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Topic: Take a picture once a day, whether you need to or not (Read 1143549 times)
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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In the reptile room of the band house, we used to have a couple monitors. The water monitor was super lazy, lounging around most of the time. We had built a pretty massive enclosure for the monitors, with little bushes, rocks, water holes. They could run around a variety of levels and types of ledges with branches between, really cool setup.
The nile monitor was the star, he was pure alpha predator. A few mice dropped in and it was on.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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My Amazon CC kicked out this month's credit, so I got a couple stands, the umbrellas, the mounts, and a hood for the lens. Now I have to figure out someplace to set up a practice setup, because my art studio is way too small to light anything without blowouts. Really need to get over this initial learning curve, the reference I shoot here is (hopefully) going to do some great things down the line.
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IainC
Developers
Posts: 6538
Wargaming.net
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I took some medium format photos from my balcony and my office to check out the local dev lab. Their scans are shit so I definitely need to get my own scanning rig again. The actual developing part seemed fine. This was on Portra 400 that expired 20 years ago, overexposed two stops. 000003.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr 000009.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr
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IainC
Developers
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Wargaming.net
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Teleku
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10510
https://i.imgur.com/mcj5kz7.png
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So this obviously isn't 'taking a picture', but I felt I should share a few neat photos. Recently, my grandmother unfortunately passed away. She was 88, a huge part of my (and my families) life, and its been a pretty tough month. I traveled about 30 hours straight back to the middle of nowhere I grew up in to be a pallbearer at the funeral, stayed 3 days, and did the same thing right back again to Laos. Though she ended up a farmers wife on a small ranch deep in the hinterlands of California, she actually lead a fairly crazy life. She grew up as the youngest child of 14 children, to a coal mining family in Western Virginia (she told me about how as a child she pretty much walked barefoot everywhere in the woods, picking berries and digging out roots for the family dinner). Her older sister ran off to Los Angles, and eventually convinced the family to send my grandmother out as well. In 1940, she traveled across the country for several days by train at age 10, lying to everybody that her parents where just in the other car when asked, until she reached LA. There she had a rather wild time as a teenager, got involved in the early Hollywood scene, and even danced on chorus lines and the such. She met my grandfather there and married him, then moved up to Napa where his family was from. After having 5 kids (including my father), my grandfather decided he always wanted to own a farm, and they moved north and purchased a ranch in the northern Sacramento Valley, where I grew up. My grandmother had a lot of crazy stories from her youth, and it really hits hard now that shes gone. Back home, a lot of her old photographs were out, and they were honest to god amazing. I need to work with my family to get them digitized, but there are a few already up, so I'm just going to post 3 of them here. I'm sure my own sentimentality is getting in the way, but I think they are pretty neat, and maybe people here will enjoy them. From where in the 1940's and 50's in LA. This last picture is of my Grandmother and Grandfather shortly after getting married. My grandfather, for his entire life, would try to make the most hideous face possible if he ever saw anybody pointing a camera at him. The only decent photos of him over 70 years are when they were taken from the side without him noticing.
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« Last Edit: June 21, 2018, 04:37:34 AM by Teleku »
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"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor." -Stephen Colbert
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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That's some dedication.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Fraeg
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1015
Mad skills with the rod.
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Sorry for the quality. Saturday night in Yolo County, California. The County fire started Saturday afternoon and as of Monday 7/2/18 is about 45,000 acres These were taken on County Road 96 (buddies place) and on County Road 102 Saturday evening and night. The area burning is an area I hike and work in frequently. co rd 102 below
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"There is dignity and deep satisfaction in facing life and death without the comfort of heaven or the fear of hell and in sailing toward the great abyss with a smile."
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IainC
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Wargaming.net
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Khaldun
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Posts: 15157
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Is that jellyfish on the surface? It's very interesting looking.
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IainC
Developers
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Is that jellyfish on the surface? It's very interesting looking.
It's just below the surface. The water is so clear, I was able to get good photos by leaning over the side of the boat and shooting through the air/water boundary.
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IainC
Developers
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Wargaming.net
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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Awesome, that's very similar to what I want to do! I can't seem to wrap my head around the lighting stuff, though. I feel stupid :D
I have another model lined up, she wants to do some Harley Quinn cosplay stuff. So I need to make some time to practice shooting with lights! Why am I so slow in the brain!?
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Khaldun
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Posts: 15157
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157
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IainC
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I went to Bang Sue yesterday to a train graveyard. It involved a trek of about a kilometer through a full-on shanty town with rickety corrugated sheet buildings on stilts above fetid water and narrow boardwalks between them. I didn't take too many pictures of that bit as I'm not a big fan of poverty tourism. The train graveyard was pretty cool though. We went in through a service shed and the guys inside just waved us through. A little while later a security guard came out to yell at me but it turned out that 200 Baht (about $6) was enough to 'buy a licence' for an hour or so of undisturbed shooting. I went through a couple of rolls of 120 there as well as the digital shots. IMG_5527.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr IMG_5554.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr IMG_5566.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr IMG_5565.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr IMG_5534.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr
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« Last Edit: July 30, 2018, 02:18:55 AM by IainC »
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Khaldun
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Posts: 15157
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I like the B&W one especially.
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Fraeg
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1015
Mad skills with the rod.
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those train photos are amazing, right up my alley... would love to see more of them *hint hint*
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"There is dignity and deep satisfaction in facing life and death without the comfort of heaven or the fear of hell and in sailing toward the great abyss with a smile."
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IainC
Developers
Posts: 6538
Wargaming.net
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those train photos are amazing, right up my alley... would love to see more of them *hint hint*
If you click through to my Flickr, there is a whole album of them. I'll have some medium format shots from there when the film comes back from the lab too.
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IainC
Developers
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Wargaming.net
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Mosesandstick
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Love seeing photos from your travels folks, keep them coming! I haven't been out enough recently, here's the only photo I took on a day out earlier. There's still some green grass here left, not much though. 2018-08-04 Hedsor Hill by Aled Moses, on Flickr
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157
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Lot of energy. More from my trip--at Yellowstone, the inevitable images. I have to watch out that I'm not getting so self-conscious about a photo having been taken before that I just stop taking photos.
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Mosesandstick
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Posts: 2474
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I'm digging those, and they go together really well, great mood and theme.
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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The thing to remember about the 'photo that's been done before' is that when you take it, you have rights to it.
I was lucky to have a lady who worked with copyright law in my first art class a couple years ago. I'm already becoming known as 'the guy who will lecture you on usage rights' in my art association (this is why I'm trying to learn portraiture photography well enough to create references to work from). Small potatoes, so it's not likely anyone will pursue infringements, but why open yourself up to the possibility?
But I digress.
I had my camera on a trip to a nice lake cabin Sunday, but forgot to take it out of the truck, and the old lady has been a nightmare about being out of the house, so not sure I would've had time for much, anyway.
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IainC
Developers
Posts: 6538
Wargaming.net
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There's an arts space out in the weeds near here called Chang Chui. It's based around a parked Airbus airliner which has been assimilated into various other structures. There are also a bunch of other largish installations as well as display spaces for smaller works of various kinds. It's super cool. IMG_5682.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr IMG_5731.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr IMG_5675.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr There's a surprising amount of brutalism and post-modernism here. This is the Bangkok Mail Centre. IMG_5784.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr Hua Lamphong Station IMG_5760.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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A couple of the better reference shots I took on the last night of class. You can click for the full res. Open to suggestions, as I'm just learning and had to take the lighting setup as-is for these.
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157
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There was an interesting bit the other day in the New York Times about the best pose for most basic portrait photography and how to coax people into it--basically, tell people to act as if there's a string pulling them up through the back quarter of their head, turn their head slightly, try to squint just ever so slightly (not too much or you have a come-hither or creepy look). I found it helpful. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/magazine/how-to-pose-for-a-photograph.htmlLighting is something I really struggle with too. I do best with a more chiaroscuro set-up because I understand how to produce it, but it's not really suited for most portraits. The thing I kind of picked up from doing some of the basic tutorial at The Strobist was that having a strong light that's about at 4 o'clock with you about 6 o'clock and the subject at 12, with a fill light at around 9 o'clock, is a pretty good basic set-up. You can reverse that if you think that fits the subject's facial symmetry better or if you're trying to get the strong light from natural light that's only available at that angle.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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The tough part for me is that I'm not shooting for good portrait photography, I'm shooting for good reference for portrait painting, in a very specific style. So 99% of stuff I've found for shooting portraits isn't very helpful. So I'm just going ahead and jumping into it. My award-winning portrait was shot with a crappy lens using the same lighting as those two I posted (an incandescent bulb in a clamp reflector light).
I'm all about chiaroscuro anyway, as a painter. Without stark values, it's tough (for me, as a newb) to execute a solid charcoal portrait. Paint is a bit more forgiving (you can use color contrast when the values aren't helpful), but I still prefer moody shadows.
Both of those shots provide enough info that I could execute a portrait in either paint or charcoal, so at this point I've probably been overthinking the whole setup. Now I just wish I had cooler furniture for posing the model at my house.
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IainC
Developers
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Wargaming.net
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Khaldun
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Funny thing about photos taken before and rights thereof--I took this just perfect photo of a gibbon with her new baby at the Philadelphia Zoo--it was one of those perfectly timed, perfectly framed, perfectly lit things. I went back about six months later and there was a exhibit text about the new gibbon and it had my photo (I'd put it up on Flickr). So I emailed them saying, "Hey, you can have the photo, but I would just like to be asked, and I send the Flickr link. They replied, "wow, we see why we think that's yours, but honestly we have a professional photographer who took the same photo at the same moment the same day who was standing just to your right--she even mentioned that there was a guy with a tripod who probably got just as good a shot." And I was like, "oh yeah there was this woman right next to me with a full-frame Nikon, whoops."
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Khaldun
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Khaldun
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Those are great. And yeah, it's surprisingly difficult to do well. I like 003 and 007 especially.
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Goumindong
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On the food front. If you use a higher proof liquor you can more easily regulate the strength/texture etc of your final product.
I use pure ethanol for making my lemoncello and it turns out spectacular
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