Picture of the day
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Monday, September 24th, 2007
Yesterday brought the marriage of Akiva and Shae in a beautiful ceremony. Attending was an interesting experience for me as this is the first Jewish wedding I’ve ever attended. While I didn’t directly understand any of the Hebrew prayers or blessings it was still fun to observe. I was very touched by how emotional Akiva got - he was shaking during the ceremony, and you could tell it really was a bit overwhelming for him.
The photo above is my favorite couples shot. I also really liked this shot of Eric, my capture of Shawna’s back, and this trippy twin-like shot of Troy. For all photos from the wedding check out my Flickr set of their wedding, or check out their Flickr wedding pool where hopefully other guests will also post some of their photos.
Congrats guys - myself and all your friends are wishing you the brightest of futures and the best of lives together!
A triptych of iPhone wallpapers
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007
I did a little work on some old photos tonight to work them up as Apple iPhone wallpapers. I ended up selecting two of them as my favorites, and am posting them here as a triptych with sunlit frond which I posted about two weeks ago. They were all selected for their central composition, and color pallets to go with the frosted grey and blue popups that appear on the homescreen. All three of them have been resized to 320×480 pixels from the original version and I adjusted the colors to look their best on the iPhone screen.
To set one of these as your iPhone’s wallpaper click the thumbnail above, then save the origional version from the pop-up to your hard drive. Save it to the location your iPhone syncs photos from (the folder of your choice on Windows or a Mac, or into iPhoto on Macs) and sync it to your iPhone. Once it’s there you can select it by clicking on Settings then Wallpaper to get to your photo library then selecting the photo of your choice.
“Chain link iPhone wallpaper” by sparktography
“Sunlit frond iPhone wallpaper” by sparktography
“Contrail to God iPhone wallpaper” by sparktography
Many things are happening
Sunday, September 16th, 2007
Further experimentation with my 20mm lens. This lens makes it much easier to work with reflections than the lensbaby did. I’m going to have to try this shot again at a higher fstop to make both the primary subject and the reflection be in sharp focus, but for now I’m really happy with the hypnotic effect. Image inspired by Myla Kent.
The long weekend is at an end - I wish I could take tomorrow off as well, but when work calls I unfortunately must answer. Hopefully I’ll be able to take another long weekend soon enough.
“Many things are happening” by sparktography
Consumerist pleasures
Friday, September 14th, 2007As stressful as work has been the last couple of weeks I’m actually having a good couple of days recently. Today is the first day of my 3 day weekend (which was supposed to be a 4 day weekend but things are too busy at work to take the 2nd day off) and I’ve been taking advantage of it to catch up on some tasks around the house and play with my new toys.
Toys you say? Why yes - I’ve been playing the good consumer and picked up a few things in the last couple of days. Yesterday I picked up a Canon EF 20mm f2.8 lens for my camera from a co-worker. It’s a fun lens, but I can tell I have a lot of learning to go with it. I’m so used to using 50mm lenses (both my EG 50mm f1.4 lens and my Lensbabies) that it’s almost a little disorienting to use. Below is the first shot I processed (and my favorite from todays shots), taken at the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park.
While out and about I dropped by the Apple Store to claim my $100 store credit for being an iPhone early adopter. I had been looking at the V-Moda Vibe Duo earbuds and with their $99 price tag it worked out to being quite the steal when I factored in the store credit - I paid about $8 out the door once tax was added to the purchase price. I wrote a quick review of the Vibe Duos so check it out!
“Ironwork” by sparktography
Spontaneous car combustion
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
While driving slowly home on 520 today the car in front of me literally CAUGHT ON FIRE! I smelled gasoline and was wondering if my car was leaking when the car in front of me suddenly erupted into a fireball. Luckily the big ball of fire was short lived and it quickly subsided enough for the occupant to escape. A passerby had a fire extinguisher and the fire was mostly out long before I got the opportunity to inch around him fearing for my precious paint-job.
I managed to grab a few snaps with my iPhone while trying to stay out of the way of the people present who seemed much more capable of dealing with a flaming SUV than myself. I’m glad nobody was hurt and I certainly can understand that it sucks for the poor lad who’s car this was - but it’s not every day you get to see a car catch fire!
“Spontaneous car combustion” by sparktography
It’s cold out here, no kind of atmosphere…
Saturday, September 8th, 2007I’ve actually been enjoying myself quite a bit the last few days. My project shipped at work, and although it was a rough couple of days it’s done now and I’m feeling much more relaxed as the result. From Friday night through to this fine Sunday afternoon I’ve been distracting myself with the Red Dwarf Complete Collection on DVD. I’d always loved the PBS Red Dwarf telethons as a kid, but am discovering I must have missed episodes as particularly some from the later seasons I hadn’t seen before.
Today I woke up early for brunch at the B&O with Brien (mmm Beni Thai Crabcake Benedict!) and then to go for a photo walk. I had to pick up some food for Skype so I decided to start out in my car and after picking up the food went back to my perennial favorite location to shoot: the conservatory.
My favorite shot of the day - a backlit palm frond in the conservatory. I actually shot it specifically with an iPhone wallpaper in mind (and tried to frame it correctly for the overlays at the top and bottom) and am quite pleased with the results. You can check out the iPhone specific version here, and the rest of the shots I liked from todays walk can be found here in my Flickr archives.
“Sunlit frond” by sparktography
Bioshock dream
Monday, September 3rd, 2007
I’ve actually had quite a nice Labor Day weekend so far. This photo is unfocused, just like me - Today I thought I would use my day off for some photography but felt uninspired and unfocused. I didn’t really get any shots I loved, but somehow this one called out to me for some posting love. The processing I gave it was highly inspired by my latest fling: Bioshock.
On Saturday morning Brien and I went to Northgate to buy copies of Bioshock and I ended up spending most of the weekend playing it. Bioshock a very amazing game - I normally hate/suck at first person shooter games, but Bioshock does a great job of minimizing the twitch factor, and making combat much more strategy oriented. The game features a terrifying dystopian 60’s feel and genuinely manages to feel scary at times - best enjoyed in the dark with the 5.1 sound cranked.
Much like my favorite game Oblivion, Bioshock lets you play your way - creeping in the shadows or all out combat, it’s your choice. I love the Plasmids (magic in most games, bio-engineered superpowers in Bioshock), and find that they add a rich element to the game. Surprisingly for being a shooter I use almost no guns - my plasmids and the wrench you get in the opening scene carried me through much of the game.
“Sparky in a dream” by sparktography
Let the design play begin
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007
Through a happy little coincidence I have been able to acquire a copy of Adobe CS3 Production Premium! I had a license for a previous version of Photoshop, but running under Rosetta the older version was getting to be a bit of a drag. Now I will not only get to enjoy the Intel version on my Core 2 Duo iMac, but I’m getting the rest of the CS suite to boot! Now I not only have still capabilities through Photoshop, but full blown video production, audio editing, and rich content authoring. This weekend I’ve already chalked off two days of the three day weekend to just start exploring the other apps and see what kind of cool things erupt forth from the depths of my creativity!
Metered carefully
Sunday, August 26th, 2007
An old gas meter nestled in the shadows lit perfectly by a single beam of sunlight. I’m finding some interest in trying to use a Lensbaby to make a shot that doesn’t look like it was made with a Lensbaby by lining the focal sweet spot with the plane of focus more like that of a 55mm prime lens. It ends up feeling more like a shot taken with fixed focal length lens, but with a prized ethereal quality permeating the shot. I got a couple of other shots today, but this one is a clear favorite.
“Meter” by sparktography
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