Pixel Darkroom Photography

I went with my friend Ugur downtown to shoot fireworks today. We had a great time and grabbed a few good images. The bridges were full of people (both the one we shot and the one we were on) and it may have been a great picture to shoot photograph all the photographers from the other side of the street ["Maybe one day we'll do you too..." - Finucci brothers], but it was impossible to cross. Traffic wasn’t stopped and some of the images even have camera shake (or should I call it “bridge shake”) due to some of the buses driving by in the middle of some longer exposures. It was a great view to see all the trails that the boats would make, the helicopter and it was just a great view. Ugur is a fun guy and a great photographer. Here’s a link to some of his images.
I will post some hdr and other images in a different section of this website. Until then, this image will suffice as the picture of the day. Here’s 285 images so far. God bless you and thank you for stopping by.

This is a repeat of a shot done a while back on Day 50. This time it happened outside with the moon in the background and with a new airplane and totally different lighting.

I’ve been planning this one for some time. It took careful planning of the route as follows: four daylight dry runs to check for small bumps in the road that may affect the stability of the car at speeds higher than 210km/h, checking the timing of the stop lights, two Valentine One radar detectors inside the car, a few cones to divert traffic on three intersections where traffic was minimal and flaggers in place at each of the other intersections and two hidden driveways. We had one major intersection blocked 1.5 minutes by a fake police car where I had someone manually trigger red and blue gelled 580′s via Pocket Wizards from inside an ex-RCMP Ford Taurus. Since the run wouldn’t take long, we planned for the best timing when we predicted that the least amount of cars would be present, to minimize the risk of injuries in case anything would go wrong or to have the least amount of witnesses besides the people involved, whom I shall leave unnamed for obvious reasons. Here’s “220 km/h on Day 220.”

Note: Do NOT attempt this! This was done by a professional driver on a closed circuit.

Disclaimer: regular visitors of this website are familiar with stories of the same or similar credibility levels. Please use your judgement before jumping to conclusions.

Today it got late and I still hadn’t had taken my picture for the day. I drove a lot and at one point I saw this cool old truck. I couldn’t stop then to photograph it so I came back later. It was too dark later so I took a few shots while driving back home. This is 23:00 or so. I’ve been planning to take some images like this one and I might work on some other ones, maybe with a tripod. I like the blur and the shakiness – I feel it adds to the idea of speed.

I like photographing nature more and more. This was my first frame today. I did a bunch more afterwards but this one I ended up liking the most. Believe it or not, this whole water is gone during the day as it is one of the spots where the Pacific Ocean pulls away its tide in the morning. A beautiful place that smells like sea water. I have shot a few images here of which one is part of the 365 project and you can find it here. Here’s Day 193.

I don’t have much to say about this image. The more I look at it, the more I like it. It also makes me think about chaos and I have to say that the more I think about it, the more I believe that chaos doesn’t exist. That’s all for tonight. I hope to keep up the posting. Thanks to all for stopping by and for all the comments I get on Facebook, Flickr, in person, by e-mail, letters, and fax. I also received a missive and a message in a bottle once. But only once.

Bunch ‘a tweaks in Lr.

There are so many things that have changed in your life time and my life time. I have seen technology change on so many levels and I am sure there are bigger changes yet to come. I have seen people come and people go, I have seen countries change, presidents change, dictators go (I am too young to have seen them come, but I’m sure there are some), I have seen regimes change.

One of the things that this cart reminds me of, is a similar cart my grandparents had in Iasi, Romania, where people had to buy propane by the tank to run their stoves. The rest of the house was heated with wood, but the cooking was done with propane. (I think it was propane; I know it was dangerous and we couldn’t play around those tanks). My grandfather had a hard time in his life. After having fought in WWII and living under Communism, life didn’t offer him many possibilities back in Romania. I remember to this day stories he told us about his combat experience, about growing up under an oppressive regime, about moving from the country to a city, stories about my parents.

One thing I remember was from back when he did not have a place to live. I don’t remember all the details, where my grandparents were living and how he came to accomplish this, but he told me he once saw a bird with a straw in its beak. He realized that she was going to build a home for herself and he said “I’m going to do the same.” So he started building a house. It was amazing to see old photographs of the house and the area in the times when it was built. There wasn’t even a road back there, only empty fields and dirt. When I grew up, there was on one side the Botanical Gardens which is basically an amazingly beautiful park and on the other side a full size soccer field for practice, where he had made a gate in the fence and my brothers and I could go and play soccer and run in the sprinklers or run with the dogs. The first house he built, was sort of temporary and was made of some special kind of home made bricks. They lived there for quite some time until they had finished the other house. This other house was the one where the cooking was now done using propane. What a big change from using wood in a stove. The propane came in tanks that were brought by a truck down the road, outside a small shack that served as a convenience store. Some people would line up there and wait for the truck to come. There was this sort of word of mouth announcement that the truck had come and the rest of the people could send someone (kids or grandkids) with a cart and some money to exchange the tanks. I don’t even remember how often this was. It might have been every two weeks, every week, I don’t know. I do remember that we used to carry each other in this two wheeled cart and run in the street with it. It was a fun toy. We fell a lot since it was not meant to carry people, but that didn’t stop us from playing with it. We didn’t have helmets and there wasn’t any big “warning!” sign on it to “keep away from children”.

Then at some point some neighbors had gas pipes installed and there was no more need for them to go exchange tanks. Technology was advancing.

It feels like I’ve shot this before. I took my son with me. It was sooo cold. We should have made it out sooner but things got late with different appointments. We played a bit and finally came out with this. The stuff we played with look fun but it was too cold to perfect it in camera so we stayed with this. Initially we went out to shoot the moon. By the time our appointment was done, the moon was gone. I can’t believe it. I don’t even know where it went, it wasn’t even cloudy. We’ll get to it some time. Here’s Day 1-2-3.

Strobist info: 580 EX II CL on ETTL -3 EV at 105mm. It was setup for some tests but finally didn’t have much to do with this final shot. It did fire, and was triggered by the ST-E2. Bunch’a tweaks in Lr.

I know I know, it’s been done before. I think I got cooler images than this one tonight but they probably have been done before even more than this one. It started raining towards the end and I didn’t feel like experimenting too much. Truth be said I did see a great image that with all the expertise I could not capture yet. It has to do with balancing high ISO with the shutter. Maybe some other night… when it’s not raining.
There goes day 86.

No story. Drove by, lights were on, needed a shot, SHOT IT.

Honestly I was working on something else tonight and I got this shot before the others from high up on a hill. I am still working on the others and I knew I needed more time for it to be entirely ready. The sky was great for both shots, but for the other one I need more time,… literally, a lot more time. Oh, and just in case you were wondering how the rules work, since I posted this so late: I need one shot a day. It must be taken that day (not on a previous day), regardless of wether I post it online the same day. I’m just sayin’… Just so you know, ’cause I might not get to posting them here the same day. (This is getting tiring.)

Going abstract. I love getting images like this out of almost nothing. I haven’t done much with this except for a big crop. I knew there was something in this image when I took it and after cropping it, it became obvious. Who can tell what this is?

Go fish.

I thought it’s about time to hit the road some more and get some shots outside. I got some other great images tonight but in the end I chose this one.

Strobist info: 30″ exposure with two 580 EX II CL full power manually triggered on the rocks. AWB. No gel on the flash. I did cool it down a few degrees in Lr.

Strobist info: 580 EX II via ST-E2 CL into umbrella.

Today I saw an UFO. It’s the first UFO that I have ever seen live. I got the camera out and took this shot. It was unbelievable. I then saw a guy being lifted up by this big ray of light. Then he fell – they must have dropped him, or somethin’. I don’t know what to say. Maybe they picked up the shutter click from my camera and it somehow interfered with their beam. I never really believed in UFOs, but after tonight,… I don’t know, man… it’s just something… I’m really dizzy. Maybe the ray of light got to me too… I hope I’ll still be here tomorrow. If you don’t see a post tomorrow… you know where I am. I’ll keep my camera with me, in case I ever get back, or in case someone finds the camera… or at least the CF card.

Strobist info: UFO light up in the sky. Tweaks in Lr only (WB, tint, etc.) – no layers, no Ps, nothing else.

Post Scriptum: big big big kudos to whomever can tell me how this shot was done, in case you didn’t believe my UFO story.

Here goes day sixty. 305 to go. Aww, man!

Strobist into: 580 EX II via PW CL at 1/32 or so with 1/2 CTO. Shot at a whopping ISO 400 and slow shutter (1/20 or so) handheld at f2.8. No setup shot. Figure it out. Thanks for the ooohs and aaahs.

Even though I stayed up very late last night playing with the beauty dish, I did not like what I got so in trying to be true to my self imposed rule that I should like what I shoot, today I went outside and tried again. Here goes day 51.

Strobist info: 580 EX II into slightly collapsed collapsible umbrella with 1/2 CTO via PW camera right. Camera info: 1/2′ ISO 400 f2.8.

Some guy driving some huge truck got pulled over in front of me while returning home. It wasn’t too far from yesterday’s spot and I decided to pull over in front of him and take a shot. It was dark and rainy so I didn’t get the best view. You can read below for details and setup shot.

Strobist info: 580 EX II with bunch of red and blue gel behind the truck, on the ground fired manually on two channels with the TEST button of the PW during 1’6″ exposure (blue, blue, red) and $2 LED flashlight handheld and hand snooted to get some highlights of the truck. Modified setup shot here. Between you and I, this was by far the hardest shot so far.

License image here

Nothing here. Thanks for stopping by. Your constructive comments are always appreciated.
Oh, here’s where you can license this image at full resolution for anything you may need, calendar, postcard, poster, fine art, etc.

Even though I could have considered the shot for today the previous post with the Thai food, I wanted to get something different. I called and made some arrangements to see if I can get Ali to come and model for me. It worked out great, except that it rained a lot. We got this shot early in the night and whatever else we tried afterwards did not work out as well because the limitations I decided to impose – using my stock lens that came with my Canon 5D II. Ali was great and I got a beautiful image.

Strobist info: one 580 EX II CR with full CTO, zoomed to 105. I forgot the setting (below 1/2). Triggered via Pocket Wizards. White balance on Tungsten. Postproduction in LR – temperature and fill light. Sorry, not setup shot. It was way to rainy and I forgot.