Category: 2D

From the iPad, including manipulation/filters.

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It was summer solstice today, and I got my hair cut for summer.  (A bit late, but hey…. it’s been one of those years.)

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I got a barber to do the honors this year.

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Another bird sketch. (Didn’t show the first one.)  I like this app.  Very good graphic logarithms.

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Another filter app (uSketch) for the MacBook, giving equal time.

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Okay, maybe the iPad can do a few serious things in the photo department worth keeping.  Self portrait, doctored a tad.

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Digital photography is fun.  Lots of stand alone filter packs leaning toward photography.   Top one is Vince Bell.

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Nuff said.

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Self-portrait, raster (Photo Booth at 5 AM) to vector (Vectoraster) to raster (screenshot) to vector (Illustrator CS6) to raster (Photoshop CS6).

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Dark

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Reached 1500 JPG photos in iPhoto this evening.  That’s in less than 2 months time.  I’m not surprised.  And of course, it doesn’t count the culls.

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In photo, I am a control freak.  I want to do the focusing.  I want to set exposure.  I want to control shutter speed and f/stop.  I can appreciate all the automated stuff, makes the process transparent often enough to be worthwhile.  But, when I start fighting the automation process to get the focus I want, the exposure I want, etc.  Yes, there is Photoshop, and I’m no slouch.  And iPhoto’s Enhance is more times accurate than not.  (Photoshop has one too.)

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It’s a different medium.  Mind you, a low end Nikon Coolpix S3100 is not a D3100.  That would satisfy my need for control.  But, there are too many purchases ahead of the D3100,  like hard drive space, a cajon, and a Norelco.

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It’s not easy bringing classic techniques to a current medium.  But the primary purpose is documenting the local floral unfolding.  For that, the bottom end is sufficient.  My biggest two nemeses are auto-focus tag and wind blur.  Auto-focus is great for beyond three feet away.  Most photos I’m taking are from much closer range, usually around six inches.  I can’t go closer than four inches (sensor parallax), so six inches is usually my standard for flowers less than two inches across.  At six inches, the tendency of the camera is to seek further away, in the background.  It can be tricky playing with the soft click, getting the right zone to come up on the primary subject.

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And it is windy here.  That means the flowers are almost always dancing.  And while that is indeed charming, it’s a pain on focus and motion blur.

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I have photographed a few people at gatherings. I have videotaped a show, and edited in the sound track from the mixer.  Pretty straight forward.  I photographed the local fauna as well.  Not extensively, and still not going for deep portrait, but some good ones.  I’m not getting lost in it, but it’s a daily thing, a little time looking around for the new stuff.  And it makes for website content.

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Primarily, I have been cataloging the blooms on the property.  And it’s been a wet spring, with no late frost, so it’s been bumper.  Lots of blossoms, lots of photos.  A pretty fair documentary of central Texas river bottom blossoms.

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Amazing what you can do for under $100 these days.

Amarillis (one of over a thousand photos of the local flora that I’ve shot with the Nikon in the last six weeks):

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