Macro Attempts

Messing around with my Kenko extension tubes I bought last month. This is the 20mm and 12mm tubes stacked onto my 50/1.8. I have played with these once before in Thailand and realized quickly that you really need to have an external or ring flash. So I setup a cheap tripod with my SB-600 firing down almost straight down on top of the Baklava.

Another macro shot, this time of the rear sprocket of my very neglected mtn. bike. Again, 32mm tubes and the 50/1.8 were used with the off camera flash firing directly above. Gotta love the Manfrotto tripod with articulating arm to get into your subject and still remain steady. Now I just need to go find one of those gigantor centipedes that were setting up shop inside my house over the summer; would be an interesting subject.

Ayutthaya Vertorama

Looks seemingly normal, but what in the hell is going on with those poles on both sides? That is because this is a vertorama, aka 2 shots stitched together like a panorama, except they are stitched vertically. The picture is warped a bit to insure that every pixel in both shots are perfectly lined up. Also, both shots were comprised of 5 exposures each which were then HDR’d in Photomatix before stitching them together.

Byokkehaya

Another one from Ayutthaya. I took multiple shots of this scene with different statues in focus. This happened to be the first one I opened and I just started to work on it. I looked at the other version a day after posting this, really, I like the focus point to be on the statue second from the left side. I think that framing your subject with bokeh on both sides is usually a bit more pleasing than starting your DoF at the beginning of your foreground. That is my theory at least.

Just Chillin

Since our international flights originated in Bangkok, we thought it would be interesting to head up to the city of Ayutthaya, which is about an hour away from the city center, maybe slightly longer if you get caught in the hellish traffic usually found in Bangkok. We flagged a taxi down in the morning and were able to get an all day tour from the most friendly cab driver I have ever met in my life–and only for 1,500 baht. His mother was born in the city, so he knew exactly where to take us. He knew of so many spots that we eventually became so wore out that we had to turn him around back to Bangkok… where he proceeded to take us to more places. So I have a lot of shots from that day since there is so much cool stuff to see. Thank you Mr. Bangkok cab driver.

Heaven & Hell

School has started again for me and it is rudely encroaching on my free time to work on my photos.. Damned dirty school! What did you ever teach me about photography? Nothing!

Well this was the evening that I took about 60% of my shots for the entire trip to Thailand. The majority of shots taken here were mostly unremarkable highlighted by a huge series of vertical panorama multiple exposure shots I took of the entire 360 degrees of Railay Beach– that were unfortunately kind of overexposed since I was too good for my histogram or meter during the series. We’ll see if I can save it in the future.

Over Saturated

Not your usual long tail-boat-on-a-nice-deserted-white-sand-paradise-beach picture. This was only about 15 yards from the edge of the beach so they were able to wait until low tide to remedy the situation. These long boats are really damn smoggy and noisy when operating and I secretly wouldn’t have missed this one if it was totally enveloped by the sea, but on the other hand there aren’t a lot of other options to get back and forth between Railay. Still, I have no idea why Thais utilize these slow, inefficient, and completely archaic long boats?

Railay Night

I used my little Photox Cleon remote to take this 141 second exposure of the west side of Railay, the area that we stayed in. The beaches there are amazing and the reason there are 2 sides is that the hotels are all on a very narrow peninsula that only takes about 5 minutes to walk from one side to the other. Both sides are dotted with restaurants right on the beach and the food is pretty damn good and not too prohibitively expensive at only about 600-800 baht for 2 people with more food than you can usually eat.

I notice a lot of blurriness from the trees on the rock face due to the long exposure, which I now see why most long exposures of the ocean or sea turn out better when you mostly focus on the glassy water and wicked skies that start to come out despite what looks like complete darkness to the human eye. I had a few other long exposures that had long tail boats in them and they were so blurry it kind of ruins the shot for me.

Prison For a Day

Today should really be spelled twoday for me right now. You see, my day began at 5am Thai time on Friday to see my lovely wife off to Bangkok International for her flight, marking the end of our 2-week tryst through paradise. Once the inevitable checkout time came, I too headed to the airport to sit and wait for 11 hours before boarding time, but this was a special 11 hours because I was sick for most of that time.

I eventually pilled myself up, snapped a few photos, and embarked on the rest of my journey back to Turkey and now about 48 hours since the start of my day, I am trying to post this HDR of my personal prison for a day that is about as heavily baked as my mind feels right now. I’ll be ready to travel again tomorrow, although, responsibility tells me no!

Schnapps Distillery

During a recent business trip to Germany a group of my counterparts that work all over Europe were able to head out to the quaint village of Reichenbach to visit a well-known schnapps distillery to get liquored up and eat some tasty German food also known as schnitzel. The distillery is called Brennerei Mischler & Raudonat which can be found here.

What is Wodka and is it even safe for human consumption?

When I walked in I was surprised at how many different kinds of liquors they had for sale. I was expecting to find a very extensive distillery in the basement somewhere, but this was actually all they needed to get the job done, and I mean they made every kind of schnapps you could think of such as jalapeño schnapps, so this must be one impressive machine!

The food was extremely good as well. Stop by if you are ever in the Rheinland-Pfalz area! And like that, I am off to Thailand for 2 weeks in about 1 hour!

Admiration

Sneak attack from behind!

Tokyo International Forum Redux

I had to go back into my extremely neglected archives so that I can vary my recently posted photos a bit instead of nothing but Turkey, I need to get away from work and go on a trip! That will be Thailand to meet my wife leaving in exactly in one week. This will be a second attempt at getting good pictures in that country as my first one was what prompted me to get a DSLR after my P&S became full of dust particles that ruined almost every picture I took the first time I was there. Anyways, here is another one of my favorite buildings–if not my favorite–in Tokyo, the Tokyo International Forum. The first batch I had processed I went really heavy on the orange hues for some reason. I have quite a few that I shot with a fluorescent white balance under these incandescent lights which gave a very blueish result.

Psychedelic Mosaic

I think I need to purchase about 200 of these psychedelic glass-mosaic cups and strategically arrange them out of the depth of field of any photo I take to make for some interesting bokeh arrangements.. What else could I possibly do with 200 cups when not using them for photography purposes? I only have so much change after the hobby of photography robbed me of everything that I am worth!

Sunspot

I was never quite sure how nature photographers were able to catch fast moving animals with their zoom lenses. I still have yet to look that up, but I am guess the answer is something like single servo focus and Nikon’s 3D tracking which is pretty much the mode that chooses the focus point for you. I always shot in single servo, single point focus where I choose the focus point since letting the camera pick out a point sounds kind of sketchy at best. When I was on top of the Galata Tower in Istanbul there were a lot of Seagulls flying around and I thought it would be fun to try and get a shot.

I just could not get a sharp shot using my old single point method and was missing a lot of shots just trying to get the focus point onto a fast moving gull. I decided to give 3D tracking a try with continuous servo… I was actually amazed, but it was quickly locking onto the gulls and getting a lot of sharp shots. I just wished I had a bit more reach, but I did get a shot that I ended up liking. It wasn’t one of the typical shots, but one that I thought would be terrible as I was shooting since the sun was right behind the bird, alas, here it is.

ps- stupid wingtip! Why oh why did I cut you off???

Basilica Cistern

I decided to leave Demonicus–my trusty tripod–at home for my recent trip to Istanbul. I wanted to give my D700 a good high ISO workout since I know I will be going back to Istanbul many more times in the future. There was one site we visited that I had never visited before and I was very, very impressed with it. I really had to fight to get some usable shots though since it was the underground Basilica Cistern, which is very dark inside. It had a decent wooden rail to place the camera on, but even at ISO 4,000, I still had to take some long exposures and the wooden railing wasn’t quite cutting it since I had to actually press down on the camera to keep it balanced.

I decided to give this the HDR treatment as well, I like the way they look coming out of this camera and the cistern had so many neat textures and and cool reflections that are really brought out with HDR.

Hagia Sophia

It has been a real important week for work and I haven’t really felt like working on anything that takes brain power when I come home, but tonight I finally decided to keep a couple of synapses in my cerebral cortex active for long enough to work on some shots. I had been wanting to post some shots from the Hagia Sophia for a while now, and now here are some architectural shots from what I think is the coolest site to see in Istanbul. This one was taken from our hotel very early in the morning. It is easy to wake up early in Istanbul if you stay near the 2 major mosques.. It sounds like 10 loud speakers are pointed at your window for 5am prayer!

I was kind of dissapointed by two things when I walked into the Hagia Sophia. One, the massive scaffolding was still there 2 and a half years later after my last visit. Two, I was not allowed to climb up it! The restoration process is very time consuming from what I have read. I also have read that the dome is so massive that there has been a lot of problems in the past with shifting and movement of the dome itself and the walls that are supporting it. I think right now they are just working on restoring the mosaics on the ceiling.

I was messing around in Lightroom and came up with an alternate version of this scene. I kind of like the darker feel to it and enjoy the different perspective compared to the shot above, so here it is..