Another Christmas has come and gone, with few consequences thereof. The world didn't end, the economy didn't fix itself with holiday shopping, and my hair is still ridiculously short.
On Christmas Day my family and I drove 3 1/2 hours south east to Fowler Colorado to see some family. I realized that it has been a long time since I have been down there when it was actually green, and the crops in the fields were tall. (It is a big farming community, if you hadn't already guessed.)
While we were down there, there is a tradition called the "Cousins Walk" where all of the cousins (obviously) go on a walk around the farm trails. It was ridiculously cold (probably around 9 degrees Fahrenheit) so I decided to bring along my D600, to see how it handled the extreme cold.
I couldn't be happier, as it handled it like a champ! No slowing down of the card, no super fast battery drain, the back LCD even worked great!
Here are a few of my pictures from that very cold walk:
I like how you can see all of the snow sort of shimmering in these two images (though it is harder to see in the upper one). I used a Tiffen 0.9 (3 stop) Neutral Density filter for the whole walk, to that I could have a bit slower shutter speeds than 1/2000.
Two more sort of random pictures. There is a small stream running through my families farm, with quite a bramble in it, which is the backdrop for most of these pictures.
And here is my brother looking like a boss without a hat at what I could guess was about a 0 degree windchill. Also he is wearing his 3d glasses that we got from seeing "The Hobbit, an Unexpected Journey."
Now that is enough from a few days ago, now I'll say something from today. I went out for a half hour or so walk with my D600 and my tripod, hoping to try some more stuff with my ND filter. So I went back over to the place with the little bridge that I posted pictures of a couple posts again just to see what I could get.
I could pull about a 1/3rd of a second shutter speed through my ND filter, so still not super slow, but enough to get the water flow. It would help if I went back later in the day when there was less light.
I'll leave you with this last picture is one of the behemoth trees in our neighborhood, as we are off to see Les Miserables.
Preow,
Kevin
TV: NCIS
Movie: Les Mis
Game: Castle Crashers on PC
Music: The Heist by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
Food: Panda Express
Well, its that time of year again. The time when many people dread going back home and seeing their families.
That's right, Christmas!
First order of business I would like to compare my Christmas eve/day post from last year (2011) to this post that I am writing. this is mostly academic for myself, as I want to see how far my photography has come since then. I will probably do a side-by-side comparison of similar pictures that I took this year (which I did on purpose should I chose to do a comparison).
However, from looking over what I posted last year, it seems to be fairly similar at least in feel. The technical aspects, however, are quite different. First off, this year I have a FULL FRAME DSLR with high quality glass, as opposed to an APS-C crop-sensor entry level camera with a kit lens. I am pretty much where I wanted to end off, with a Full Frame sensor, so I couldn't be happier.
All of these pictures, then, were taken with my lovely D600.
So we had our traditional Christmas Eve service, like usual. I focused more on the details with my camera, so an not to be to distracting to others.
Let's start off with our Christmas Tree. This picture below is my parents tree, which because of the High Park Fire, they finally broke down and got an artificial tree.
Here are a few detail shots in the sanctuary, and a few that I took during hte candle-lit portion of the service. Always one of my favorite parts.
As I said before, I really like the candle-lit portion of the service, as it is just relaxing and very nice. It also afforded a good opportunity to snag a couple good pictures before they turned the lights back on.
Once we got home, but before dinner, my brother felt like doing his "firewire" thing again, so I got one good shot of that.
Then we had a nice steak dinner, very similar to last year, and now I am sitting here writing this, so I should end this pretty soon.
Now, to end things off, this may be one of the best pictures that I have taken since I started getting more serious about photography. My personal opinion, yes, but I really like the composition and lighting.
Preow,
Kevin
TV: Iron Chef America
Movie: LotR
Music: The National, Macklemore
Game: Castle Crashers on PC
Food: Steak!
Well, I haven't really been up to updating this blog lately, but since I'm on break now I can spend some time doing a good post.
Now, instead of doing a post just saying what I have been doing since my last post, I'll do one about how lighting really influences the look and feel of a picture. While it seems to be self-explanatory, I feel like it is something that I have been learning in the past year that I have been really into photography.
These two pictures were taken at pretty much the same place, in my parents neighborhood, but the one on the left side was taken this morning when it was foggy and still snowing a bit, and the one on the right was taken right before sundown, when the sky was clear.
While you can see more details in the one on the left, the whole feel of the one on the right is better, in my opinion. The one on the left isn't quite framed by the trees as I would have wanted, but the wind was bitter cold, and seriously painful to be out in, and I was sort of in a hurry. Now I was still in a hurry for the second shot, as I was rushing to get the picture before the sun went down, and my friend was waiting in the car. when I took it I didn't notice the random power pole on the left side, so that is distracting to me.
However, I do like the distribution of the tree branches in the right frame, as well as being able to actually see detail in the sky, instead of a plain slate grey sheet. While the whole tone of the left frame is fairly stark and bright, which in some cases can be a good thing, there isn't enough contrast in the frame to make it very interesting.
That being said, the right frame isn't super interesting, but in my opinion it is better. My eyes are drawn towards the sun, but then there is also the reflection in the water that add a bit of depth, and even though the bridge is a bit dark, it is still a fairly good point of interest. Most of the frame is blue, which can be a soothing color, which is offset by the yellow of the sun.
So that's pretty much my opinion on the pictures that I took today. Take it as you will.
Random picture:
Thanks for reading,
Kevin
Tv: Big Bang Theory
Movie: Hanna
Game: Minecraft, Forge on Halo 4
Music: The National
Food: Cheap Chinese food, lovely.
Wow, it has been SO long since I updated this blog. I don't even know where to start with updates. Lets see where my last post left off...
Ok, so after the Coldplay concert I finished up my last couple weeks or so of my internship and went back home for a week to get my drivers license renewed, and I brought my D7000 back with me with all of my lenses. I really do need to get back home to Colorado more often, I really do miss it quite a bit. The landscape if just stellar, so much more interesting than this flat stuff they call land here in Indiana. Even after 3 1/2 years here I still am slightly off-put by the lack of mountains.
Anyways, while I was back home in Fort Collins, the big city arts/music festival was going on, New West Fest, and there were numerous local bands playing at something like 8 different stages across the downtown area.
This band was quite good, and they had a good gimmick going on with the zombie makeup. Pretty good stuff.
The next day we went hiking up Horsetooth Rock. A few mile hike with a pretty nice view of Long Peak at the top.
Also Chipmunk.
A couple days later my brother, my friend, and I went backpacking up the Poudre Canyon. We hiked up about 2 miles with our packs and set up a nice little base camp from which to explore around from.
My brothers SOG tomahawk was getting a bit beat up after spending a couple hours throwing it into a very old very dead tree. Really fun, though, and I was able to nail down 2 and 3 rotations. It lent a nice sense of power sending this heavy piece of metal flying through the air and hearing the "thunk" as it embedded into the tree. Later we decided to go out on a hike, and literally less than 1/4 of a mile out from our camp we go around some trees and Bam! Moose! And not a little one, a very large Bull Moose. It is unfortunate that I only had my 50mm lens with me, or else I would have gotten some better shots of this majestic beauty.
Later that night we discovered a really awesome effect with an overpowered laser pointer and the fire.
Here are a couple nice result shots.
We tried some long exposure stuff later, but they didn't really turn out from me.
That was basically the end of the camping trip, and we didn't really do much more before heading back to Valparaiso for school.
Intermission:
Not chronological with the telling of this grand yarn, because GoPro just released this, but it is just awesome:
Be sure to watch it in 1080p if you can! Just stellar.
Anyways, School started and I got back into my Engineering classes. It is senior year, and it is a bit harder in ways, as the subject matter is a lot more confusing, but I have less homework.
I am taking:
Machine Design
AutomaticControls
Advanced Materials
And Senior Design.
Now, for senior Design I actually am in the greatest project group. We have to develop and build a remote controlled submarine for taking pictures underwater at a depth of up to 100 feet. I'll give more details in some future posts (hopefully).
Anyways, I got a job with my Universities marketing department as a photographer/ photo editor. It is basically one of my dream jobs! I get paid to go to all of the university sporting events and other happenings, as well as I get to use the large nice photo studio down in the basement. Yay 3 point studio lighting!
As "stellar" as our football team is, it is still really fun to go to their games and get nice shots like the two above. These were with my D7000 with my 80-200mm AF. I am getting so much better at timing and framing, and just photography in general. Yeah, I would go out and take some random pictures this summer, but that isn't the same as getting actual experience at an actual event. I'll probably post some more of my better pictures here, too, but I have to get them off the work computer still.
More event pics. I really should get those pictures off the work drive, as I have quite a few all right pictures that I really would like to have up here.
So as a result of all this, I bought my bosses D600. Full Frame beauty! I can definitely tell a huge difference in the Dynamic range and noise performance when compared to my Crop-Sensor APS-C D7000. I am So glad that I made the jump to Full Frame. The camera's performance in general, also, is also in general higher than the D7000.
Here are the specs on Amazon: Nikon D600
And compare them to the: Nikon D7000
The only thing that is slightly obnoxious about the D600 is that it seems to gather more dust on the sensor than my D7000, so I have to be more careful about changing lenses. There might be some issue with a slight gap in the shutter, it is something that has been seen in some models, and it might affect mine too. I'm not sure what to do about it, but I can deal with it in the mean time. The image quality is just so stellar that it makes up for it.
This is the only picture that I currently have on my home desktop that I took with my D600, so it;ll have to do for now. I spent a couple hours messing with this on Lightroom 4.2 and Photoshop. Also, it is fortunate that lightroom 4.2 supports the D600, even though Photoshop currently doesn't support the .NEF files out of it.
Anyways, Picture.
As many of you may have read, my band that has been my favorite for a long time is Coldplay. However, I had not been to one of their concerts, due to them being prohibitively expensive or in the wrong place or at the wrong time.
BUT my girlfriend bought us tickets to a Coldplay concert for my 21st Birthday!
Pictures! All of these were taken with my little 6 yer old Fujifilm f100fd point and shoot, so they obviously aren't of the quality that my DSLR possesses. Anyways, onwards!
We got there are almost exactly 7pm, which is when the tickets told us to get there, and this is what it looked like, so it obviously wasn't then.
This was the second of the opening bands, the first one being mediocre so I don't remember their name, but this one was Marina and the Diamonds, and they were pretty good.
But of course they were nothing compared to the main act. Coldplay! The whole show was absolutely mind-bogglingly amazing. I obviously know all of their songs by heart, so it was interesting to see what songs they chose to put into the concert. They didn't just do the Mylo Xyloto songs, they did all of their old good ones, plus some of their less-well known songs as well.
As you went into the stadium each person was given a wrist band, and they all lit up at strategic times during the show, so the entire stadium was awash with lights and music.
This was during one of the songs, I can't quite remember which one, though.
There is just something about their music that evokes an emotional response in me, and really relaxes me. I have a tendency to quell any emotions that try to come out from me, as a defense mechanism or some such nonsense.
Each song just sort of... works, if that makes sense. There is just something sublime about them that comes together into a masterpiece.
This was taken by holding my camera way up and shooting down the row that I was sitting at.
And the final bow.
Whatever you may say about them, Coldplay knows how to put on one hell of a show, and I would gladly go to another concert.
That's all for now. School is coming back and I've got lots of engineering and swimming, and I've got a job as a photographer for the Torch (my universities newspaper).
Two more sort of random pictures. There is a small stream running through my families farm, with quite a bramble in it, which is the backdrop for most of these pictures.
