010

From photo project 2010

From photo project 2010

Lately it seems I've been obsessed with two things - photography, and guitars n' gear. These are some of the best shots I've taken to date. For these shots, I used my 50mm prime lens, aperture set between 7 and 9, and had to mount the camera to a tripod. At that aperture and the quickly fading sun, the shutter speed was just too slow for me to hold this camera while shooting. A little exposure adjustment in a photo editor to bring down the brightness and up the contrast a bit, and voila.

I've gotten a number of complements from strangers on this guitar. It's not a big name bling bling guitar like a Gibson ES335 (which this Ibanez copied), but people have been surprised at how nice this guitar looks. Picked this baby up on ebay on the cheap - guitar was in like new condition when it arrived at my house. I was debating between getting a sunburst or a cherry red, but I'm so glad I went for the sunburst. It's magnificent.

Rock on my friends.

After the Rain

From photo project 2010

Sun came out after a 10 minute thunderstorm today. I ran out with the camera hoping to catch some nice shots. In the little time that I had left on my camera battery, this was all I could come up with - water flowing into the sewer grates. Swell. I didn't really get a chance to experiment with different compositions because I ended up using up a lot of what little battery life I had left looking at my histogram and trying to correct the over exposure and clipping on the right side of the histogram. Tomorrow is another day.

Into the Sun

From photo project 2010

To commemorate our new windows being installed last week, I thought I'd shoot something by our new windows. This one to be exact, is our kitchen patio door which was in desperate need of replacement. I've told this story several times, but in the winter time, our ceramic tiles are unbearably cold to feet fitted with socks. One time, we left ice cubes in the sink overnight, only to find out in the morning that said ice cubes remained 70% intact.

The challenge to this shot was that by the time I got home at 5:30, the sun was creeping down, and I was getting a full view of the sun shooting at this angle. I could've chosen to shoot at an easier angle, I but I was really loving the way that the sun was radiating through the flower pedals, almost giving them a wonderful glow. So I first tried shooting with a 50mm with just a UV filter on. Then I tried my 18-105mm with a polarizing filter on to cut down some light along with the strong reflection coming off of the table. I needed to switch over to manual mode here because in aperture priority, the camera was exposing for all the light, and hence, the flower was being underexposed. Still, I kept getting some clipping on the right side of the histogram, and I think this one had a minimal amount of it. I've also got a little lens flare - which could work in certain shots, but I don't think it really works here - if that's even lens flare where the light circle by the flower is. I was already using a lens hood with the 18-105mm lens as well. I may try this shoot again tomorrow at around dusk where the sun is much warmer and richer color, and I don't have to deal with colors around the flower being too washed out from the strength of the sun.

Anyway, here's to our new windows, and a relatively happy and warm winter!

Gearhead

From photo project 2010

Okay, so owning six pedals doesn't really qualify me as a gearhead (that Boss F5-5U tap tempo doesn't count). This won't be the last photo of my gear on this blog because I've got a few ideas of shots for my pedal board that I have yet to implement, and as new gear is added to my board eventually, there'll definitely be more photos. For this shot, I used a polarizing filter to eliminate the reflections from the window off of the pedals. Prior to shooting with the polarizing filter, there was a really strong reflection coming off of the black Timmy and Lovepedal (black and taupe) to such an extent that the word "Timmy" couldn't even be seen. After screwing on the polarizing filter and rotating it around a bit, I was able to eliminate much of the reflection. In the background is the very cheap, but very nice sounding Vox AC4TV, a 4 watt all tube amp. This little monster gets LOUD while maintaining a very nice chimey sound. Gotta love the gear.

Out with the old, in with the new!

From photo project 2010

One of my most quoted lines in Anchorman is by Ron Burgundy - "I love scotch, scotchy scotch scotch, down into my belly, mmm mmm good."

Today I finished off the last drop of Glenfiddich single malt. Don't mourn for me friends because I've got a nearly full bottle of Macallan 15 Year Fine Oak waiting for me, courtesy of my uncle. This was heads and shoulders above the Glenfiddich, which doesn't even specify how long it's been aged. This Macallan is the finest I've had to date. Thanks uncle!

Farmville in Central Jersey

From photo project 2010

We've been living in our town for 8 years now. We love it because it's not too congested, and there is still a lot of open land while having all the convenience of major shopping centers and highways close by. On Saturday, I took a drive with my DSLR which I acquired three months ago. I came across acres and acres of beautiful farms just 5 minutes out. The unfortunate thing was that in such a rural part of the neighboring town, these farms resided on narrow two way roads with nowhere to pull off. I did manage to snag this beautiful tractor on the side of the road. Maybe the only reason I liked this was because I've been playing Farmville on facebook. =/

My Photography - Pre-DSLR

My first real foray into photography came over 10 years ago, when I won a photography lesson at a service auction for our Young Adult Fellowship group at church. Being completely new to photography, I learned a little bit about how to compose a photo, and was encouraged to keep practicing. However, at the time, we still had these things called "film", and digital cameras were just emerging on the market. The cost of buying film and developing them turned me away for a long time until I purchased a Sony Cybershot 3.2 megapixel in 2002.

With a digital camera in hand, I began to click away without the worries of developing a whole roll of film only to find that all my shots were terrible. Now I can see how terrible most of my shots were on screen! Out of all of these shots, most have been horrible, a large handful were not too bad, a few were good. I share the small handful of what I felt were good ones here, taken mostly within the last 5 years. These were all taken with a Sony Cybershot T-60, and have been processed with Photoshop.

3 photos taken below at New York Botanical Garden Oct. 27 2006. I really liked the first two shots as it mimicked a wider aperture of an SLR by shooting in macro mode (I think). The third one, I wish I had given the same treatment of mimicking a shallow DOF focusing in on the white flower with the pond leaves blurred a bit more.

From pre-SLR

From pre-SLR

From pre-SLR

Taken at my cousin's wedding in North Carolina on May 18 2009. Again, shallower DOF would've been nice. The detailed background with the trees and the photographer's lighting equipment was just a terrible distraction detracting from the main subject.

From pre-SLR