Take a picture once a day, whether you need to or not

[RhyssaFireheart]

PPed is obviously not PowerPointed, so what is it?

I assumed it meant post processing.

[Mosesandstick]

Thanks for the comments/thoughts. Yup, it's a caldera lake with a fancy hotel at the top (which we weren't staying at!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_T%C5%8Dya and I meant post-processing.

I'm not the biggest fan of B&Ws but I figure I need to practice them more.

[Lightstalker]

I drive by these rotting trains a couple times a week, so yesterday I decided to pick up the camera and do some scouting for some night photography.


Rail Crane with Fence

The fence is 6-7' along the length so I'd need to bring my 24mm and set up inside the perimeter to capture anything but a super cropped shot.  The view SE from here is pretty cluttered, and there may be sodium vapor lights (there are the lights, they may not be active throughout the year), so it might all be a no-go for framing the milky way through a rotting cab anyway.

[Endie]

That
is
amazing.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, great shot. HDR?

[RhyssaFireheart]

Yeah, what Endie said.  That is an excellent shot there, Lightstalker.

[Nebu]

That
is
amazing.

Great eye and a great pic.  I think you have a nice spot to really tap into your artistic side. 

[Mosesandstick]

That's a great use of HDR. Nice shot.

[Lightstalker]

The sharpness was through post processing (PP) in Lightroom (actually a 3rd party preset used for astro-photography), HDR on the Nikkon writes in jpg only and that's pretty limiting.  If you manually set up HDR you need a tripod and to take several normal shots at different exposures, not really viable when shooting a moving target or in this case crawling up a fence to get the shot. 

Original:

Original-Rail Crane



I took 90 shots to get 9 good ones, most had the focus/frame on random pebbles/moss because I was holding the camera above my head to get the lens over the fence.  Seriously using it wrong to have a high powered DSLR and be doing the awkward tiptoe-reach-lean on a chainlink fence point and shoot with it.  If I go back with the 50mm I need to bring an 8' ladder so I can shoot down over the fence.  I also need to step the lens back to about f12 since I'm so close to the subject and the depth of field is annoying.  If I go back with the 24mm I need to get over the fence and set my tripod near the ground.  

"This is totally not trespassing, see I have a camera!"  

[IainC]

I had my first rolls of 120 film developed and printed yesterday. These were taken with my new Kiev88 medium format camera. 80mm f2.8 lens onto a 60x60mm film frame.


Mural and Graffitti by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Andriivskii Mural by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Andriivskii Spusk by Iain Compton, on Flickr

[Lightstalker]

Went back with the 24mm manual focus and lined up shots using Live View so there was less point and pray (though necessarily shooting from a different point than I was focusing).  The sun was popping in and out of the clouds until the rain started, so it was more work but more productive. 


Tank


Old Paint, New Paint


29


Shay Stack and Truck


Green Door

[apocrypha]

My first ever attempt at night sky photography. Pretty much straight out of the camera. Didn't spend much time up there taking pics because it was a gorgeous clear night and I was too busy looking through the telescope. Definitely want to do some more of this though! Froze my fucking toes off too.

[IainC]

Went through some old photos and re-edited them. Particularly pleased with this one from Skye a couple of years ago.


Summer on Skye by Iain Compton, on Flickr

[Lightstalker]

That's a vibrant shot across a variety of lighting conditions, very nice.

It is always surprising when you notice how few trees there are in some parts of the world. 

[Ironwood]

Almost makes Scotland attractive.  If you don't know it.

[IainC]

Concert photography!
I love concerts and love taking pictures of live performances but ugh, I hate processing the results. Especially as lighting designers these days think that it is big and clever to wash the stage in red light. This is basically death to good photographs of the band because you either have to stop down to a ridiculous level or you have to accept that colour is not going to happen and just convert everything to black and white in post.

Anyhow, here are some from a concert I was at on Friday.

untitled-291.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


untitled-249.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


untitled-29.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

[Khaldun]

Love the last one.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Yeah, the contrasts in that last one are great.  Especially when you realize he's wearing traditional national costume paired with rad glasses and keyboards. 

Who/what was the concert?

[IainC]

The band is called Kahaberi & Khanums, they are billed as Georgian electrofolk but they are a bit more like Faithless than The Levellers. More photos are here and I should get some usable ones from my medium-format camera once the film comes back from the lab in a few days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOvcgZKAhKw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55kihHfJlQY

[Khaldun]

P.S., hope everyone saw that the Nik Software filters are free now from Google. They're still pretty good.

[Mosesandstick]

The Nik filters seem like a bit of fun. I bought Lightroom after handling my collection was getting too awkward and it's nice that they're embedded, but still a bit difficult to incorporate in my workflow.

That's a cool looking band and some cool photos Iain. How are you finding bringing a medium format camera into such a tight space? I've been thinking of heading to Skye in the summer, any recommendations?

Lovely night sky Apoc, if that's the first one I can't wait to see what comes after.

I got a new toy for Christmas. Gave it a proper test taking photos for a martial arts seminar. I've got to say modern cameras are pretty ridiculous, especially when they're full frame. I was shooting up ISO1600 without any apparent visual degradation, especially when you're mainly putting it on the web. I think in the future I'll be comfortable going up to ISO6400, possibly even further.




2016-02 Imperial College University Training Seminar 066 by IC Shorinji Kempo, on Flickr


2016-02 Imperial College University Training Seminar 024 by IC Shorinji Kempo, on Flickr


2016-02 Imperial College University Training Seminar 005 by IC Shorinji Kempo, on Flickr

[IainC]

That's a cool looking band and some cool photos Iain. How are you finding bringing a medium format camera into such a tight space? I've been thinking of heading to Skye in the summer, any recommendations?

I'm still very much getting to grips with the medium format. At the moment I'm treating it like a big, slow DSL. That's not really playing to it's strengths but it does mean that my learning curve is a lot steeper - which I like. Because it's all manual, no internal metering or anything, I have to be good at eyeballing exposure and trying to predict happy confluences of lighting, focus and framing - especially in a very volatile environment like a concert where the performers are moving around a lot, the lighting is changing radically from moment to moment and I'm trying ot focus through a waist-level ground-glass screen. Mostly my biggest problem was reloading film magazines in-situ and remembering what was loaded in each one (I had colour and B&W film with me).

On Skye, I'd strongly recommend getting in touch with Marcus McAdam. My girlfriend and I went and took one of his landscape workshops a couple of years ago and it was excellent value. Even if you're not interested in his workshops, he is a fount of local knowledge for photography locations and opportunities.

If you look at the EXIF for my concert photos, you'll see that most of them were shot at 6400 and there's not a lot of noise once a very minor amount of post-processing is applied. That's on a crop-sensor. I'd love to see what 6400 ISO on a full frame could do under the same lighting.

[Endie]

How about a picture of your birthday cake?

[IainC]

I met a lady recently who is the director of a video-production studio attached to the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture. She's asked me if I want to go with their documentary team to Chernobyl next week as a crew photographer. Obviously I do. In the meantime, I was invited along to their woodland retreat where they were inventorying stuff after the winter. Was a fun day where I got to use my medium-format camera, one of my recent Soviet 35mm acquisitions and, of course, my trusty Canon 70D.


River at Twilight by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Woodland Retreat by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Pump by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Glow by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Forest Spirit by Iain Compton, on Flickr

[Khaldun]

Some really well-seen shots there. I like both the shots of the cabins in the woods--the light on the curtain inside is delicious.

[IainC]

Some really well-seen shots there. I like both the shots of the cabins in the woods--the light on the curtain inside is delicious.

Thanks, I was walking back to join the rest of the party and I noticed that. I was trying to find a good way to frame it within an interesting composition.

Anyhow, today I was out taking photos of Soviet Neo-modernism. The crematorium at Baikove Cemetery. Light was meh and I was dodging a security guard who really didn't want me to be photographing there (I checked beforehand and it's allowed, but he was on a personal power-trip).


Baikove-36.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

Baikove-29.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr


Baikove-35.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr

[Nebu]

You have an amazing eye.  Looking forward to more pictures.

[apocrypha]

Digging this stuff Iain. I do so love some of the Soviet era architecture.

[Khaldun]

I really find it so so hard to shoot architecture. Landscape is easy for me in compositional terms, and so are close-ups of nature and objects. But buildings to me have the worst combination of objectness and scene-ness--my mind doesn't see them well. Iain sees buildings really well.

[Merusk]

Buildings are about mass and profile, then let the details reveal themselves. Approach them like a still life.

[Lightstalker]

The crematorium is amazing. 

Any chance you can get in and shoot it at night / with your own light?  That structure could carry some serious light painting - but looking at the crop you are constrained by the buildings nearby aren't you? 

[apocrypha]

Arcitecture photography is also about light - but unlike other subjects there's little you can do to control the light except wait. Check out Ezra Stoller, Hélène Binet and Julius Shulman.

[Endie]

Iain you should twee one of those crematorium pictures at https://twitter.com/BrutalHouse   They are absolutely excellent.  If you don't do twitter or can't be bothered, would you mind if I did it, attributing it to you?  They deserve a wider audience than us!

Until my early 20s I was positively offended by brutalism and, indeed, by high modernism in general in both architecture and music, but have grown to adore them in both forms.

[Merusk]

Brutalisim and Modernisim aren't my favorites but I've always enjoyed the honesty of them. Nobody has the money to do my first love of Arts & Crafts and Lois Kahn has always held a place in my heart.  Fuck the postmodernist bullshit of Ghery, Eisenman and the like. Graves was the only one I could tolerate and his were still functional buildings at least and more cartoony than the deconstrtivist loons who said things like, "Buildings aren't meant to be inhabited."

[Yegolev]

Iain's instagram is easily my favorite.