D - 248 - Window geometry

D 203 - Sunset in the garden #3

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442
JPG corrected in Lightroom

D 203 - Sunset in the garden #2

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 44-4
RAW developed in Lightroom.

D 202 - Sunset in the garden #1

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 44-4
RAW developed in Lightroom.

D 185 - Skew't

Accidental shot, really. But I liked it when I checked the photos on the LCD.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW edited in Lightroom.

What I learned

My new tool in the photographic arsenal is: twisted perspective. Frames get some extra dynamic when the horizon is far from straight.

D 180 - Night Stripes

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Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW edited in Lightroom.

D 174 - Dirt

Bathroom sink after rinsing vacuum filter.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW edited in Lightroom.

What I learned

Even dirty menial housework can have an interesting perspective.

Well... Alice In Chains rules anyway. I'm playing 'Dirt' on my stereo today, so I guess I got inspired or something.

Garbage, sewage, dirt and abandon. The rat and roach infested backstage of modern life. Menial works that nobody thinks about but someone has to be doing it. It all sounds like a very tempting theme and it has always been so to me. Freud wouldn't have liked it.

D 148 - Staircase-Well

Peculiarity of staircases in my block is that they are in the middle of the building without any outside windows. It isn't a problem until the electricity shuts down. Then it turns into a parade of Will-o'-Wisps when people try to get in or out of their homes.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW file developed in Lightroom.

D 133 - Trek

I don't like the background. But I like the cute and the way light works on the chick in this photo.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

ZD1442 kit lens is not fast enough for candid indoor photos. It is f/4.7 at standard focal length (50mm after crop) and auto-focus takes a long time to snap in low light. I should look for a way to obtain something prime around 50-70mm and f/2.8 or better.

D 132 - By the fire

First campfire of this season.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW file edited in Lightroom: levels, split toning, crop from 4:3 to 3:2 format, noise and sharpness adjustments.

What I learned

I played around with different automatic presets and programs in my camera. This time I wanted to check out the 'By the Candles' scene mode. It used smaller ISO and aperture than I would. It surprised me with using simply 'Daylight' white balance but it gave a nice result.

D 89 - Master Frodo?

Taking advantage of the warm lamplight in my living room.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
Tone levels and color mix in Lightroom.

What I learned

With relatively slow shutter speed (1/10 - 1/20 sec) making shots in a series greatly increased my chance to capture a any sharp photo.

D 88 - Incarnate

Limitations fuel creation. Again.

I was thinking about a nice close-up shot with my palms spread around an eye for a Pan's Labyrinth like effect. But since I had a macro rings with Helios lens on, I decided to keep this magnification factor and work something out within it.

Equipment

E-510 with all three extension tubes (yeah, now I remember - that's the name) and Helios 44-4 on a tripod.

Cropped and changed to greyscale in Lightroom.

What I learned

This is the mode of work I like not only with photography. It is more like a philosophy for me. I try to approach a subject with some idea in mind and then react to the insights I have while working on it, experiment and come up with something different than what I planned but exciting and satisfying.

D 83 - Don't drink and derive

We all had some few beers before. I decided that this isn't the best moment to appreciate the adrenaline of karting, since I haven't done it for more that 15 years.

I was chased away from the track's edge by a staff for safety reasons but before I took some rewarding shots. The perspective on this photo is from a viewing platform well and safe above the racing track.

This racing track is built inside a hotel near Szczecin. The owner of it had some successful business before, but visited Michael Schumacher's karting track in Germany. He never took a ride on it, because the queue was so long. He thought that this is a great business idea and sold his previous company to open 'Silver Hotel' with the most professional kart racing track in Poland.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442. ISO 1600.

What I learned

ISO 1600 is not as useless in E-510 as I used to think. In poor lighting conditions and far from fast kit lens, even this high ISO didn't allow for sharp capture of karts in motion. But at least it allowed for sharp still photos.

D 77 - NKVD on Victory Square

A dubious result of carrying a camera with me at all times. This particular times were completely inebriated and late for the last bus home.

This place is really called Victory Square in Polish but the fur hat isn't Russian.

Equipment

Samsung S630 on high ISO (thus the noise) and long exposure (thus the blur). But the lamp light was too good to waste by turning the flash on. Or so I thought at that time. Well, maybe "thought" wasn't the word to use in my condition.

What I learned

It is hard to make long exposure photos. It is very hard to make them while being totally smashed. Each time I looked at the LCD to frame, my labyrinth went a bit crazy, my upper body went backwards and I had to try to compensate it with my hands to keep the camera steady. I wish I could see myself doing that. Must have been quite a disturbing sight.

The city is amazingly quiet on Sunday midnight. Even more so, when two major local football teams (soccer for some) play an evening match.

All restless souls of that night had been pacified in clashes with the police. And then it was quiet. Shhh... shhh... It was so still and so peaceful until I felt like singing on the bus. :D

D 75 - Tinkering in the bathroom

I just recalled that I had still some options to improve the quality of photos made at high ISO setting in my DSLR. So I tinkered around with them looking for optimal adjustment.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30 3.5.
Channel mix, levels and sharpness in Lightroom.

What I learned

Modern DSLR is a little computer with lens. So there is always something new to find within the extended menus.

This time I recalled that even before I bought my E-510 I knew that it gives best results when noise reduction is off and sharpness is reduced from the default settings. I changed this a year ago and forgot about it.

I set ISO to 1600 (max for E-510), pushed sharpness up from -1 to 0 and turned on the noise reduction to "normal" level.

The decrease in noise is clearly visible, yet I still need some luck and overexposure to avoid noise distracting even at low resolutions. However I still don't see any possibility of using ISO 1600 shots for larger prints.

D 38 - Not a square

Today I was looking for a square compositions to continue the geometric theme.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 44-4 lens.

What I learned

Squares never quite worked out for me. The box was rectangular, yes. Yet the first shots I made proved to consist of triangles as far as composition was concerned. The later photos which I made straight from the front of the box were not anything that I would like to share, so I posted the triangular one.
It could be worse, I could be stuck with only square compositions unable to come up anything more dynamic.

Anyway tomorrow I'm back to square (one).

I've been looking for usable range of applications the highest ISO setting in my Olympus but without any firm success.

D 37 - Teatime

Oval composition. I was already thinking about it yesterday but only today I found something that could work out fine.
I treated the photo with split toning for tea-like colors.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon lens.

What I learned

Why on earth didn't I change ISO to 100-200?
I thought I've learned to check the settings before I start making photos. Apparently I can't take any knowledge for granted.

There is something about standard focal length. If I could have only one non-zoom lens it would be something between 40 and 50mm.

D 33 - Crouching tiger

"Nysa" van half buried under the snow on a monitored parking lot. It haunted me for a week or so, because I can see it from my window lit at night.
The guard there told me that it is actually up and running and even has LPG installation. The owner wants some thousand polish zloty (about €200) for it.

This post is late, because yesterday my connection was down and I forgot to reset the router afterwards until today morning.

Equipment

E-510 with my new shiny and pretty Pentacon 3.5 30.

What I learned

At night I'd probably have to get f:1/1.4 lens to shoot sharp photos at ISO 800 hand-held. My E-510 has ISO 1600 setting but the level of noise makes it next to useless. I must take a tripod with me every time I plan to soot after dark.
I might on the other hand buy a monopod and use it also as a walking crane. I'd kill people with brutal remarks concerning their life and death and pretend I'm House MD.

Talking to people while you are out there making photos can get you a long way. This was always somewhat hard for me. I preferred to concentrate on the camera and stay invisible.
But some time ago I realized that a good photograph of a scene involving people should make the camera (and the man behind it) not a spectator but a participant of the scene. Just like when we watch a scene through our own eyes, we are a part of the scene as well. And other people around instinctively react to us, get out of the way, briefly look at the cameraman and such.
That is the right way to go. This makes the photographed scenes authentic.

D 30 - Misty

Foggy day outside, ill child inside. I'll have to postpone my decision to go out with the camera more.

I noticed that I always use contrast adjustments on my RAW files to increase the output contrast. So I tried to go for something different this time.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 44-4.

What I learned

This photo was done hand-held with window glass as a support but the ISO had to be high. It comes out that perhaps even more than with high contrast, low contrast photographs must be done with low ISO to minimize the noise.

I was kindly instructed how to upload larger photos to Picasa and then shrink them when embedding in blog. So now you can click the photo to see four times bigger photo in Picasa.

D 29 - The art of maroon

I got this e-book that says my photography can be better, see. It says that I need to work on making my eye see and by brain compose. It says that there are points, lines, areas and edges that really count in photography. It's got Don't panic! written on the cover exercises to put the theoretical concepts into practice.
It told me to photograph stones or rocks. I don't have any! I got walnuts and chestnuts.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 44-4 hand-held, softbox for built in flash, sheet of white A4 paper and smaller sheet of aluminum foil as reflectors, LED light in my mobile phone.
I set the whole thing up in a corner of a sill with paper sheet on the right and aluminum on the left. I had to edit out some of the aluminum foil in Lightroom, because it was partially visible as a darker area (what a precision of reflecting surface setup!) in the upper right corner.

What I learned

Reflected light is a treasure to be deeply studied. Composition is the basic building brick of photography. To the point that having mastered it one can make great photos without much of an interesting subject.
You'll likely to hear me complaining for those exercises some more. I plan to improve my workshop with the book: Photography the art of composition.