photos and other things…
Out for a stroll in the CBD tonight I captured one of the old buildings on the main road -Queen Street. A funny story,perhaps for another time, I recall getting stuck between this building and the next with a friend when we were young kids – eventuating in a rescue!
Shot on the mobile, using androids afterfocus app I converted to black and white and roughly blurred the background, finishing with a vignette.
As posted yesterday, Wednesday night I attended the Garbage concert at the Auckland Civic. Being concerts can be iffy about cameras, especially ones with Lenses that look big, I took along a Ricoh CX6. A great little camera with 10.7x zoom, as with all small point and shoots, it struggled a little with focus at times, and certainly had some noise at the higher ISO’s. Turns out other people (non officials) had walked in with their DSLR’s, so I could have taken something more substantial, but never mind – a great little camera with a big zoom that fits in the pocket, and has many of the custom aspects my usual GRD IV has.
Capturing Shirley, Duke, Steve and Butch, I cropped in a little on todays image. To deal with noise, I decided B&W was the way to go, and also pushed the contrast and slightly adjusted sharpness. All done in CS5.
Today marks a bit of a changeover in post image shooting for me. We purchased a new Mac, and my Linux machine, although still in use, is slowly getting things transferred over from. I like to use all OS’s, so will continue to do so, but mostly for now on OSX. Likely I will continue on with Gimp, but I also have more opportunity to keep in practice with Photoshop and the like also – something I have mentioned before, I am well out of practice with. As we are still battling with ISP issues, I have not yet managed to get Gimp on the Mac, but will attempt again over the next few days.
Ranginui and Papatuanuku (Rangi & Papa) are the two primordial parents relating to the creation of the universe in Maori legend. To summarise loosely (check the full story here), Rangi and Papa lived embraced together. Their children were always stuck in the dark, cramped and unhappy. Eventually they decided to separate the two, and one of the son’s, Tane-mahuta successfully pushed them apart by resting his back on the ground and pushing up with his legs, Rangi and Papa screamed and cried, but they were forever separated – heaven and earth.
For today’s image I shot a simple grassy ridge and sky. Pushed the contrast and leves in the sky and slightly on the grass. Converted to B&W and added a vignette. Shot on the GRD IV and edited in Gimp.
All going well, this posts tonight. Ongoing ISP issues still…hopefully resolved tomorrow! Also off to a music concert tomorrow night. Hope to get some shots.
I am a bit sick today, so excuse the limited text. Forgotten Jetty, shot last week on the Olympus E-500. Converted to B&W in Gimp with vignette added as well as pushing the contrast a bit.
Similar to my image taken a few weeks ago, Down in the Crowd is one of the images shot on Ilford Pan 100 using the Pentax MG SLR. Slightly tweaked in Photoshop CS4, I lightly colorised and resized – all adter developing and scanning.
Waitangi Day here in New Zealand tomorrow. If the weather holds, we might head out for a bike somewhere hopefully!
What started as a ~1 hour walk out and about, turned into a 20km 5 1/2 hour walk today! Quite enjoyable, but it would have been better if I didn’t only have my jandals (thongs/flip-flops) on.
Starting off (entirely on Auckland’s North Shore) in Eskdale Bush, I worked my way to Kaipatiki Bush, and then followed the Glenfield costal trail, before hitting the suburbs, over to Milford, Takapuna and Devonport.
As well as only planning a short walk today, I took along the Olympus E-500 DSLR – the heaviest of the bunch I have at hand.
The above image was captured in the first section of today’s walk. In post-processing I added vignette, converted to B&W and adjusted the curves a little to assist in giving the image a dark look.
Feet worn and sore, its time for a rest. Until tomorrow.
Some heavy digital pushing of today’s image ‘Dark by the Sea’. Mucking around in Gimp, I was pushing the sky to get some dynamics, and then the foreground to get the cliff sides. I think the result, although requiring more editing effort on my part where the foreground and background collide, gives quite a dynamic surreal feeling to it.
With the weekend here (at last!) I am hoping I will get some time to develop my film – and start a new one. I also took delivery of a budget 2.2x telephoto lens to try on the Nex. I wanted to see how acceptable a result it would give me on my 210mm leans, as well as the possibilities it may offer when I am travelling light with the standard kit lens.
Not much time for written content today sorry. ‘Up and Down’, shot at the Auckland Airport on the Ricoh GRD IV. Using Gimp I converted to B&W, adjusted contrast and sharpness and resized to post.
I have finally finished my film in the Pentax with the music festival on Monday – just need to find the time to develop it now!
Being a fan of sci-fi of all sorts, I recently caught the latest Judge Dredd movie, and re-watched the earlier Stallone version. As a teen, I remember reading episodes of Judge Dredd in 2000AD comic. On one such storyline, and in the Stallone movie, the Judge takes ‘The Long Walk’ out into the wild lands, bringing the law to the lawless. It is portrayed as a hostile environment, and one they are not expected to return from.
Using that as a concept today, I imagined stepping out into the sun swept wild lands, the sun being too harsh to allow the eyes to see into the distance, a land of nothingness.
Shooting with my Ricoh, I captured the image in cross processed and then converted to B&W in Gimp. removing the land in the horizon and pushing the contrast, I then gave it a colour tint.
Not much time for written content today…its been a long one & bed beckons.
Shot on the Sony Nex ISO 3200 1/50th sec and converted to B&W in Gimp.
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