Cellphones #3
By sirsnapalot | August 22, 2008
I’ve decided to make this a regular feature- from time to time I’ll post a few of my best cellphone pictures. Again, while I don’t think they are good enough for general photography- the family vacation or little Timmy’s birthday party, I think you can exploit their characteristics and of course the portability.
This first picture was made just killing some time in a restaurant waiting for more of our group to show up.
Fake Candle
It was a rather silly, fake candle- an LED powered by a battery (and therefore not hot). I place the cellphone camera centered on the “candle” and took the photo with the flash turned on. The blue color of the vase came out, and the “candle” overexposed, creating this simple abstract photo. Having had low expectations, I was surprised at the outcome and rather pleased. So- the key is to just try things, and sometimes you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
The second photo opportunity here was while I was riding my bike. I always carry my cellphone with me when I ride, just in case I have an accident (which in fact happened in 2004- I dislocated my elbow and needed an ambulance to come rescue me).
I noticed I had a crisp, long shadow with the slowly setting sun, so I looked for a stretch of road that was lightly traveled and went back and forth for a while. I took quite a few photos, hoping not to wreck again. I was pretty happy with this result. One fellow on Flickr though it looked like a “penny farthing”- which my British->American dictionary says is a giant tricycle.
This will become a recurring theme as I take interesting cellphone shots- non-standards that complement my “normal” big-camera photography.
Topics: Buying, Cellphone Cameras, Creative, Intermediate | No Comments »
Flying the Friendly Skies
By sirsnapalot | August 15, 2008
Something I have been emphasizing so far is to photograph things from a different perspective. Flying is no exception- though you may fly a lot (I certainly do), you still spend a small percentage of your time in the sky, and it can be a good opportunity to get some great shots.
I recently flew from Dallas to San Francisco and for a change, I had a window seat. I’m a pretty tall guy (nearly 1.9m), so I generally prefer an aisle seat. But, luckily I got a free upgrade to First Class, and a window seat at that. So on approach to San Francisco, we flew over Yosemite. I was sitting to a rather large fellow with some rather smelly habits, so I hesitated to make him get up so I could get my camera. But, as the beautiful terrain kept scrolling by below me I finally had to get up and get the camera. I had missed the best shots over Yosemite, but got some great ones on approach to the San Francisco Airport.
Wetlands near Fremont, CA on San Francisco Bay
San Mateo Bridge
Later in the week on my return flight, I just kept the camera with me in the seat. Conditions were not quite as good over Yosemite, but I did get some good shots over Nevada of some rather strange looking stuff- here an Army ammunition depot.
Hawthorne Army Ammunition Depot, Nevada
In 2006 my wife & I honeymooned in Africa- a lifelong dream of mine to visit. On both the inbound and outbound trips, we flew squarely over the Saraha, what would seem to be a vast, featureless plain. It was anything but, to the trained eye 
I shot these two shots over the Sudan on the way from London to Nairobi:
Sahara Desert in the Sudan
Sahara Desert in the Sudan
I especially like the second one. From the shadows you can see the wind down there must be brutal most of the time. What I especially like about these aerial Sahara shots are that they look like photos taken by a NASA spacecraft, yet they were taken by me and my Nikon Coolpix 8800 digital camera from the window of a 747, back by the lavatory.
On the return flight from Zambia to London, we took a bit more westward path over the Sahara, taking us over Chad, Libya and Tunisia. The following un-Earthly shots are from those respective countries.
Sahara Desert in Chad
Sahara Desert in Libya
Mediterranean Coastline of Tunisia
When shooting the ground from an airplane, your photos will likely come out a bit flat. You can fix that in a photo editor by adjusting the brightness and contrast. All the shots above (except for the Nevada shot) were contrast enhanced to bring out the detail, but otherwise are unaltered.
The Africa shots are perhaps a bit “out of this world”, but lest you think that you can only get great shots in faraway places, I’ll leave you with two more shots- over Idaho and Tennessee. The clouds themselves can be in endless, fantastic formations and are well-worth photographing if you’ve got the sun at a good angle (behind or in front are the best).
Flying over Idaho
Clouds over Tennessee
So, the next time you fly, just keep your camera stowed under the seat in front of you and be ready shortly after takeoff or until shortly before landing, and of course, during the flight, and get a window seat if you can.
Topics: Tips | 1 Comment »
Fun with Toys
By sirsnapalot | July 18, 2008
A couple of months ago, I picked up a toy at a tradeshow (put on by RIM, the maker of the Blackberry). It was a silly keychain with a bundle of cheap fiber optics coming out one end. Orange, a huge cellular operator in Europe was giving them away.
Fiber Optic Toy
I have given up taking such crap usually because it ends up in the trash. But, this one was different- I knew I could make some use of it with my Picture365 project. You see, I’m always looking for lights or optics that can be useful when you need to be creative and try something different.
In a dark room on evening, I set the camera on a tripod and set it on 2s exposures, with a 3s timer delay so the camera would stop shaking after I pressed the shutter release. During the countdown, I started twirling the fibers in front of the lens, so the motion would be smooth.
The toy color shifts fairly rapidly, and acted as a shifting paintbrush as I painted various shapes onto the photo, looking like some an extremely colorful aurora borealis.
These were probably two of the better ones- some went off the edge of the photo, as you can’t tell precisely where you are going. But the beauty of digital is that you just keep trying, and you’ll get some that come out great!
Topics: Creative | No Comments »
Shadowplay
By sirsnapalot | July 13, 2008
I can’t stress enough that if you want to improve your photography and learn to be more creative (yes, you can “learn” creativity), then commit yourself to a Picture365 project and really commit to it. I am in my second year, and I have continued to discover new nuances of photography that extend past the standard point-n-shoot.
I’m a fairly avid exerciser, and despite several injuries in the past few months, I’m still getting out and exercising the parts of my body that aren’t in recovery (broken toe on the mend, and a swimming injury). That involves at the moment a lot of biking and a decent amount of walking (running will return soon). I’ve been taking my camera with me a lot more lately.
As it’s near 100 degrees almost every day now in Dallas, I have pushed the outdoor workouts later into the evening, so it’s frequently dark when I walk. I decided to play around with really long exposures, and took the photos while walking, not even stopping. The exposures were 8s and were obviously handheld.
This is where it pays to experiment- I had no idea of the final effect of this photo. I noticed my shadow extending in front of me as I walked under streetlamps, and thought I’d try to capture that. I positioned the camera fairly still in front of me and fired off the shutter just after I walked under a streetlight, and continued walking for the 8 second exposure. The effect was that the camera relative to my shadow position more or less was the same- that shadow lengthened and changed a bit. The results is the photo below, with the sides overexposed- a shadowy figure awash in a fiery (almost hellish) sodium vapor-lit fog.
I’ll publish some other photos from that similar treks at a future date- there are some creative effects you can do at night with almost no equipment other than you, some good walking shoes, and a camera. No tripod required!
Topics: Creative | No Comments »
Try Using Backlighting
By sirsnapalot | July 8, 2008
When photographing flowers, sometimes you get better results if you use backlighting instead of direct illumination. This works well for leaves as well as the flowers themselves, and helps bring out intricate details you might not notice otherwise.
An example is this photo of a Canna Lily leaf growing in our yard:
Canna Lily
This particular variety of Canna Lily is very colorful and is prized as much for it’s foliage as the flowers (or moreso, in our case). To best show the beauty, I placed the camera (in macro mode) underneath a leaf when the sun was shining brightly (it helps if it’s not windy). I fired off half a dozen shots (the beauty of digital) and this was one of the better ones. Probably could have been just a bit sharper if I used a tripod and waited for less wind, but you get the point- it worked quite well and is a great way to show off what’s in your garden in a bold and beautiful way. Not to mention a bit differently than most people would do it.
Topics: Intermediate, Tips | No Comments »
Capturing the Moment
By sirsnapalot | July 1, 2008
Increasingly, because of my Picture365 project, I take my camera with me. Last week my wife & I visited some friends in Tennessee. On the flight home (from Knoxville thru Chicago to Dallas), I had my camera out as we approached Chicago, and fired off a few shots of the western part of the city near O’Hare. The real shot, though, came as we were seconds away from landing. It was near sunset, and the shadows were long and our orientation was just perfect for this shot:
American Eagle landing, Chicago O’Hare Airport
A few seconds earlier or later wouldn’t have gotten this good of a result. And a problem with digital cameras is that even if you have them “ready” and in your lap- they power off and can take 5-10 seconds to power back up. I was lucky enough to have it still on and active, so I could just point and shoot out the window, as this shot was not planned (this is difficult to plan unless you make a specific flight often enough to know the nuances of it).
Topics: Tips | No Comments »
More Fun with a Cell Phone
By sirsnapalot | June 29, 2008
I just got a new phone at work the other day. I work for Nokia, and I’m getting to try out an E66, an enterprise-class phone with a 3MP camera. So, maybe the camera isn’t as good as an Nseries prosumer-grade phone, which is more oriented towards having a life outside work, but for enterprise, it’s not bad.
That said, it’s a cellphone, and all cellphone cameras, for a seriou photographer, are marginal at best. So I strive to make them work for me in two ways:
1. It’s always with me, so I can get the unexpected shot, even if the quality is low
2. You can take advantage of the idiosynchracies- “graininess” and slow response times, for instance.
I decided for my first serious photo with this phone I would try spinning the camera to test out the CCD latency (slowness). I chose some venetian blinds in a bedroom in the late afternoon. I wanted outside light so it was naturally balanced, not yellow incandescent or green fluorescent light. I probably took about 20 shots, and a few turned out OK. I have no idea what the exposure was, as the prototype I am using failed to record it in the EXIF data. However, it was at least 1/4 second, fast enough for a cool effect.
Venetian Blinds, handheld & spun
Venetian Blinds, handheld & spun
The result greatly exceeded my expectations. It looks much like a computer-generated image, to the extent that a hard-headed admin in a Flickr group (Abstract Photos) kept deleting it to the point that I had to drop out of his group. Of course all the Exif data is preserved in the photo here as well, though the prototype E66 identifies itself as an E51 and leaves out some of the data.
So, I’ve said it before, even though I don’t care for cellophones as a mainstream camera, you can definitely have fun with them!
Note: Sorry I have been absent so long. Work has gotten very busy and I haven’t had the time to do everything I’d like to do. Please be patient and use the RSS feed if you want to be notified of new posts.
Topics: Cellphone Cameras, Creative | No Comments »
Portraits
By sirsnapalot | March 19, 2008
I did a little demo today of the effect of telephoto when taking a portrait. Generally, the further away you are, the better the person will be represented in the photograph. It is better to stand back and use a little zoom, which will flatten the features a bit and put them into a pleasant perspective.
My demo was to take 6 photos of myself against a brick wall. I started far away, and moved the camera closer with each successive shot, but changing the zoom so that my face stayed the same relative size. The changes in the first couple of shots from 80mm zoom to 49mm weren’t so dramatic, but quickly the difference is notable.
I have assembled these 6 shots as an animated GIF to show you the difference. Since I took these photos solo, you will see some slight orientation differences, but pay attention to the nose and glasses with respect to the ears.
Progressively zoomed in
I’ve added the Zoom data from each photo’s EXIF data (viewable in Photoshop and some other image editors, as well as on Flickr). Notice that as the camera gets closer and the zoom decreases to keep the size the same, my nose and front of my face start to pop out towards you. The final shot is very distorted and my face looks very round at the end.
So, the lesson is, unless you are trying to be funny or unusual (not a bad thing occasionally), back off from your subject just a bit and try some zoom- 70mm or so should work well enough.
Topics: Improvement, Intermediate, Tips | No Comments »
Simplicity
By sirsnapalot | January 27, 2008
The other day I saw a photo in one of my contact’s photo stream that smacked me in the face. I’ve learned a lot in the last year with the Picture365 project, and learned a bit about framing and composing, but it’s always hard to put into words. This photo easily summarizes that a photo doesn’t have to be complicated to be attractive.
What’s Up? (by Christian Faggionato)
This photo, by Christian Faggionato, has many of the basic elements one looks for in a photo- shape, lines, colors, a point of focus. There is no texture in this one- another element, but it’s not needed. The “Rule of Thirds” is not followed here, and to good effect (remember it’s OK to break the rules sometimes, as they are really only guidelines).
So, here you have three colors- black, blue, and a spot of yellow. The black and blue are evenly split, but at a slight angle, which is what makes the violation of the “Rule of Thirds” work- if it were split vertically down the center, the symmetry would be too much. As it is, you have a little more black at the top, a little more blue at the bottom.
As a point of interest, you have the bird’s head just sticking over the edge, with the yellow beak as the highlight. So, it near a perfect picture in terms of elements and a great capture of a moment in time (and a likely non-repeatable one). It’s effectively what modern art strives to be- a distillation of the elements, eschewing the complexity of everyday life.
Not that all of your pictures should be this way, but this is a great example of simplicity in action, and in real life.
To see Chris’s picture, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/20965952@N04/2198998293/.
Topics: Basics, Creative | No Comments »
RSS Feed Now Works
By sirsnapalot | January 26, 2008
If I have a complaint about open source software, it’s that the documentation is dismal, and what exists is written by the developers for the developers- it’s not straightforward and you have to dig through many examples to find what you want.
Creating RSS feeds is not my specialty, and honestly, I spent several hours looking through the Wordpress website to tease out that all I needed was http://www.sirsnapalot.net/?feed=rss2 to give you an XML feed. Instead they give me all this stuff about the_Loop and the_ID written in a way that assumes I know where everything is and exactly where it should go. By developers for developers- no consideration for those who are not well-versed in PHP.
That said, I guess I get what I pay for :) I’m thankful for Wordpress and that it’s free. In any event, the RSS feed should now work- paste the URL above into your feed reader, or click on the RSS icon at the top and put it in your reader. If you don’t know what RSS is- it is a way to be notified when an update to this site is one. I don’t write blogs everyday- in fact I’ve been averaging maybe two a month. So to save you from checking something that infrequently (at times) changes, you can just use an RSS feed to tell you when I’ve posted a new entry. Read up on them- I suggest FeedDemon or Firefox’s Live Bookmarks for starters.
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
