It must be stereotype day on yon blog. I mean… other than taking a ferry to Pike Place Market, I think sunrise over Space Needle with Mount Rainier in the background is about as typical as it gets, yes?
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Canon EOS REBEL T1i (N/A) & no lens info |
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1/4 s |
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2010:02:04 08:21:18 |
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f/4.0 |
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Ari Brown |
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100 |
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N/A |
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70 mm |
If the view looks familiar, it’s because Kerry Park is one of the very few places you can shoot this view from, so the idea is hardly unique, but I was still excited to go up there for myself and see what it was all about. I did a bunch of panoramas too, so you might see some of those coming up. I like this a lot in HDR, but there is some ghosting – it’s a really busy picture and there are a lot of lines that will show any mis-alignment. I shot this on a tripod with a cable release, but it’s still not as sharp as I’d like. I guess there is a reason that my tripod was $80 instead of $500.
Standing up in the park on a cold morning made me think a little more about what it means to make a picture like this. Sometimes all it takes is a lot of luck and showing up to get exactly what you want, but the real pros put far more work in than you might think. I wanted sunrise, so I got up early. I wanted an interesting sky so I waited for some clouds but not too many. I wanted the sun between the Needle and Mt. Rainier, but when I got there I realized it was coming up much too far to the north – if you want that shot, you need to come back in a whole different season. Like I said, sometimes you might get lucky, but most of the time it doesn’t just happen!
Tags: HDR, kerrypark, mtrainier, rainier, seattle, spaceneedle, stereotype, sunrise
Posted in Photos | 1 Comment »
After all the talk about how much I love my DSLR and such, I went out and bought myself a Canon S90. Yes. A point and shoot. Most P&S’s are, in short, horrible pieces of crap – the S90 is kind of an exception – kinda. In a minute, the problems, but for now, the one undeniable quality: they fit in your pocket, which means you have them with you when you’re say, at work. That means you take pictures, like this:
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Canon PowerShot S90 (Canon) & 6.0-22.5 mm |
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1/1000 s |
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2010:02:18 00:31:08 |
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f/2.0 |
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N/A |
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160 |
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N/A |
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6 mm |
Not too bad, eh? If you want to hear my thoughts on why you’d want a Point and Shoot vs. a DSLR and all about the S90, hit the jump for more…
(more…)
Tags: bokeh, comparison, g11, pointandshoot, RAW, review, s90
Posted in Photos, Reviews | No Comments »
Steampunk stuff is great – old knobs and rivets. The stuff that inspired it is even better – authenticity, you know? With this one though, I just couldn’t pass up the pun…
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Canon EOS REBEL T1i (Canon) & EF50mm f/1.8 II |
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1/15 s |
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2010:01:01 15:31:24 |
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f/1.8 |
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Photographer: Ari Brown |
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200 |
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Normal program |
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50 mm |
Tags: antique, coffee, espresso, espressomachine, knob, steam, steampunk, vapore
Posted in Photos | No Comments »
I mentioned the Seattle Underground Tour in the last post. Low light, shoving tourists, not a lot of time. In cases like this, you get a lot of what you get:
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Canon EOS REBEL T1i (Canon) & EF50mm f/1.8 II |
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1/6 s |
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2010:01:01 15:25:14 |
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f/1.8 |
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Photographer: Ari Brown |
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3200 |
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Normal program |
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50 mm |
Sometimes that isn’t a bad thing though. Back in the film days it was more of a change, but even now it feels odd to some people: taking good pictures is all about taking a whole lot of picture. What you get will vary and what you expect to like might not be what you do. For these shots, I wasn’t trying to really document what I was seeing because I knew it wouldn’t come out, but I like the effect anyway.
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Canon EOS REBEL T1i (Canon) & EF50mm f/1.8 II |
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1/6 s |
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2010:01:01 15:25:56 |
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f/1.8 |
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Photographer: Ari Brown |
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3200 |
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Normal program |
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50 mm |
The hand-held shots means camera shake. High ISO means noise. Funny lighting means… funny light. It just is what it is and these two, I liked. Wish I’d have taken more, but it was a tour, not photo time. Oh… and if you are wondering, these two are both the old glass sidewalk skylights common in Pioneer Square – if you see them on the street, the ground underneath is hollow.
Tags: abstract, handheld, highiso, lowlight, pioneersquare, seattle, underground
Posted in Photos, Technique | 1 Comment »
When you like a picture, it doesn’t have to be for any particular reason. Maybe the reason I like this is because it’s old-timey. Maybe because an antique sink, completely covered in dust just has some charm. Maybe it’s because the Seattle Underground Tour is fun for the whole family. Or maybe it’s because this is the most anthropomorphic sink I’ve ever seen.
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Canon EOS REBEL T1i (Canon) & EF50mm f/1.8 II |
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1/30 s |
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2010:01:01 14:24:13 |
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f/1.8 |
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Photographer: Ari Brown |
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400 |
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Normal program |
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50 mm |
C’mon – there’s a face in that, right? He’s even got a different color for one eye. That’s great stuff! But yeah. A sink. I just liked it. Getting a little photography wonky, it was a dark tour. I took it with my 50mm, which goes down to 1.8, but when you’re being jostled by the crowd, you don’t have a lot of time to set up or a tripod, so you get what you can and I liked how this came out. With low light, you can often lose some color, which made me want to try it in black and white. Hit the jump to see that one!
(more…)
Tags: 50mm, anthropomorphic, antique, B&W, face, lowlight, seattle, sink, tour, underground
Posted in Photos | 3 Comments »
How do you decide when to take a picture in black and white as opposed to color? In the film days, it was actually a decision you had to make but with digital, it always starts as color. Most cameras have a black and white mode, but you’re kinda nuts if you use it*.
Most of the time when I take a picture and decide to process it into a B&W image, it’s because it either has really strong lines and contrast or it has very little in the way of color to start. That was what I found here:
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Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT (Canon) & 12.0-24.0 mm |
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1/60 s |
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2009:12:19 12:30:21 |
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f/5.6 |
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Ari Brown |
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200 |
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Normal program |
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15 mm |
You like reading all of my jabbering? Click the link for more:
(more…)
Tags: B&W, building, garage, ghosttown, lines, wood
Posted in Photos, Technique | No Comments »
It isn’t usually that cold here. Seattle isn’t known for snow, or freezing, or any real extremes. This week, however, is not effing around. My computer is telling me it’s 25 degrees out right now, on its way down to 16 overnight. This is not normal or ok. So far, it’s been freezing but dry. At this temperature, however, just a little moisture and you get what we had last year, almost to the day:
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Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT (Canon) & 50.0 mm |
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1/13 s |
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2008:12:13 23:08:31 |
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f/1.8 |
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Ari Brown |
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400 |
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Normal program |
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50 mm |
Right now it’s all happy and bare out there, but never forget people – this is how it started. You remember what happened after that, right?
Tags: cold, freezing, seattle, snow, winter
Posted in Photos | 3 Comments »
Panning shots always looked cool to me. You see them often in sports photography – a car or bike in perfect focus with the background just a motion blur behind it. The way you usually do this is by setting your camera to a moderately low shutter speed (it all depends, but maybe somewhere between 1/50 and 1/10) and as the subject moves past you in a horizontal direction, you track them with your camera and take the picture while moving your camera to follow them. When done right, you get a subject in focus and everything else a blur. I’ve never had a ton of practice getting this type of shot but here are a few like that:
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Canon EOS REBEL T1i (Canon) & EF35mm f/2 |
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1/80 s |
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2009:10:12 11:31:19 |
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f/5.6 |
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Photographer: Ari Brown |
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200 |
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Shutter priority |
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35 mm |
Here’s another. Notice how… not sharp the subject is. Part is lack of practice and the other part is this just… kinda hard!
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Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT (Canon) & 24.0-105.0 mm |
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1/60 s |
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2007:09:29 09:27:56 |
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f/5.6 |
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Ari Brown |
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200 |
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Normal program |
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24 mm |
I’ve got the cure for your problems. Wanna take a picture that doesn’t require things to go whizzing past your face, lets you easily accommodate your subject of choice, and get a great panning effect? With a little help from an idea stolen directly from DIY Photography, you can do just that! Hit the jump for the rest!
(more…)
Tags: background, blur, merrygoround, panning, spinning, sports
Posted in Photos, Technique | No Comments »
Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach is my kind of place. I spent a lot of my formative pre-college days listening to the pounding waves against the cliffs and enjoying the distance from the hippies and crowds of OB proper. Usually out on the cliffs you have the company of a few joggers, a few more seagulls, and a lot of wind. It’s just a nice place to be.
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Canon EOS REBEL T1i (Canon) & EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM |
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1/250 s |
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2009:10:13 11:39:22 |
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f/10.0 |
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Photographer: Ari Brown |
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100 |
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Normal program |
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24 mm |
If you’re a property owner, however, I’d be a little more worried. The cliffs are always eroding, sometimes in a spectacular way, and I wouldn’t want my house right across the street. They put up these little fences around areas of particular danger, and I thought the sharp man-made lines just seemed so out of place in all the rounded nature around it. I like the lines in this picture, and it’s one of the few that makes me feel ok breaking the rule of thirds. Maybe even more than in this one. I think that because there is one man-made object in the whole frame, it makes sense to sort of hide it in plain sight. It lets nature stay balanced all around. I think it would have looked sort of funny anywhere else.
Update 2009/11/19/16:25:
Oh yeah… one more thing I didn’t mention above. I threw a little vignette on this picture. I don’t use this a ton and when I do, it’s mostly for portraiture. I tried to keep it pretty subtle too, but I think it works well here for the same reason it does in portraiture – you’re bringing all the eyes into the middle and you don’t want people drifting out the sides. Just thought I’d mention it!
Tags: cliffs, danger, Ocean, oceanbeach, sandiego, sign, sunsetcliffs, unstable, vignette
Posted in Photos | No Comments »
Sometimes it rains in Seattle. I mean it – it only rains sometimes. Wet, however, is a state of almost constant being. Seattle is damp. Seattle is drippy. Seattle has moss.
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Canon EOS REBEL T1i (Canon) & EF50mm f/1.8 II |
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1/50 s |
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2009:10:31 14:30:39 |
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f/2.8 |
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Photographer: Ari Brown |
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100 |
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Normal program |
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50 mm |
I can’t say that scenes like this are rare, but the forest-like nature in the middle of the neighborhood seemed just right to me. It reminds me why I like carrying around my camera while I’m taking walks on rainy days. It also bewilders me why people feel the need for specialty lenses like the Lens Baby line. They’re not cheap enough to be toys (well… except when compared to real lens prices) and they create an effect you could otherwise create in Photoshop, if you didn’t want to do it yourself, like above, with a small aperture. Just sayin…
Tags: green, moss, plants, seattle, wall
Posted in Photos | No Comments »
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