Patterns

So this nigh- I mean week of shooting for the weekly project was interesting. I had no idea what to shoot and I tried the first thing that might be interesting with different lighting conditions.

I chose to shoot these because it was small and there are a lot of them. Boring or not, here are the pictures:

This one is on a glass plate with the light underneath it so that all you can see is the silhouettes. 

I put the things on white card and black paper cut out.

This is the same scene except I put the light on top of the car between the black paper and white card. It is purposely overexposed.

In the end, all I was shooting was corn. The popcorn corn. It was interesting playing with lighting and how much the lighting can change the whole picture.

 

good day yo

Breaking Bad / Proposal in Time

Subject Irrelevance 

The past "holidays" or "mid-trimester break" I decided to start watch a TV series known as "Breaking Bad" because it is a well known TV show that a lot of people seemed to really like. I remember in a lecture we were shown a compilation of time-lapses. Even though these were great, the amount of time these would have taken, they didn't have a story since they were out of context in a compilation. I watched the show.

(music not in original time lapses)

Nailed it. Without spoiling anything I will try to explain what is so clever about the use of time-lapses in the show. The way the show breaks up the slow pace with "fast" time lapses adds to the overall tense mood of the show. In the show the time lapses feel fast, not only because of the fast moving objects but the sound effects hit home. When cars pass the on screen you feel like the car is passing, at pace, and many. I'm not sure if it is recorded sound sped up of some sounds added in after, it has a tense feeling. It is amazing how everything ties into the story and the time lapses don't feel out of place. It goes fast.


If this shot had a human..

This has given me inspiration to do my own series of time lapses for my time project. It will show the the time over a day in the Hutt Valley. The Hutt Valley is a place I grew up and am currently living so it is suits me. I will try to capture fast moving traffic and tensity through sound and picture.

Timelapsation

Some experimentation, still figuring out how to do a nice sunrise timelapse. The colours are quite amazing.

I also did some stop motion testing of the water in the vase.

I did this a couple days ago, I was really planning of doing some sunset testing but it had just starting raining intensely on the same day as this sunrise. I was not so keen to leave my camera out is the windy wetness.

I'm getting closer to working on my final work for my final hand-in.

More coming soon..

Learning from mistakes

This morning I went out to get a nice sunrise timelapse at the beautiful Petone Beach. I was not intending for this to be anything final, just testing to get some exposure setting right for the proper shoot. So I'm out here at 6 am which is a bit late, by the time I started there was already a bit of light so I had to start as soon as possible. Part way through I decide that I want to actually turn the camera around the other way towards the sun only to find out the view towards Wellington City was much better. So I'm sitting in my warm car for a long time. I come out later to find that the camera was on low battery and was not taking any more photos. The results were a not that great. But I found adding a track in the background helps out a lot.

Ten Light Trails Photos

Just flicking through flickr for some examples of light trail photography that I found interesting. After doing some light trail experimentation I thought I would look at what other people are doing.

light trails in hong kong - kapester - Film

Looking down at a one way street makes this photo pick up the one color tone from the street lights and headlights. 

In car light trails through Sunderland - Steven Pugh - Digital

This is interesting because it is basically the opposite of everything else, moving the camera to see trails. It becomes quite hectic outside but the interior of the car stays sharp.

Light Trails at Dusk on Kings Highway - Jason Barnette - Digital

The Sunset brings this picture to life. The town is lit up as well of the light trails from the cars.

Duotone version of Light Trails - Formidable Photography - Digital

This person has turned this photo into one color. It is very nice without any glaring lights from street lights. The highway vanishes into the horizon, and the feeling is very dark and mysterious.

Boston Blue Hour - Greg Dubois - Digital

This is a strange photo because I wonder why there is a hole in the fence. Maybe so people can climb down to tag on the side of the bridge, the stickers on the pole make me think this might be one reason. The red and white lights are very defined in this picture. It looks very busy while being incredibly linear.

Light Trails and the City - Sam Post - Digital

This view is amazing, A place I'd like to go some day. The sun is very warm. The colors in this photo warm cold and warm. The blue fades to yellow to the left. I think this photo could have been framed differently but the view is still nice.

Swan House Roundabout - Claire Wells - Digital

There is a lof of curves and lines around everywhere. This photo is very industrial. The whole in environment is build, hard concrete surfaces and the roads are built to fit. The building on the left is a car park.

Untitled - Ether Moon - Film

The amount of lights in this photo is crazy. I really like the way film looks. It isn't super sharp which makes it look calming. 

Frome town centre - Kevin Withers - Film

Star trails @ Fusoshan - Alex Lin - Digital (Edited to look like film)

Star trails are always interesting, but I find the horizon and town below much more interesting. Trails of cars on the roads are visible.

There were some more interesting photos than these but most photos I couldn't link to this blog. Light trail photography is interesting because it shows what happens when you leave the shutter open of long amounts of time at night.

Trailography

Today I am talking about "trailography"; no, it does not have anything to do with trail biking, or tracking of IP addresses; although I would technically say they are kinda in the same category.

Trailography is about the study of trails. To be honest I don't even think it is a word and there is probably is a much better word but this is what I call trailography:

This shot was fun trying to get the spider visible to the camera, thee are  also getting the cars passing by behind, it would have been nice to see the web as well. This photo shows the cold metal fence in the foreground of a warmly lit road in the background with cars passing by on a long shutter speed leaving just trails. The focus is on the fence which covers the entire photo.

This is the second time I've been to this spot, Petone Train Station. I wanted to show something different. This is the view looking out the bridge. When in here you feel trapped so that was what I was showing with the bars across the framing and war.

This was interesting, the street lights were out so you can only see the light trails, the outlines of the hill and the blue sky.

The concept of time is great, light trails of cars in photo's is nothing new, with these photos I was trying to capture them from a different perspective. I think my shoot went well.

Art of Photoshop

Restroshop - 15 second exposure with "ND filter"

Photoshop is a great tool; the all-in-one when it comes to photo editing; and when it comes to Camera Raw it is amazing how much detail you can get out of a badly taken photo with a cheap filter. I got a bit carried away with all the sliders, trying to get that "aged" look, just for fun I created this photo is actually the weekly task, sort of. *not over done
Just looking at the photo itself there is a relationship between the train lines and the motorway, to me it seems like train lines like to run parallel to motorways (I also looked at an image by Elliot Erwitt which shows this), and it's just really linear in the way they move. The "ghost lines" of the train and cars on the road are parallel and vanish into the distance.

White-Out

This is my "ultrafast" shutter speed photo. Well you can see it's foggy and it hasn't been like this for awhile in Wellington and those two people just happen to be walking by(if they are people :O). If you can recognize where this is that is great.
What I think makes this photo so good is the two figures on the right side of the photos in contrast to the large figure on the left. It is quite a mysterious photo because the "items" in the photo are far away where the it is barely visible and then it is just a total white out after that.

I enjoy slow shutter photography and it is what I mainly do myself. Completely unrelated.

More is More

More Elliot Erwitt. I like his photography a lot so I looked through some other of his work.

 

USA. New Jersey. 1966. Allied Chemical.

This photo is quite interesting, not just because of the obvious scenario that is happening in the picture but because of the extreme symmetry. Everything from the lab coat uniform, the open doors, to the construction of this corridor It is extremely "clinical" and gives me an uncomfortable feeling. 

USA. Wyoming. 1954.

I thought this photo was cool.

Just joking, even though that is what I thought the reason I think this photo is "cool" is how both the train and the car are coming from a far away vanishing point. There is a symmetry here and it directly relates the car to the train. The car appears much cleaner because the train running parallel has a massive smoke cloud trail following it.

It looks like the train and the car are in line with each other which help to the effect.

The road and train track also do run parallel in this part.

Something else interesting about this photo is that it looks like it was shot out the back window of a car. The black bar at the top and bottom look like the back window frame of an old car.

GB. ENGLAND. Birmingham. 1991.

And of course I had to put another dog photo in. I like how Elliot Erwitt in this picture is playing with the fact that this breed of do looks like an old granny(the white hair does it). The granny dog is actually "standing" next to a real life granny. It is interesting how he relates humans and dogs by putting dogs on the level on the humans.

Strange

Elliott Erwitt. 

Well the images speak for themselves.

Just a picture of a small dog at the legs of the owner you think ?

No, not at all. This photo is framed so well that I didn't even notice anything strange about it until I said to myself, "there must be something absurd with this photo", then I saw the legs on the left are in fact dog legs.

Another thing I have noticed is that Elliot Erwitt seems to enjoy playing around with nudity. This is an example I found of one of his many pictures of people with a bit less then an acceptable amount clothing.

What I found interesting about this photo and what Elliot has done is that, it is perfectly normal to have a group of people painting a nude model, but he has switched it around and made a bunch of nude artists painting a clothed model.

He does this a lot where he put nude people into "normal" situations. I'd put them on my blog but I don't think I should have a bunch of naked people on my blog. Look them up yourself.

Now Elliot Erwitt also takes these really absurd photos of colored people back in the an old America. This boy is hold a gun to his head and he is smiling.