58/365 - been draggin' around

58/365 - been draggin' around
Originally uploaded by ddiemont

OK, a little something different today as for the next few days I may be posting my daily pictures from the indoors (we've got a couple days of rain and... fingers crossed... snow headed our way. As you can see the concept for this photo was to have an evil me pulling a not so evil me (or possibly a second evil me) behind the hummer. Not exactly sure why I came up with the idea... I did want to try out the radial blur feature in photoshop. I had a photo of the day a few weeks ago which I wish I had photoshop for to add some radial spin to the wheels of a toy car. So, heres how I worked today's photo.

Step 1: Took a photo of an area of my backyard without the hummer in it. Then I added a horizontal motion blur to that photo.



Step 2: OK, now I took a picture of the hummer with me driving it (obviously) and pasted that over top of the blurred background.



Step 3: Now I took the undergrowth below the hummer, the background behind me in the car and did a motion blur on those sections. Then I ran a radial blur on both wheels.


Step 4: Next I took a third picture of me being "dragged" by the hummer and pasted that into the photo.


Step 5: Now I did a blur on the lower portion of my body so that it wouldn't be such a sharp contrast between the bottom of my body and the ground... then I did a small amount of horizontal motion blur on the hummer and me (5 pixels worth or so).


Step 6: Then I darkened up the background layer a bit in layers to make it match the hummer and I. The final product on flickr has some cropping and a small amount of vignetting applied as well.



Hope you enjoyed.
Have a great weekend
-Derrick

56/365 - Mr. Lucky Starlight

56/365 - Mr. Lucky Starlight
Originally uploaded by ddiemont

Well, sorry it's been a while since my last post.  Didn't really think there was anything that was technically very hard over the last few weeks (although I may go back and post about my layered shot a few days ago... "Wish I Was Here"

So, the reason this shot is called "Mr. Lucky Starlight" is because this is a series of exposures (as was recommended by flickr user clay.wells...  The Mr. Lucky is referring to the album I was listening to as I was taking the exposures... and it played a somewhat important part in the photo taking process...  it is how I timed out the exposures.  I took on photo per song.  Ended up taking 24 pics for this, each around 4 or 5 minutes.

Well, that presents a bit of an issue because the exposures become slightly whacked out.  So I imported all the images into Apple Aperture and adjusted the histograms on each of the exposures to approximately match.  Then I matched the white balance and then exported the files out as jpgs.

Now I imported the files into Photoshop using the "Import photos as stack" option.  I selected create as smart layers (and I did not automatically align as they were taken on a tripod and didn't have much variation)...  Once I got them imported in I set the Layer Stack Mode to Maximum...

and there you have it.

Mr. Lucky Starlight.

thanks for stopping by.

-Derrick

49/365 - waiting

waiting is the first 365 entry that i would possibly file under the "art" category.  While there have been other photos on my stream that have arty type features to them, this one is more of a concept photo...

what i wanted to create was a photo that could be interpreted as either sad or happy...  is the subject waiting merely for someone to show up (an early arrival perhaps), or is he waiting for someone that is to never show...  part of the reason that the subject is aimed away from the camera is to hide any sort of emotion... the all black clothing is there to increase the feeling that this is just a silhouette.

maybe not the best art style photo, but give me some time... i may get better.

So, this photo was taken with the Nikon D90, ISO 200, f/2, 1/13 sec.  Brought the photo into Apple Aperture to work with the photo.  Cropped to square to remove trees on the right hand side of the frame.  Made some tweaks to the exposure (bought it up just a tad), changed to a monochrome image using the orange filter option, then converted to a color monochrome using 60% intensity with a brown color.  Then cloned out a power wire that was in the distance and there you have it...

waiting

thanks for stopping by.

- derrick

45/365 - the ring

45/365 - the ring... it floats
Originally uploaded by ddiemont

Its a special Valentine's Day post in my blog!!!

Today's photo, in theory, didn't seem so difficult.  About 2 hours of shooting later I discovered that I was being much more ambitious with my photo than even I could have anticipated.

Before we get into the setup of the photo, just a little information on the subject of the picture.  I was engaged a few years ago and luckily I called the whole thing off a few months before the wedding...  We weren't spiritually compatible, and it was going to be a rough go of it had we gone through with it...  and over time i've come to realize that the differences were more than spiritual...  so there's that.  But, on the bright side...  I did my ring back!  And I have always liked this ring... I like the symmetry of it.

*** the shoot ***

the original idea was to have the ring falling and to capture a picture of it in mid-fall.  challenging, but I thought it was doable...  I took about 170 pics of this, with varying levels of success... Regardless of the settings that I made within the camera I wasn't able to get a clear picture of ring at the right angle.

So, onto the backup plan.

to recreate you will need:

• a ghetto lightbox
  
• some pink tissue paper
  
• something to cover the sides of your ghetto lightbox (i used a towel for maximum ghetto-ness)
  
• a ring (you're gonna have to get your own... unless you are female, single, and play your cards right)
  
• some string to magically suspend your ring in mid-air
  
• a candle to light your ring with (and if you are lucky, not catch the tissue paper on fire with)
  
• a tripod
• a camera (unless you are a fantastic painter)

Once you have tied the string to your ring and taped it to the top of your lightbox to suspend it in mid-air, set your camera up to a long exposure (cause it's dark in there) and then light your candle underneath the ring to light it up.  now take some pics.  i used a long lens so i could get some distance from the ring (250mm) and the shutter speed that i used was 1 second.  Also bumped the ISO down to 100 to allow for the longer exposure...  and the aperture is set to f/5.6

once i got the photo into aperture, I took the saturation down a notch (the hot pink was a little too hot), vignetted (as always), and adjusted the levels on the photo so as to get the proper mood.

so there ya go...

happy valentine's day

-derrick

 See - i told you it was a ghetto lightbox ;-)

43/365 - there's no fun and games at the bar

43/365 - there's no fun and games at the bar
Originally uploaded by ddiemont

lucky for me, when i got home i saw this yo-yo sitting on my counter, just waiting for me to pick it up and start flinging it around.  Done and Done.

every once in a while I will see a selective color photo on flickr that I really dig (like this one i found this week) and i really want to try it... but i don't have the sexy legs... what's a boy like me to do...

YO-YO

So, here's how it was done:

obviously the tripod was mounted at an angle... this is where it pays to have at least a decent tripod that won't buckle under the pressure of the weight of the Nikon D90 and the Flash (SB-600) attached...  Then i got the focus of an item placed at the approximate area where the yo-yo would be at full extension when thrown and once that was done I put the camera into manual focus mode (i'm gonna wear out that switch).

The camera was set at the fastest possible shutter speed for the flash to shoot off at (1/200th of a second), i set the camera to fire with remote, then I went over to the bar and started slinging.  After a few minutes of yo-yo tossing I had some shots that could work for me.

Then I brought into Apple Aperture (currently my post-production weapon of choice) and then dropped the saturation on all color channels except for the blue ones (all my clothes were neutral colors)...  a little vignetting and levels play later and I was ready to push the pic up to flickr.  it was a simple as that ;-)

thanks for stopping by

-derrick

42/365 - diesel bomb

42/365 - diesel bomb
Originally uploaded by ddiemont

this was an accident... i swear!!!

So, for some reason on the way home from work I bailed on what my original plan for tonight's photo was going to be.  I would spill the beans on what it was, but I'll come back to it once i have a wider lens, which will make that idea more effective.

So, while stopped in traffic I decided to get online with my iPhone and do a little research into how much a lightbox might cost me and where I might go about picking one up...  Well, lucky for me I came across a nice little blog post on Strobist detailing how to make a "do it yourself" lightbox...  sounded like a good idea, cheap, and i want to be able to do cool lightbox photos like this (simplicity roxx).

So, the original idea was similar to this photo... EXCEPT instead of the flames, I was going to have the mist from the perfume spraying out of the bottle...  the plan was to photoshop 2 pics together to make it appear that the perfume was essentially spraying itself.  Great Idea, except I couldn't get the droplets to show up in any way, shape, or form!!!  well, here is where the candle comes into the game.  all i really wanted was a little something to give a different refraction to the mist, making it show up a little more.  Well, I was a little worried about it catching fire, and so I went outside and ran a few test "shots" of the cologne over the candle... and no flames... so, thought it was all good to come in and start shooting...

First shot of the cologne over the candle and BOOM (not noisy, but visually pretty cool).  Since I built the lightbox pretty big, the flames didn't get too close to the walls, and then i set off trying to capture the flames...  with one hand I was shooting off rapid fire shots on the camera and the other I was pumping the cologne...  after about 80 shots I had a few that had some flames that I liked.

a very small amount of post processing later, I had me a nice little diptych (2 pics in this sense are better than 1... at least more exciting)

apologize the last blog was so darn technical... i'll do my best to keep the technicalities down to a minimum in future posts!

thanks for stopping by.

Derrick

40/365 - self portrait - m.c.escher style

40/365 - self portrait - m.c.escher style
Originally uploaded by ddiemont

sometimes i get an idea in my head... and i'm gonna execute it no matter what...  and this was actually last evening's crazy idea which got postponed one day due to some extremely nice weather on Sunday ;-)

The inspiration for this is m. c. escher's self portrait.  I've always admired escher's work partially because he used a lot of math in his work, and as a kid I was REALLY into math.  that kind of wore off, except for I still love to problem solve...

So, this shot was successful after about 40 or 50 takes.  basically what I have done is tethered the camera to my laptop, then set an SB-600 flash off the camera aimed at me (so I would be properly lit for the shot).  Next I set the camera on a tripod and aimed and focused on a point in space... then set to manual, so that focal point would not be lost.  Now, I set the ISO to 1600.  It's kind of dark in this room, and I really wanted to control where the light was coming from in the image.  Now I lit the bar area softly, set the flash mode on the D90 to Commander mode, then set it's output to 1/128th power (would have prefered no flash at all, but the camera did not seem to want to cooperate).  Then i pulled out my trusty remote and just started clicking away, checking the laptop after every exposure to see how I needed to compensate for the next shot (the lens is zoomed to 140mm, and the 8-ball nearly filled the frame, so the slightest movement and I was doomed).

then click, click, click, click, click, rest my arm, click click, click, click... and BAM i got the shot i kinda sorta wanted.

maybe something easier tomorrow evening.

fly away sunset

fly away sunset
Originally uploaded by ddiemont

i generally resist the urge to go overboard with the saturation. not my style... but sometimes i'm ok with it, and i suppose this is one of those times.

can you tell by my indecisiveness how i really feel about it?

this is of a lifeguard station in huntington beach, and for a slight challenge I decided to go onto the beach armed only with the 50mm f/1.8... lesson learned: didn't do the math on how much walking i was gonna have to do to frame shots properly. but, that's fine as i do like the results of the outing... some great DOF in some portraits i took of the family.

with this photo in aperture i cropped to square leaving the lifeguard post in the lower half of the photo, leaving the sky to fill the rest of the frame. then vignette and saturated... also dropped the exposure level a bit to drop any detail from the lifeguard post into the shadow.

hope you like ;-)

thanks for stopping by.
-derrick

36/365 - the night falls upon my home

36/365 - the night falls upon my home
Originally uploaded by ddiemont

night shooting... deserves a quiet night...

R.E.M. once said something similar. Well, it's been cold around here lately (minus the benefit of any snow) so i've been more of a shut in than normal... i want to get out to some of the local places in the next few months to shoot, but right now i'm confined to my place, so trying to think of some new ways to shoot the area.

so, this was attempt 3 of 3... glad it turned out, cause the battery drains pretty fast when you are doing some of these long exposures... For this shot I set up the camera just below the barn, propped it up and made the following settings on the D90:

Aperture: f/10 (for a decent depth of field, didn't want any of the barn to be really out of focus.
ISO:200 (the lower the noise, the better... and i'm not a huge fan of the noise reduction feature of thes cams, takes too long;-\)
shutter: bulb... started the exposure with a remote and got the heck inside... did i mention it was cold outside???

then about 20 minutes i came out and stopped the exposure and ran back in the house (again, did i mention it is cold?)

now for some post processing work... in aperture (love this program) i bumped up the saturation of the blues and pulled down the luminosity. cropped (can you tell this isn't a native resolution of the d90) and straightened out the picture (would have paid more attention as i was taking the picture, but did i mention it was cold???)

hope you gleaned a little info from this blog entry... if you're digging them let me know on the flickr page and I will make sure to keep them coming... love sharing these lessons learned with all my flickr friends.

-derrick

34/365 - ghost in the attic

34/365 - ghost in the attic
Originally uploaded by ddiemont

ok, this was slightly more difficult than some that i've done over the past month... and i'm not 100% pleased with the final outcome... but i suppose I never really am 100% happy. i always see something i could fix or do better next time...

alright, 'nough bitchin...

so, i decided on this shot earlier today and decided that i didn't have a powerful enough flashlight (that worked) to be able to accomplish what i had in my head. so i headed down to lowes and picked up a 2 million candlelight power flashlight and came home to take the shot.

I had the camera tripod mounted and and started the shot with the remote. ran into the shed and covered the front door with a heavy blanket, then broke out the flashlight and started painting the windows. then i climbed up into the attic (no easy feat, mind you) and then did a couple of poses up there with the flashlight, to make me look like i was trying to get out through the attic.

now, climbed back down, did some more painting on the windows and then pulled the blanket off the door. now, i take off my heavy black jacket and run out the door, jump off the deck while stopping the exposure with my remote (check the right hand)... the rear flash freezes me in the frame.

now the downer part... the shed itself is underexposed like crazy... and there isn't much i can do about it... if i properly expose the shed with some spotlights in the first part of the shot, then i disappear into the shed when I am jumping out and the ghosts up top disappear... ugh.

learned a couple of lessons on this one... I hoped that I would not look like a ghost in the final image, but hey, whatever...

then i did some pretty heavy lifting in Apple Aperture (monochrome mixer, exposure adjusting, levels, shadows bumped up, vignetting added)

hope you enjoyed this installment.

the settings:
Nikon D90
Aperture: f/18
ISO: 200
Exposure: bulb... 410.9 seconds
Flash: SB-600, set to +2.7 exposure compensation

33/365 - d o m i n o s . . . they all fall down

33/365 - d o m i n o s . . . they all fall down
Originally uploaded by ddiemont

ok, my first diptych... and i'm ok with it... i'm sure I'll try a more classic diptych sometime soon, but wanted to get an action shot of some dominos biting the dust... so here's how it was done...

like last night's photo the flash was off the camera... SB-600 held above the dominos. took an 8 second exposure at f/6.3, ISO 200 (base ISO on the d90)... shot off the flash one time. oh, and the room was pitch dark.

second shot has the same settings 8 seconds, f/6.3, but this time i shot off the flash once at the beginning of the frame, toppled the dominos, then shot off the flash again.

now, i imported the shots into Apple Aperture (along with about 30 other shots... failed attempts) and then cropped and created a "book" from the images. now, i removed all the pages except for one, and then added the photos to that page, and then rotated both and added a small frame... "published" the book to JPG and voila.

my first diptych.

2 photos that are better together than they are all alone. kinda like peanut butter and jelly. or rum and coke.

32/365 - Rubik's to the 3rd Power

32/365 - Rubik's to the 3rd Power
Originally uploaded by ddiemont

My first post going over my photography... this is soooo exciting (ha ha). So here's how this was done...

I has the D90 on a tripod, and the rubik's revolution in a shot glass (I have plenty of those laying around)... I turned off all the lights in the room and started with the Rubik's Cube just out of frame. then i panned the camera during a 30 second exposure slowly to the left until i had the cube just out to the right hand side of the frame... pan stop!

Now, I moved over to the right hand side of the bar that I had the cube sitting on and took my SB-600 and flashed it... then i got over on the left hand side at approximately the same area and flashed again! and then waited for the exposure to end...

then in Apple Aperture I cropped the photo to make sure the cube was on the right side of the frame and the shot glass was copped out... boosted the Saturation (it's a toy, it should be saturated) and the definition (I wanted this thing to really look defined). then moved the black point such whatever was in the background completely dropped out...

and voila... Month 2 is off to a rousing start!

Welcome to the Blog

Jellyfish
Originally uploaded by ddiemont

Welcome,

In October of 2007 I picked up my first Digital SLR (a nikon d40) and I fell in love with the hobby of photography almost immediately. I'm constantly trying to learn new techniques to make my photography more interesting and in this blog I intend on (a) going over some lessons learned, (b) tell some stories behind the photos, and (c) highlight some of my favorite photographers on flickr and what i feel are their best works. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy.

My first "Explored" photo on flickr: