it’s something…

As I drove around to day I noticed quite a few cool looking cloud formations. This one that I grabbed around the corner from my house.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the coolest clouds I saw. I was driving home about an hour or so before sunset, and the sun coming through the slightly stormy looking clouds was really beautiful. I didn’t even bother to take a picture because the shot would have been ruin by the “sprawl”. Power lines, hotels, light poles…every time I thought I was getting to a clear line of site a new intrusion would show up.

Oh well maybe next time…

I have been out parting…sorry “part-aying”, so I don’t have much to say, but I have this picture that I think is great so I wanted to get it up here and stuff.

It is just a rock. A really fucking cool looking rock sitting along side of Park Ave. in fancy Winter Park. There was another one on the other side of the bush that I took a couple pics of too, but when I walked around to this side and snapped this shot I knew it was going to be great. (I love when that happens) The reason this one is better…the bush. Yep the bush adds something to the picture that makes it pop…at least for me anyway…you may hate it, but it doesn’t matter cause I lover it.

As I continue my Lake Eola series, and thought I should mention something. Lake Eola is fucking filthy. As soon as I got within 30 feet of the water my nose was accosted by the foul* stench of bird shit. Then as you get closer to the water you notice that it isn’t only the smell the water looks gross. Most of the bodies of water around town don’t invite you to jump in, but you would think that the lake that is in the middle of fucking downtown wouldn’t make you think of a cesspool. Guess I will probably get some kind of letter from the Chamber of Commerce or the Tourism Bureau about this, but I will not be silenced.

Shit I hope I do get a letter, then I can call Tony Pipertones and get him go down there and film the shit filled lake. Then those tourism fucks will have egg on there face and shit.

Anyway, I got photographic evidence of the problem…

*I was going to spell it “fowl” to be “punny” but I figured that most people would figure that I just fucked up and spelled it wrong and then a bunch of you wouldn’t get it anyway, and the rest wouldn’t even notice. (I think that covers all 5 of you…)

Here is another shot from Lake Eola in downtown Orlando. When I was taking these skyline shots I was thinking that I would convert them to B&W, but the color came out much more…hmm…I guess dramatic or dynamic, whatever…the color looks better than I figured it would.

I think there is a slight bit of keystoning* in this shot also. I guess it is actually kind of hard to avoid when photographing tall buildings.

*not parallax ;)

I was downtown over the weekend and decided to park at Lake Eola and see if I could find any interesting shots. I snapped a few shots of the skyline, but figured that they would turn out kind of “meh”, but actually they came out pretty decent. OK I think it is a bet better than decent, but I am not exactly sure what I am liking about it.

Maybe it is the level of detail.

Maybe it is how much of the skyline fit into one shot.

Whatever it is that I like about, one thing that is for sure interesting is the building on the right side that is “leaning”. I think this optical illusion is called parallaxing* or something. It has something to do with the round lens and bending light beams or some shit. I read about it, and even read about correcting it somehow with photoshop, but fuck it…

Oh yeah I did crop this to make it look more “panoramic”.

*It isn’t called “parallax” but it is a good word so I am leaving it in there, but I wanted to try to save some face and add this note since I fucked up…plus “parallax” is a great word.

I was at the book store or the library over the weekend…well I was at both, but at one of those place, I can’t remember where exactly I was when I saw something in a magazine about smoke pics. Technically it was a letter to the editor about an article in a previous issue about smoke pics. In other words they didn’t really have a bunch of details on how to do it. What I did take note of was “glass container” and “food coloring”.

So tonight I set out to give it a try. I didn’t have a glass container that would work well, but I did find a plastic jug thing that I thought might work good enough for the testing. It seems to have worked out OK except for one thing. At least I think the container is to blame…there is a slight fuzziness to the pic. You can see it if you look at the “blow up”. Anyway this is certainly something I want to revisit again cause it is pretty neat looking.

So I figured it out. It took a little while to find, but I found it. See I knew what I needed but there was no button that said “click here for that thing”. I pulled out the Photoshop Elements 5 book that I bought so that I could learn how to do the things I wanted to do, but the index doesn’t even mention this thing. OK, so maybe I am calling it the wrong the thing. I pop open the help file and search…hmm there it is in the help, but it doesn’t say how to get to it!! What the fuck!

So I search the internets. Oh it is there, but it is hidden under that other thing over there and behind the doo-hickey.

Anyway…here is the finished product.

Eh it isn’t 100% perfect, but I was getting tired and stuff.

I think I am starting to figure out this fireworks thingy…just have to work on the timing some now…and maybe find a better show to shoot.

Oh yeah and the cable release makes this much easier.

I was sitting here the other night looking for things to photograph and I found this vase. Perfect! Then I started trying to light it.

Motherfucker!

The surface is really shiny so it would reflect the light very harshly. Other thing I have just turned a bit this way or that, or shifted the light a bit, but as it turns out round objects don’t care about these little adjustments…

So I sat down tonight with a clear head and went at it again. What i came up with was to put the light out in front and filter it through some fabric so that the bulb itself wasn’t visible in the reflection. This reduced the overall harshness and resulted in a decent pic. However…because the light is filtered to reduce the glare it isn’t providing a lot of light and therefore the exposure time is a little longer…in other words it would have been nice to have the camera on a tripod. And if my studio wasn’t sitting on the floor…I think I need a new gadget.

There is this chick I know…she can be a real pain in the ass about stuff sometimes. So one of those things is fishing. She likes to get a group of people and go out on this boat with a bunch other people for deep sea fishing. They call these boats “party boats”, but I am not sure that is an entirely accurate description. See…I gave in to the constant badgering and agreed to go on one of these adventures.

I was a bit concerned about getting sea sick, fortunately I didn’t get sea sick, but I didn’t make it through the day feeling fantastic. I am not sure exactly what the problem was, but I didn’t feel great. It could have been the lack of breakfast, the plastic burger for lunch…or just the bits of dead fish and octopus that we were hanging on the hooks… Despite not feeling great I did hook into a dragon fish. It was a weird looking fish, but it was not something you are allowed keep or maybe just don’t want keep, not sure either way it got tossed back.

Anyway, once I gave up on fishing, I started taking pictures. Sometimes I will see something and think to myself “that might make a neat pic”. Half the time I take the picture and maybe half of those pics actually turn out as something interesting. This picture is one of those pictures. I really liked how the light was hitting this reel so I snapped a few pictures of it.

And yeah…I don’t have any interest in “partying” on one of those boats again…