call me jacob black. or was it edward cullen. same shit

whattheballs are you talking about, you may ask. well, here's whattheballs for you:

no I have not gone emo, nor did I get crazy contacts. That'd be cool, though. Nah, what I was doing was a bit of photoshop fun, and mainly trying to emulate this guy's technique (5th video down). I'd already been starting to play around with high contrast, low saturation pictures, but this guy's postprocessing for portraits takes that a step further. I went ahead and took it a few more steps further, and OD'd on it, apparently. but still, pretty fun playing around with it, and my mom shit brix when she saw that pic. here's a less-over-done (but a bit too desaturated, i think) version:

and the original, straight out of camera (ish)

good shit, photoshopping. unless i try to do something that's mindblowingly confusing, in which case, fuck photoshop, film photography>all.


and on a slightly more exciting note than my face (though surely a difficult act to follow >.>), yesterday i drove up to squamish with my dad (okay, he drove me, but i didn't feel like driving. besides, driving while exasperated by his inability to comprehend peace and quite would make me a road hazard) to see some eagles. we saw a few. but first, share with me my pain:

dad: hey, dyou know some chinese riddles?
me: no
dad: okay here try one: (in chinese) "there's a really big bus. how is it that people are still getting on it?"
me: cause...it's..big?
dad: hahahahah yes!


since when did i have fuckin' down syndrome? nice to know my dad thinks so highly of me. anyways, so yeah, we saw a few eagles. by that i mean every 5 minutes there was another one perched on a nearby tree; one time, there was even one ontop of the parking lot. and bunches were flying around overhead, etc. apparently the bald eagle peak is around late december/early january, so i'd look forward to going back at some point then, hopefully with a F 70-210.

speaking of which.

so i'm checking kerrisdale camera's used catalogues, and saw a pentax-F 70-210mm lens. checking on pentaxforums, it looked pretty awesome of an old lens, pretty great reviews, esp considering most of the old lenses were more harshly reviewed. so i call up kerrisdale camera's main store and ask which stores have it in stock. they list off a few, burnaby and then the really far ones, north van/coquitlam/victoria. then on saturday, after coming home from an aquarium meeting, i call the burnaby one and they say they don't have one. then i call the main store and they say burnaby does have one. so i call burnaby and the find that they do have one. at this point, my bus ticket has expired, but whatever, i bus out anyways if it turns out they have one.

they didn't have one. they had some other shitty lens, mislabeled as the 70-210 (and i mean shitty - a brick wall about 10 feet away was totally soft, no detail left at all, at 200mm (it was some 70-200mm)). so a bunch of talking later, they're shipping the 70-210 from one of their other stores to the burnaby one, and if it's not the 70-210 when i pick it up, i shall shit brix.

anyways, eagles. there's enough chromatic aberration  here to feed a small country (so please don't go brickshitting, those branches aren't actually purple and green), and it's not as sharp as i'd like (my other lenses have evidently been spoiling me in that respect), but here they are:

i also got a chance to play around with...something new. :D it's awesome. and took a shot at landscapeography with it. not the best ever, but not a horrible start imo. wish i could do more landscapes, more often. time to go backpacking across the wilderness ;D


i wish i had a neutral-density filter so i could've long exposured this shit up, but i didn't so i couldn't ): . i should get one though, they're like ~$20 for a 3-stop one. thank god my lenses're all 49mm filter thread.

not sure which edit i like better, so here's both of em

and more from this new thing ;D

also, an almost tragic event occurred this past weekend. i almost lost my beloved:

bulb blower. unless you sit with me all day long when i'm in my comp room, you'll never know what this thing means to me. it's like the answer to all my ADHD/ADD/whateverthefuckitis tendencies. fidgetty hands ? squeeze it like there's no tomorrow. make masturbation jokes all you want,  it won't change my love for this thing ;D. plus it helps me clean out shit from under the keys of my laptop, blows away dust, pisses my mom off, turns lead into gold.

and i use it to clean my camera's sensor when there's persistent dust on it, but psh, who uses bulb blowers for that >.>

(for those of you who're a bit slower, that's sarcasm. that's what bulb blowers are for.)

anyways, it was underneath my desk in some deep dark hidden corner.

ireallyneedtodothiswithsomeformofregularity.

or procrastinate less on this shite. wow, i just realized i'm so lazy i'll procrastinate blogging.  (y). anyways, time to start with about 2 weeks ago: finally went on another photowalk. and another one the day after that.

of course, i haven't gone on one since, which is kinda shitty especially cause it snowed (!) and i'm craving going to some lake or something that's frozen over. be amazing.

anyways, that first photowalk was on nov 11th, remembrance day. i honored our fallen soldiers by doing something completely unrelated to that and not thinking abuot them at all. i'm such a patriot LOL.

anyways, went back to the bird reserve near ladner and tried out 2 things, the box of awesomeness (or, macro flash bounce/diffuser. but box of awesomeness and/or sexbox sounds cooler), and using the m200/4 - i realized i'd never actually used that before. in a true display of luck, it was cloudy but dry on the drive there, and cloudy but dry on the drive back, but pissing rain while i was actually there. thankyoujesus.

anyways, here're some shots from that; i saw some pretty cool birds that you don't really see in the city, which is always awesome. shit, 50% of my vocabulary is comprised of cool/awesome. descriptive win. anyways, this photowalk was a bit depressing for me, as it made me realize i'm actually pretty  shitty at manual focusing.

thankfully, due to the magic of resizing for the web, none of my MF fails are visible and this all looks perfectly sharp. gogo incompentency coverup:

exotic species that nobody has ever seen before, kthxbai.

duck.

demonic soul sucking black duck of pure evil.

ducks attempting to behead one another.

awwh, what a cute little duck surveying its kingdom. all ducks are so---


HOLYSHITWHATTHEFUCKISTHATDEMONICBALLS-DESTROYINGBEAST

a wild offspring of satan has appeared!

wild offspring of satan uses deathglareofholyshit!

speaking of shit, imagine if 1% of this took a dump while flying overhead...

and on a less shitty note, so i also used the flashbox/sexbox/whateveryouwanttocallit that day for the first time, didn't get a ton of shots with it though what with the rain and all. here's a few from that:

i know a lot of people are like zomg waterdrops so pretty, but personally this looks a bit too "clinical" imo; the light's too flat. i should play around with using diffusers on the end of the flash or something.

(dingle)(dangle)berries

this is probably used as a sex toy in japan. just sayin'.

and that's that for 11/11/2010. and then of course, the very next day i drove on my own (well, technically) for the first time to a photowalk, and i didn't waste this opportunity of course: drove all the way out to lighthouse park ! i did go there once before and it was pretty awesome, i had a bit more time this time but there didn't seem to be as much stuff - no chance to take insect macros or stuff like that cause all the insects were gone. and no more woodpeckers this time around, though my results of shooting woodpeckers are deleted and embarrassing (in my defense, i later found out the lens was backfocusing. wasn't my fault !). but yeah, it was defs pretty cool, and it was also a pretty damn nice day: 

a photoshop beast could probably increase the amazingness quotient of this photo by about 500%, but sadly i am not a photoshop beast. 

i really have no idea what the hell these things are. but they're coolish, and shows off the results from the sexbox. and yes, i think i'm just going to stick with calling it that.

moar macro: i really love this lens; it's so damn sharp - never even noticed that spider web till i was lightrooming !

blahblahorgyofmushrooms

did i mention the view was bloody amazing?

i am a safe, responsible, driver that always follows the speed limits. just cause this is a half second or so exposure you automatically assume i'm speeding. what am i, asian or something? and no, i didn't take this picture. which therefore leads me to...

thanks to this random person for coming along and increasing the sexual tension of my photography tenfold. (y) LOL it was fun (:

and now, more recently, we appear to have had a mild case of snow.

nothing much to worry about, though.

i did take some macros, but most of them are pretty shitty in almost every degree. comp is boring, lighting is monodirectional and background is featureless. BUT, SNOW! 

it's like the grass has frozen precum.

this is one of those instances where saturated colors just makes it look boring, imo

desaturated, on the other hand...love this shot.

 and, i dunno if it's just me, but for some reason i absolutely love this shot, probably the most out of all these.

sadly, the rain pissed away the snow today and now there's just slush/frozen almost-snow in its place. but yeah, cool shits be happening. but first, the embarassing:

the aquarium has an event on the 14th of december, and one of the positions i could volunteer for was "photographer's assistant". naturally, i was like ZOMGJIZZ and emailed the organizer right away all enthusiastic-like. i had my own gear, i was really into photo, i could provide examples if needed.

the reply, was that i was mainly wanted to help cover the paperwork half. well that was a bit of killjoy. luckily though, after replying that i was still interested, it seems that if i can work something out with the photographer, they'll have me shoot too. which would be aweeeesooomeeeeeeee. networking and all that.

and with regards to (what a random WRT subject, but meh) postprocessing stuff, something  that's starting to be really fun to do is a high contrast (gogo tone curves), and desaturated image. that last shot with the leaf is an example of this. i dunno, gives it that moodyish/atmospheric look that looks pretty good to my eyes.

and as far as i know, that's about it for the past 2 weeks or so.

which, of course, totally ignores the fact that school has been crazy and shit, but i think i barely managed to bring my chem/eng marks back up. that has been talked about way too much and is way too depressing for me to repeat it here. happy thanksgiving, goddamn americans !

hooleeshiet

well it's been a bit of a while, huh. anyways, been an interesting few weeks. as far as volunteering at the aquarium goes, it's been great - in the morning it's particularly cool cause glen and i have this bond thing going on and he only listens to me half the time. it's awesome LOL. he's a cool kid, kinda stuck in his own world half the time and doesn't give two shits about what he's sposed to be doing - screw crafts, he's a dragon dammit! kinda reminds me of me when i was a kid, i remember making my mom/sister/dad act out as a certain animal of the day, every day, when i was like 4 or 5 or whatever; i was apparently a dragon to glen haha. good times.

and i got my grad photos taken. i kinda don't like them though, the dude made me teeth smile and i look like a derp-y shit when i teeth smile, and the "badass" poses just make me look like an asshole. im too pudgy in the chin and cheeks for that shit LOL. there was one pose i was pretty hopeful about but it didn't turn out that great either, but meh. here's that one:

i guess it would've looked cool if i actually had the tripod ontop of my shoulder or something, but it doesn't quite work like this imo. meh.

actually looking at my grad photos from a photo standpoint is pretty interesting though. everything i read on portrait taking and stuff is all ZOMGSHALLODEPTHOFFIELD, ZOMGNOHARSHSHADOWS. well they're definitely not afraid of causing shadows, but i guess in fairness its not that harsh. and in their pictures in their lobby/waiting room/whatever, there're quite a few pics where the depth of field isn't all that shallow, and they had a wallful of awards which means they're doing something right. 2+2=4, i guess that means shallow depth of field isn't everything in portraiture.


speaking of photography, so two interesting things have happened recently. the first is while googling shit for some photo assignment, i came across this PP technique which...well, basically it makes things look all atmospheric/grungyish. i don't have that many pictures that it works well on, but here's a quick example:

                                                              
                      before...                                                                                                         ... and after


personally i find this looks rather badass; this picture isn't all that interesting though but it does show off the effect. next time i go out photowalking i guess i'll have to try and find some shots where this'd work well with it. basically what the thing is (in photoshop) is i open up a channel mixer layer, select monochrome and juggle the sliders until it looks cool, and select multiply for blending options, tweaking it where neccesary. the difficult thing is it'll make it a lot darker, so i guess if i'm shooting with this in mind i'll have to overexpose somewhat. still though, this is pretty damn cool and i'm excited to try it out.


and speaking of exciting to try things out....:

                                                                            sex on a stick.
now that i've got an external flash (oh yeah, i got an external flash. a cheap fake one from china, but whatever,  it works) i don't have any need to ghetto it up with my card of aluminum foil to bounce the light anymore. and so to fill up the void of ghetto DIY equipment, i give you... that. ^. it's for macro, to bounce (and diffuse) light from the flash onto the subject - in macro, a lot of the time you'll need to stop down the aperture to get a larger depth of field - even in f-11, at 1:1 the depth of field is tiny. like, half an insect's head tiny. so that alone will telll you something - at f-11, i'll need either a lot of light, or a slow shutter speed. the latter is why i got a tripod, which is pretty useful. also, at such high magnifications, a lot of the ambient light is cut out, making it darker over all - again, needing more light or slower shutter speeds. hah, almost typed slutter speeds. but if i have this, then i can shoot at 1/180 of a second and have perfectly bright photos at iso 100. which is pretty damn awesome - any hand shake or motion blur will be frozen, and i don't have to spend forever setting up. i look like a retard with that thing, but hey, at least it makes for interesting conversations.

anyways, this thing works great, and the built in diffuser combined with my shitty (unintentional) crumpling of the aluminum foil that's inside the great sexy beast makes for pretty soft light without the need for attaching tissue paper to the end of it. and it is fun as hell to use now that i don't have to have a sniper's steadiness when i'm trying to take a shot, nor do i have to spend 5 minutes setting up a tripod. here's a few shots i took with this setup - shooting macro has never been easier or more fun. this seriously reinvigorated my love for photography, how a little bit of DIY lets you do so much:

yes, i know, this is backfocused. blow me, i leaned in a bit too much.

this shot goes to show how shallow the depth of field is at 1:1, even though it's taken at f11. and the framing and such aren't perfect cause it's kinda hard to hold this thing perfectly steady at my mom when she's not standing totally still either.

the earplugs i brought to the concert/school dance. yes, i know. i washed them. well i haven't washed them yet, but what i mean is, brb washing them.

so that's that. i really can't wait to go for a walk with this setup and see what i can do with it. the only problem i guess is, focus stacking might get tricky if i start hand holding every macro shot. but i guess we'll see. the cool thing about this is, since the ambient light is so low, when i use this the background is black or almost totally black, which gives it that cool studio-or-something look. i think it's cool, anyways. but yeah, these shots were also the first in a while that i took with my 100/2.8 macro. i've missed it and it's missed me.

and while captioning these pictures, i remembered something else that i haven't written about yet either:

is it sad that i just went to my first high school dance a week ago?

probably. but yeah, what makes it a bit sadder is that i didn't go to go, i just went as one of the photographers. it was pretty fun though ish i guess. even though the dj was kinda noob and allegedly smoking pot. photographically speaking, it was a pretty learning experience esp cause it was my first time out with my flash. it performed pretty well throughout the night, but it did eventually die or stop communicating with the camera - it said it was ready and powered up, but it wouldn't fire when i took a shot with the camera. this was after about ~200 shots though at full or half power, and after recharging batteries it worked fine, so i guess it was just cause the batteries were dying or dead. oh yeah, and the fire alarm got tripped like two hours in. good times.

edit: oh yes, i forgot one more thing that's exciting that's photo-related: lightroom 3. i passed over this initially to torrent photoshop cs5 instead, but after reading some tutorials from a beast concert photographer on lightroom and how it sped up his workflow dramatically, i decided to torrent that and gave it a try. 

it is awesome. it's so much more convenient than cs5, with more or less all the same controls there but in a more streamlined package - it feels less like just an addon, like ACR kind of does in cs5. it opens automatically from the moment i put my sd card into my laptop, and i can import all the files right away to a preset folder, and then go straight to developing them. what with all that i've learned to do in postprocessing now, like sharpening, i do end up spending more time per photo than i did before. but because of the last and best convenience of lightroom, it's all worth it: in lightroom, it automatically saves/converts to jpg all of the photos i worked on in that session. in cs5, i would have to go ctrl-s--->hit enter---->hit enter---->click x---> next photo, where each arrow represents another 5 seconds of lag cause of the file sizes. and i had to save each individual picture individually. this mass save in lightroom does take a while, but it's significantly faster than in cs5, and damn it is awesome.

also, have you seen the lightroom 3 ui? it is damn sexy.