If I’d had a tripod I could have tried HDR for this, but as it is I chose to concentrate on the reflection of the sky and underexpose the rest. I like the fringe of autumn trees too… What do you reckon? Comments are welcome, as are ratings.
It’s 8pm, I rarely post in the evening, but I’m hiding out in the basement…
Luckily I had the foresight to nip to the supermarket and stock up on skittles, kitkats and starburst (coincidentally, all the sweets I like) a few hours ago… Boba Fett Jr, some Princess or other and Batman are among many others that have been round our house this evening. Atticus was initially apoplectic that so many strangers were wandering the streets after dark and daring to approach the threshold of his realm. He seems more resigned now. I know the feeling.
DrSita’s in Denver at the minute. I’m picking her up from the airport at midnight tonight. I just texted her to say I can’t get the hang of this gringo tradition thing. By the third visit, I realised I was doing it wrong and you don’t say “Good luck” to a five-year-old. You say “Happy Halloween” (no apostrophe, ‘cos we’re in America). And the stress is on the ‘a’… “Hálloween”, not “Hallowéen” (UK)…
Anyroad, have a collage of some of my latest Through the Viewfinder shots of some skellingtons from Mexico. And if you’re feeling particularly masochistic, wade through my latest pix of a walk round Peter Kerr Park down the road. I spent a while thinking up some decent puns for some of the titles.
I never thought about the roots of the word “business” before. Busy-ness. Just thinking out loud, anyroad moving on…
My photoblog‘s getting revamped at the minute mainly because of the number of people asking about the vintage viewfinder contraption when I’m out. I’ve found a great template for it and have been tweaking it to my liking.
Still to do? The title (“Say Cheese, It’s Gwyn’s Photoblog”) needs rethinking… I need a proper archives page, more straightforward tag system, and to write some updated copy for the About Pages…
Might I implore you to sign up for email updates? Sign up below, confirm, then when I post a new picture it’ll wing its way to your inbox with the description too, never more than once a day. You can cancel at any time… I’m going through some of my older photos at the moment but I’ll soon be posting new ones.
Any thoughts on the site or pictures are, as always, most welcome in the comments here or over at the phlog. And if RSS feeds is how you roll, it’s replete with that kind of nonsense too.
I’d also like to plug Uprinting.com and the Web Resources Depot who are doing all these cards for free ‘cos I won their competition. Once the cards arrive I’ll say nice things in my professional blog too. Though judging by recent news I’m going to be a lot busier soon…
Looking over the Willamette River from here (Google Map) in Sellwood, Portland, OR. An area noted for its plethora of antique shops and Tacoma Bridge, held together by glue and prayers (probably).
I’m going to start entering VFXY’s theme of the week . This is my entry for this week’s topic : “Darkness”. I shot this photo through a crack in the door of a huge warehouse in Alameda, CA on a Flickr phototour of the abandoned navy base. Haz de Luz means ray of light in Español…
A polarising filter, slightly longer exposure and, most importantly, zooming while pressing the shutter created this here effect.
One of my first Through the Viewfinder shots, taken just outside my front door. We’re having one of the dryest autumns on record in Oregon leading to a gorgeous selection of turning trees.
It’s supremely difficult juggling an expensive digital camera, a vintage Kodak Duaflex IV and a hyper-active, squirrel-crazed schipperke. However, occasionally he does stand still and lets me take a shot like this.
Just to bump that photo of me ‘below the fold’, have a video from The Onion:
In The Know: Has Halloween Become Overcommercialized?
And have a through the viewfinder of some pumpkins.
I won’t write too much about the interview, ‘cos there’s a good chance I’ll be googled and they’ll find this post if it went well enough. On Facebook I put in my status that I was wondering what to wear and received sartorial advice ranging from optimal tie patterns to clingfilm with strategically placed Sarah Palin stickers. I then announced I was going to wear my Ghostbusters T-shirt and got these words of encouragement…
Alan: Best of luck, Gwyn.
Stuart F: Who they gonna call?
Joop: Did someone give you the questions?
Paul: dont get slimed
Alina: You gonna be a ghostbuster and all?
Emma: definatley the best choice of attire for, well, any occassion. be sure to mention in the interview that you “aint afraid of no ghost” in your best english accent
Annelise: Good Luck!
Ricardo: Are they going to ask you to take the TOEFL?
Facebook is often a lot of fun…
Other news. DrSita’s in North Carolina right now. Apparently in the airport there’s a mexican restaurant called La Tequileria or somesuch. News of her adventures soon…
Cut and paste: agaveweb.com/tequila to see a site in progress for some mates of mine in Guadalajara and their new language school.
I’m starting a new photoblog just for my Through the Viewfinder photos. I’m at the design stage right now. Because of the number of strange looks I get when I’m wielding my dual camera contraption and the occasional person asking me what it is, I’m thinking it’d be handy to have a business card with the site on it so they can see (buy??) the photos and learn more about the technique. Might take a while though, but I want to get something up because the other day I won 1000 free business cards and I need a domain for it. Any suggestions for a domain name? IsThatAPeriscope.com …
I’ve been posting about some of my latest projects over at agaveweb.com in the hope of drumming up some business and lending a bit more colour to the CVs I’m sending out to temp companies.
Other than that, it’s been pretty quiet this side of the pond/Rio Grande. It was frosty this morning and has since given way to glorious sunshine. I can see it through the little window in my underground bunker… I nipped out to the park yesterday with the PenDak Chimera and took a few longer exposure shots. I think I’d need some kind of retort stand to properly keep everything still enough for anything longer than 1/5th of a second, but I liked this one…
The next step is learning how to focus more ‘into’ the image, rather than on the border and dust particles. I might have to re-engineer the cardboard and I’m guessing there’ll be something to do with the aperture too.
Sally & Martin arrive tomorrow night. Driving from LA to here in 2 days is quite a trek.
and a quick way to put a couple of thousand miles on the odometer. So we’re thinking of things to do (expect yet more waterfall pictures…) and where/what to eat.
Judging from the pageview stats, no one cares in the slightest about my lifestream… I’m not taking it personally, FSM knows I’m happy enough you keep coming back to read this nonsense. But give it a go, cos if this page hasn’t been updated there might well be something of interest over there. There’s a distinct bias towards photography tutorials and flickr activity, but once I find out how to put my reddit faves in there as well, there’ll be a lot of good stuff.
I won’t mention it again.
Gwyn’s (For-the-love-of-all-things-holy,-Get-a) LifeStream
Probably.
Though ones like this one shouldn’t really count.
Any suggestions for Post 1000?
Our friends Gina and Evan had us round for dinner the other night and showed me their dual lens camera. Since they don’t make film for these things any more the idea is you take a picture with another camera Through the Viewfinder (Ttv) of what it sees. You end up with slightly distorted, vignetted, dusty, square images that are really pleasing to the eye. I was inspired and bought the first camera I saw on eBay. It’s been a while since I used eBay and my original bid of 5 dollars was soon outbid and I got caught up in the competitive bidding and finally snapped it up (pun intended) at the last second for 20 bucks and it arrived today. You can probably get them cheaper, but what the hell…
The next step after cleaning the lens and mirror a bit was making it light proof, there’s a tutorial on how to make a perfectly fitting tube, but I couldn’t be arsed with all that… I ripped up the box it came it and went into a sellotaping frenzy… 10 minutes later… behold!
Next step is wandering around seeing things from a waist-high angle for a while and getting used to the mirror image while Drsita and Atticus look on bemusedly.
Here’s the set on Flickr from today and here’s me favourite below:
To make a long story short, I’m very happy with me new toy.
Other news… we’re looking forward to Sally and Martin’s visit in a few days. Had a lovely weekend and met the neighbours properly. And still no major news on the work front.
This is Herman Dune, they were the support band at last night’s Jolie Holland gig. Right now I’m going through the pics from the concert and editing some from our jaunt out to Peter Kerr island this afternoon. Brilliant place, it is. Plenty of colour, the (unrealised) possibility of bald eagle spotting and Atticus even got a wander around off his lead.
I liked the foliage, then the heron gives it that stock photo touch 🙂
No, not for me…
For DrSita: You’ll need our dog’s name again.
Posting at a rate of about one a month I’m afraid… Autumn in Oregon is a special time though.
The password for link below of DrSita’s latest posters is the name of our dog. No capitals.