Home Sweet Block is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

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?

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.

Watermelon Agua Fresca, Sin Juicer is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

It seems when the president is going to hold a meeting with local business leaders at the place where you usually get snacks and pastries, that is somehow more important.  Funny – I usually go through the door, not a security tent.

These nice gentlemen told me that after the president was gone around 1, they’d be happy to serve me coffee, but right now, I couldn’t be closer than 20 feet from the door.  They didn’t tackle me for taking pictures though, so there’s that.

Glad I didn’t drive today.

Obama at the Bakery is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

It is, of course, only random to me.  After looking into it, I learned that this piece was part of Prismatic Lightscape by MiLa.  I appreciate how it makes the square feel alive with the strips of cellophane snapping in the breeze.  You’d hardly know that most of the time the only sound comes from the ramblings of hobos.  Hey – better than nothing!

Lightspace in the Park is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

This shot isn’t new, but it’s also from my 100 mm macro.  It comes courtesy of the shots I did at the zoo way back when.  What it does share, however, is the super shallow depth of field.

I love keeping things simple.  If you’re blessed with a subject isolated from a background, you’re all set.  If you’re (more likely) taking pictures of something with a distracting background, shooting for shallow DoF takes care of the problem for you.

If you don’t have a macro lens, you can still get shallow DoF, at least to a point.  Here are the steps:

1.  Open it up.  Whatever your available aperture settings (f-stop) are, make sure you’re using the widest (smallest number) possible.  This is often not a problem as unless you’re shooting under a lot of light, most cameras will do this automatically.  For the cheaters out there, the “Portrait” setting found on most cameras is going to pick settings to minimize depth of field for the same reasons as I describe above.  Use it as a quick way to get these settings.

2.  Get as close as possible to your subject.  Each camera and lens has a minimum focusing distance, and unfortunately this can be much farther than you want, but get as close as you can and still focus.

3.  Position yourself so that things in the picture other than the subject are as far away as possible – just get as much separation as you can.

That’s it – with any luck, you should end up with a sharp subject and buttery smooth bliss in the background.

Sad Sad Elephant is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

Starting with Photoshop CS4, Adobe changed all that.  There was a panorama tool built right in, and it had a magic setting called “Auto”.  With CS5 it got even better.  No matter what you throw at it, it blends, warps, and just works magic.  The pictures always look good.  Always.  Here is my latest:

Like before, I’m posting my panoramas at twice the width of most of my pictures so you can see a little of the magic in there!

This is a shot from the end of highway 270 on the north shore of the big island of Hawaii.  Stretching out to the east is the Waipio Valley.  From this side, near Hawi, you can drive only so far, and then you can hike.  The beach below is only 20 or 30 minutes, but you can go a couple days farther if you’re stupid brave enough.  It’s a beautiful place with lazy cows, fields of waist-high grass and the odd taro patch.  It might not be obvious but this shot is a bit odd.  I’m standing on a hill, shooting down and panning the camera diagonally – sort of inland + underneath me.  In the past, this just wouldn’t work.  You’d have to map every point in the panorama by hand, and at the end of the day you’d have a distorted picture that would probably lead to a lot of rending of hair and kicking of computers.  With Photoshop CS5, you just hit go and wait.  I’d like to say I miss the old days when things were hard, but I don’t – at all.  Not only does this let you just take pictures and do what you want to do, but it means you can shoot hand-held and with lesser equipment and still have something serviceable come out the other side.  Adobe, this time, I love you.

How Photoshop Won The Panorama War is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

See that red circle?  You can now find the like and share buttons after each post.  If you could find it in your heart to spread the love, I’d appreciate it.  I do indeed like you.

UPDATE 6/23@2:45 pm: It is a rare day that any post comes close to touching what is clearly my most popular.  This bokeh post stands head and shoulders above all others on this blog but today, this guy made it to the top.  Thanks for liking me!

I Like You is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

Black sand is something you only find around volcanic eruptions.  When the right kind of lava enters the oceans, the reaction shatters it into little pieces that sometimes collect in certain areas.  Usually these beaches are transient and only last for a short while before the currents wash them away.  The black sand beach in Punalu’u is the exception.

Likewise, there are plenty of places in the world to see sea turtles, but the Hawaiian islands are the only place in the world where the green sea turtles pull themselves out of the water and hang around on the beaches and rocks.  Both times I’ve visited this beach there have been at least a couple.  You can see a second one in this shot just crawling back into the water.

Hawaii isn’t that far away but it can feel like a different world.  When your cell phone still works and Starbucks is an option, it’s easy to forget how far away you are.  Crouched down watching the turtles makes it easy to remember.

Black Sand, Green Turtle is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

On the 12 mile road from belt road to the point, you pass several banks of windmills.  These are some of the older and smaller ones.  The missing blades and patina of rust makes it pretty clear that these aren’t newly installed as some recent jump to green energy.  These have been here.  There are some newer windmills you can’t get as close to.  They’re larger and look more modern.  These had more character.

Interestingly enough, I took a few HDRs of these.  When I was editing the pictures I put them together and really didn’t think they gained much from it.  A good note on HDR is that unless you have really dynamic lighting that has a lot of bright and dark spots in the same photograph, you don’t gain as much from it.  These shots do have some shadows and blown out spots, but I like this effect just as much.

The other important thing to point out is one item you just can’t do without in Hawaii, or anywhere else where you shoot a lot of sky and water – a polarizing filter.  In this modern world of digital cameras and Photoshop, most on-camera filters have fallen by the wayside.  You can do many things after the fact, but polarizing the image isn’t one of them.  A polarizing filter removes reflections from shiny objects, like metal and water.  This means if you want to see the fish in the water, you can.  It also means you can remove reflections of people from building windows.  At the same time, it can turn your blue sky into a much more intense blue.  The downside is that they eat some amount of your light, so I only use them in bright and sunny places.  When I go to Hawaii, the polarizer goes on and rarely comes off.  The blue sky in this picture really pops from the filter, not from what I did after the fact.

Windmills of South Point is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

South Point Boat Hoists is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures