coming and going

wednesday: photoshoot with kathy and kelsey and leslie! :D it was pretty fun shit. they brought multiple outfits, we went tooooooo....the railway tracks near marine dr canada line stop, and then to steveston. it was fun, and good for experience as a portrait photographer i guess. though i didn't really do much directing...a bit, i guess. photographically speaking, well...i was planning on going all out with it - i had my DIY beauty dish, my flash at the ready. put on an ND filter, tried a shot with the flash, didn't see appreciable effect, said fuck it from then on ^___^ and just went with the plentiful available light.

direct, middle-of-the-day summer sun = pretty harsh, but overall i think i did pretty damn well with regards to that.

anyways, here are my favorites:

loving them. i'm pretty excited to do more of this type of shoot, cause i was really quite pleased with my results here.

now to the exciting news...

the first lens i ever bought, my d-fa 100mm f2.8 wr macro, has been sold.

and on the way to me now, is.......an FA 77mm f1.8 Limited. shitbrix am i excited for that to arrive. if it's anything like the 43, and lots of people think it's superior, then it'll be a damn good lens to have. just on paper,  i get a more versatile length than with the 100, in a more compact package, and also over a full stop faster - 2.8 vs 1.8 is pretty hefty. if i had that at the gala i wouldn't have ever had to hit iso 10k, probably.

speaking of which, damn is it hard to find gigs to shoot at in vancouver! i've emailed nearly a dozen craigslist ads and maybe two have replied, both of them turning me down. pretty tough shit. but they can't keep me out forever eh? ;D

anyways, yeah. bit of an uninspired post, this. i should really stop procrastinating these (which i've claimed to do each post in the past few weeks), i feel so much more spirited about each topic when it's just happened. meh.

NEW LENS!!!! :DD

out, out, out!

i'm out! high school, it's over! also, picked up my $500 scholarship check. awww yeeeeh. well not totally over. still have french + bio provincials. but that's nothing. i'm out now. photowalks galor--- nope. working all weekend, goddamn. but otherwise.

anyways, the second i did my math final, when i was really quite done, went to downtown. to see the aftermath, the cleanup effort post-riot. god the riot was retarded. but, what really represented vancouver imo, was the cleanup. not 12 hours after downtown was trashed, thousands of people were out there cleaning it up. by the time i got there (about 4something), most of it was pretty cleaned up. but it was an amazing sight to behold. very poignant - the words on the boards were quite something to read....enough spam, here're some shots i took of the cleanup:

this is probably my favorite shot of the cleanup. FA limited classic 3D-ness, in spades here

this was pretty damn sad. the mannequin was burned to a crisp.

m-m-m-matttang!

shit, it was good to get out with the k-5/fa43. i'm starting to quite love this combo. it's only been my 2nd photowalk with this thing yet i'm at 5k + shutter activations now, wow. but man, it's great to hold my camera in hand. and it works amazingly well as a street camera. just footsteps are probably loud enough to drown out the shutter sound, and focussing is quite nice and rapid. i don't know what it is though, but after post, a lot of my shots seem to be a bit underexposed...it's not the originals, which are fine, but something in my editing process....hm.....

"My God, what's happened here?"

I think this shot has a lot of potential but I'm not totally pleased with it yet..

I love this shot. It begs for a B&W, but the hair and book just give it such a nice colour shock I had to leave it like this.

this photo is something of proof that I'm getting more confident in street photography now. Like in this shot, I waited for him to look up  at me before I snapped - usually I try to avoid being spotted, sniper style.

this and "my god, what's happened here" are examples of this new thing I'm trying out. focusing on the background, which normally wouldn't be as prominent in the shot, so as to better tell a story. like in both cases, if i focused on the men, then the backgrounds would become irrelevant and you wouldn't even look at that on first glance. however, like this, i think it's like your eye goes between what's sharp - the broken glass, the poster - and what's recognizable, what's human and sympathize-able - the men. and so there's more correlation between the two elements, and thus, more of a story.

imo, anyways. ^__^ 

bending.

so close. 5 more days. but that's a lie, because i still have provincials. god, i feel like shit. like an asshole, like a wreck, like i'm about to fall apart.

no homo.

but seriously. interesting parallelism here. end of elementary school, i remember i lost my book so had to pay my teacher back. end of high school, i lost a mic and have to pay teacher back now. goddamn. ending on a high note, eh?

bio final in the morning, attempting to (and failing) writing wallets. well, clearly failing cause i'm on blogspot.



shit, blogspot finally got devoured in the procrastination food chain, just burned a few minutes on msn.


anyways, itching, yearning, needing to go photowalk sometime soon. anywhere, anything, i just need me some shutter actuations. holy shit i'm somehow at 4k (i guess the project had a lot to do with that) shutters, but i've only been on one photowalk with my k-5 so far and it was more a test drive than anything. goddamn. goddamn, goddamn, goddamn.


almost there.

antics and frantics

end of school is in reach! just about 10 or 11 days till the last official day of school. you know, you'd think it'd be some momentous thing, some big ending of an era of my life, of the end of the molding which'll largely determine who i'll be in life, and that i ought to cherish these last 2 weeks.

fuck these next 2 weeks.

too many finals and tests and projects ): and thus i can't wait for the summmmerrrrrr, for photowalks and walks with people and meeting people of all walkss and just, life! outside of school. and maybe outside of work too, though i do like mah money. it's kinda bad, i'm sort of adopting the avi-method of selling shit now: "you NEED this dude, how could you possibly get x instead of y?" but, usually it's a pretty good product i recommend so i don't feel bad in the end.

speaking of french project, omg it's so epic. i cannot wait for that to be finished and to watch the final product....due to a bit of a blooper on my end, we're shooting it at 720p instead of 1080p. but that doesn't affect it hugely, and either way, still so excited for that....

....
....
sidetracked by forum stuff.

i think i've been feeling the lensbuying itch lately. in particular, i've been looking at the da* 55/1.4, for some odd reason. and the 31/1.8. 15/4, 31/1.8, 55/1.4, 100/2.8. or like the 77/1.8 (trade in the d-fa 100, but then no macro...

but, several things have been keeping me grounded.

#1 - my lenses are facking awesome, and i love them to death
#2 - i'm a broke-ass bitch

since the lenses i'm lusting after are also facking awesome, it's clear which reason is the limiting factor here.

i love my fa 43, but the screwy aperture blades do kinda piss me off sometimes...

i love my da 15, but f4 is pretty slow sometimes..... (though pentax doesn't really have a fast wide angle. wish that they did, i'd trade my fa43 and da15 for it in a second if it was like....a 24/2 or something)

i...don't feel much for my d-fa 100 wr tbh. it's kind of a bland lens. but it's my only macro and i'd feel naked without one, qualities of the lens notwithstanding. i dunno, just something that'll even go relatively closeup, like 1:4 or so.

the 55/1.4 would make for a pretty sexy combo with my k-5. weather proof, great for lowlight, silent focusing, silent shutter, but it's just that the focal length is a bit too long for me....which is where the 31/1.8'd come in. but then likely i'd use that a lot, and the 55/1.4 is bloody expensive for just a specialty lens.

and the 77/1.8 would be if i were to let go of the 100wr...but, no macro. though this is actually plausible that i might trade it off. who knows. a full stop more, and amazing rendering akin to that which i've seen from the fa 43....but no macro ): 

21/3.2. i want a goddamn fast moderate wide (like a 35mm f1.4 full-frame equivalent). this is the closest thing pentax has got out there, and it's not all too close, unfortunately.

arghhhh. but the fact that i haven't sold off a lens for one of these is i guess a pretty good sign that i'm quite content with my lenses, shortcomings and strengths and all. maybe i'll put in 80 hours a week at futureshop in the summer and then buy another lens or something. but, fuck, i'd like a new laptop...arghhh. now that i have a job everything is so much harder to justify. i hate it. ):

but, anyways.

work is kewl. brought my k-5 to work and played with the 16-45/4 we have there....maybe after a while they'll give up on selling it and just give it to me ^__^ not that i'd use it or want it...probably just resell it rofl.

pretty damn sharp, imo. but i mean...it's a 16-45/4. nothing incredible, nothing interesting to me. not fast enough. but the sharpness makes it a decent workhorse lens.

a wise man once said...........BOKEH. looooool

anyways, more random work photos, but with the fa43/1.9 this time. the portability of that + k-5 never ceases to amaze me, especially when i have a d7000 and 60D to count as company constantly.

it's funny, i've taken this shot a million times with the d7000 and 60d....k-5 and fa43 does a nice job here. very 3D imo, though whether it's better than the d7000 + 50/1.4 G, i'd have to get a fullsize of that to compare. seems quite similar though. idk why that one has a meh reputation (apparently), i've quite liked it everytime i took it out of the demo cage to try it out.

some product shots of the beast (Y)

mmmm...fun shit. i blame my inconsistent posting on school. tune in next 2 weeks! (Y)