Archive for the ‘Technique’ Category

« Older Entries
Nov
29
2011

End of the Line

Always loved industrial areas.  I wish they’d let me wander around rail yards and container storage sites.  Unfortunately, between terrorism and insurance, that’s not going to happen.  The Port of Seattle has a few hidden parks that are invariably next to shipping sites.  Jack Block Park is one of my favorites.  Here is the end of the rail line.

Camera & Lens   Canon PowerShot S90 (Canon) & 6.0-22.5 mm     Shutter:   1/1600 s
Creation Date:   2011:10:06 12:56:31     Aperture:   f/2.0
Artist:   Ari Brown     ISO:   200
Exposure Mode:   N/A     Focal Length:   6 mm

I wanted to highlight the part of the shot I liked best since I couldn’t frame around the bits I didn’t like.  I used the same technique from here to remove the color from the rest of the shot.  Simple, geometric.  Railroad lines – I’m always trying to frame those.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Photos, Technique | No Comments »

Jul
05
2011

Time-Lapse Fence Construction

It’s been a long time since I put up a stop-motion video.  The first two I did were fun and had a nice view, but were mostly about the technology, not documenting anything.  Ever since I’ve wanted to actually use it to show something tangible happening.  Last weekend was the perfect chance – we were building a fence.  I knew where it was going to be so framing wasn’t too hard.  The technique is still the same as I documented here.    I think my biggest revelation was when I realized that sometimes the best way to attach your camera to something is upside down – flipping all the shots at the end isn’t too hard.  The biggest issues were taking my camera down every time we had to go somewhere (I get a little queasy touching my camera when I’m covered in mud) and a dead battery toward the end.  Oh well – the most important stuff came out!

Fence Building Time Lapse from Ari Brown on Vimeo.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Photos, Technique | 1 Comment »

Jan
30
2011

Through the Telescope

On the surface of it, taking pictures is all about finding a way to show other people how you see the world.  Often times, I just want the picture to reflect what I really saw – the framing, the light, whatever.

Other times, seeing a scene through a new light reflects something new.  These Through the Viewfinder pictures were all about a new way of seeing.  I like any sort of new framing device.

As it so happens there are a bunch of those big metal telescopes (kinda like this one) across the street from my work, overlooking Elliott Bay.  I was kinda curious if I could shoot through them.  Turns out I can.

Camera & Lens   Canon PowerShot S90 (Canon) & 6.0-22.5 mm     Shutter:   1/500 s
Creation Date:   2010:12:30 13:44:09     Aperture:   f/5.6
Artist:   N/A     ISO:   250
Exposure Mode:   N/A     Focal Length:   15 mm

That’s Smith Tower, poking out over downtown.  Want to see a few more?  Hit the jump.

(more…)

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Photos, Technique | 2 Comments »

Nov
23
2010

Pictures from Seattle Snowpocalypse 2010

It rarely snows in Seattle, but when it does, everyone immediately freaks out.  Partly it is because this is a very hilly city with few backup modes of transportation.  All it takes is a little ice (which usually accompanies even the mildest snowstorms) to turn many major streets into car-sized pinball games.  The other reason is that we’re just not used to it, and even in the best conditions, Seattlites are horrible drivers.  Nice people, horrible drivers.

As such, every snowstorm up here is a Snowpocalypse.  Here are a few pictures from the one currently gripping the city.

How it starts:

Camera & Lens   Canon EOS REBEL T1i (Canon) & EF50mm f/1.8 II     Shutter:   1/320 s
Creation Date:   2010:11:22 13:01:25     Aperture:   f/7.1
Artist:   Ari Brown     ISO:   400
Exposure Mode:   Normal program     Focal Length:   50 mm

Full snow accumulation.  Sorry about the blur – taken from my steamy living room:

Probably my favorite picture.  Mental note – things that are safe from the rain are not necessarily safe from blowing snow:

One last photo-note for everyone out there.  When you’re taking pictures in the snow, you want to over-expose.  In film, it really mattered.  With RAW, you can do it later, as I did here, but if you’re shooting JPGs and you want them to come out well, overexpose by at least one stop.  If you don’t do it all the time it might take some fiddling to figure it out, but unless you want dark pictures, you should take the time.

The theory behind it is simple.  Cameras are trying to make the scene average out to 18% gray.  If you fill the frame with something very bright (like snow, sand, or reflected sunlight), the camera will underexpose it to make it less bright.  If you actually want it to look the way it should, you need to have the camera over-expose.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Photos, Technique | 1 Comment »

Nov
04
2010

Make Your Own Planet

It’s been a while since I posted any nifty little Photoshop trickery, but there has been something I’ve wanted to try out for a while – I just needed the right picture.  Your ingredients here are a panorama with level edgeswhere both the fore and background are pretty plain.  After getting this night shot at Greenlake a little while back, I thought I might have the raw materials:

Camera & Lens   Canon EOS REBEL T1i (Canon) & EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM     Shutter:   15 s
Creation Date:   2010:10:06 20:36:45     Aperture:   f/4.0
Artist:   Ari Brown     ISO:   200
Exposure Mode:   Normal program     Focal Length:   95 mm

It’s really not too hard!  Hit the jump for the whole walkthrough!

(more…)

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Photos, Technique | No Comments »

Oct
12
2010

Night Panorama – The Revenge of the Stuck Pixel

Night photography can be pretty cool.  During the day, generally speaking, the human eye sees more variations of color and shadow than your camera, hence the reason for HDR and all that.  At night, the camera has the ability to accumulate light and color over time, which your eye can’t do, so in a way it sees more.  I don’t do enough night photography, but I got out the other night for this.

Camera & Lens   Canon EOS REBEL T1i (Canon) & EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM     Shutter:   15 s
Creation Date:   2010:10:06 20:36:45     Aperture:   f/4.0
Artist:   Ari Brown     ISO:   200
Exposure Mode:   Normal program     Focal Length:   95 mm

I was pretty pleased, reviewing on the camera.  Pleased enough that I forgot about the downsides.  Doing things in the dark is just difficult.  I generally like shooting things a bit farther away, because it’s really hard to tell what is and isn’t in focus.  If you have more distance between your camera and the beginning of your subject, it’s easier to get enough depth of field to get them all sharper.  I did bring along a flashlight to check focus up close, but… it becomes a pain.  I also stepped in a lot of goose shit.  That’s just how it is.  This being Greenlake, I wasn’t even worried about getting mugged for my backpack full of camera lenses.  All was good, right?

Well… yes until I got home and saw a line of blue across all my shots:

All.  The.  Way.  Across.

You don’t see it in the panorama above because they have all been laboriously removed in Photoshop.  After I found the problem, I immediately shot a few more pictures with other lenses, batteries, whatever – I wasn’t happy about this.  They’re all the same, including with the lens cap on.  Any aperture, ISO speed, whatever.  I did some research.

If you want to get technical, this is called a stuck pixel or maybe a whole row of them.  It is slightly different from a hot pixel, which would be white all the time.  All that matters is it is going to ruin my pictures.  The internet is rife with folk remedies about taking off your lens, setting your camera to manual cleaning mode (where the mirror flips up) for a few minutes and then turning it off and reattaching your lens.  Maybe it works for some people, but it didn’t do anything for me.

Since hot or stuck pixels (at least a couple of them) are nothing new, there are some other options out there.  Some cameras have options to use a dark frame (basically a picture taken with the lens cap on which should contain light only on the problem pixels) to cancel out the noise in the good frames.  The theory is that since the bad pixels are always in the same place, you can map them and work around them.  I’ve yet to find any software that works correctly with my camera and since I’m a few weeks past the grace period on Canon’s warranty, I’m still unsure what happens next.  I see a lot of healing brush in my future!

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Photos, Technique | 6 Comments »

Sep
24
2010

Swimming With The Turtles

Getting up close and personal with interesting bits of nature isn’t always easy.  As city folk, I’ve got cats, dogs, squirrels, crows, and if I see something like a raccoon, rat, or possum, that’s pretty exciting.  One of the reasons I like to travel is a chance to see something more unique.  I’d by lying if I say that Hawaii is one of my favorite places because of the animals – the beaches, warm weather, and implied relaxation don’t hurt.  At the same time, snorkeling is one of my favorite things to do out there and I like to bring my camera along.  Here’s my favorite shot from the last trip.

Camera & Lens   Canon PowerShot S90 (Canon) & 6.0-22.5 mm     Shutter:   1/500 s
Creation Date:   2010:09:15 15:58:26     Aperture:   f/7.1
Artist:   N/A     ISO:   800
Exposure Mode:   N/A     Focal Length:   12.8 mm

Green Sea Turtles are endangered but fairly prevalent in Hawaii.  The islands are also the only place on earth that these guys actually come out of the water to bask in the sun.  Getting pictures underwater is a bit harder though.  Most of the time the are found in the super murky shallows eating algae off the rocks.  I finally managed to catch this one in deeper water in Shark’s Cove on the north shore of Oahu.

Underwater photography is a whole different bag of tricks – just like taking pictures of food, I only dabble.  First off, you need a camera.  Although some point and shoots these days are at least nominally waterproof, I prefer a specialized housing.  Canon wins by a country mile here, because they have for many years produced really nice waterproof housings for many of their point and shoot cameras that are, as these things go, pretty darn cheap.  Getting your camera underwater is just the first issue.  The second is you have to be able to actually use it.  Luckily here, your best bet is just throwing it in automatic mode – using the buttons through the housing is possible, but so cumbersome that you won’t want to do much.  Next you need good visibility.  I’ve taken pictures of turtles underwater before but most of them look like this:

The problem is that turtles and many other critters like it shallow, where sand and other muck is often in the water.  The farther you get from the shallows, usually the better.  Color fades fast at depth as well, so unless you get perfectly clear water, bright sunlight, and shallow depth, you have to play with the image after capture to try and make it look good.  People who are serious about this kind of thing buy monstrous rigs with huge flashes.  They generally scuba dive (so you can get very close to something and actually hold still, which you can’t do very well holding your breath) and well… before you take your first picture you’re out $10,000.  Not the kind of barrier to entry I’m interested in.  For now, get yourself a snorkel and mask, a cheap underwater camera and a place with good visibility and try your hand at it.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Photos, Technique | No Comments »

Aug
24
2010

Watermelon Agua Fresca, Sin Juicer

Other than my wife, my all-time favorite roommate was the guy I previously mentioned here.  When we shared a deathtrap, slum apartment in San Diego, he had a juicer and it was always too hot inside.  Other than drinking Newcastle and eating veggie burritos, we would periodically use that juicer to turn watermelons into seemingly more juice than the entire starting mass of the things.  Good memories, horrific mess.  Cleaning a juicer?  Eff that.

A year or two ago, I realized you could make watermelon juice (of if you wanna get fancy and Mexican, watermelon Agua Fresca) with just a blender.  Even if you have a juicer, this is much faster, easier, and you end up with a built-in pitcher.  Oddly enough, watermelon juice in the store is really expensive – something like $2.50/pint.  This recipe makes about a quart for about $1.50 in about 5 minutes.  What’s not to like?

Camera & Lens   Canon EOS REBEL T1i (Canon) & EF50mm f/1.8 II     Shutter:   1 s
Creation Date:   2010:08:24 08:37:06     Aperture:   f/11.0
Artist:   Photographer: Ari Brown     ISO:   200
Exposure Mode:   Shutter priority     Focal Length:   50 mm

To make the juice, just cube 1/4 watermelon and throw it in the blender – it should just fill the thing.  The beautiful part is it really doesn’t matter too much if it is seeded or seedless as everything is getting pulverized.  Add to that about 1 Tbsp lime juice (or lemon, or nothing if you don’t have it) and 2 tsp sweetener.  I like agave nectar, but you could use honey or sugar or nothing – it’s easy like that.  Throw the blender in high gear and let it run.  Odds are it’s not going to do much for a minute, so remove the middle circle bit of the lid and use the handle of a wooden spoon to smash things together until it gets a grip, at which point thing will quickly turn juicy.  Be careful not to jam that thing down too far though – splinters in juice aren’t wonderful.

After the blender has run for 3 or 4 minutes, you have a choice.  You can drink it as-is, or you can strain it through a sieve or cheesecloth to remove the bigger pulpy bits.  I don’t care much either way, but you might.  Refrigerate whatever is left – it tastes great cold.  Just make sure to stir it back up before serving.

I had a good time taking a picture of the blender to get this shot.  My wife saw it sitting there and realized it would make a good shot – she was right.  Since it was too big for my light tent, I took a piece of white posterboard out of the light tent and propped it on a table to simulate the same shape.  I used my flash off-camera to blow out the background, but I had to use a pretty long exposure to get the watermelon to expose.  I could have done better with a reflector to open up the right side a bit, but I was ready to make juice, so this is what you get.

Posted in Photos, Technique | 6 Comments »

« Older Entries