D 192 - Toying around

Die alone and that cats eat you.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

D 170 - Handset

A doorphone handset shot in a DIY light tent made from a recipe found on the net.

Equipment

E-510 with both kit ZD- lens interchanged.
RAW heavily worked on in Lightroom.

What I learned

I bow before accomplished product photographers. I thought it was a no-brainer to make some clean and appealing product shots.

I was very wrong. Achieving a barely satisfying result was quite a hard work for me.

I didn't make it easy for myself and used only household and DIY equipment to make the photos. It took my well over 3 hours to make a makeshift photo tent and set it up under a lamp with extra bright bulb (do they still call that name those new fluorescent energy-saving things?) and than make the shots.

I approved 12 out of 42 photos, which all-in-all is quite a good ratio but on the flip side, I know that next time I could make the shots way better.

I wish I've had: black backdrop, dense fabric for tent walls (or a light tent), two or more lamps giving exactly the same light, a good tripod, external flash(-es) with a reflector or soft-box.

Additionally I must remember to compensate exposure bias when photographing white object on white backdrop. I had to brighten photos in Lightroom to a point when even ISO 100 gave away some noise.

D 168 - Swingallows

And sometimes a night can look like a day.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW edited in Lightroom.

D 166 - Night of the Lush Green

A scene that attracted attention on a dark, cloudy night.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW edited in Lightroom.

D 150 - The Worst

A T-shirt.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
RAW edited in Lightroom: crop, levels, sharpness and yellow filter.

What I learned

I felt really good about my photography yesterday. I had to choose some good family photos which I made since December. It was hard for me and my girlfriend to cut down below 120, because each photo left at this point was too good to reject.

I thought that my cheap Chinese tripod was a junk already, but it came out that after fixing all the loose screws and lubricating joints it is works smooth and stable.

D 105 - Too close

Macro and lighting experiments.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 on tripod, white-sheet reflector.

D 101 - Was Andy sober?

I had a great idea for a photo after puring myself some of this fine stout with an exceptional foam.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 and Pentacon 30 + 21mm extension tube.

What I learned

Combined photos have never been my strong side. I always seem to be missing something important after I combine the elements.

D 99 - A grain of pine

Macro shot of a well dried log.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 on a gorilla pod.

What I learned

Sidelight is a blessing for black and white photography. Enhanced textures won't hurt in color photos either but they are crucial for monochrome.

D 97 - Nightime sneaking

The moon was close to full, the sky was almost to clear. The night was bright and inviting without being overwhelming.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30. Mounted on gorilla-pod.

What I learned

I was using a manual lens at night with very little ability to precisely focus the lens and with a need to have large depth of field. I ended up with exposures from 30 to 60 seconds and ISO boosted up to 200-400.

I'd decided to start shooting SooC (Straight out of Camera). So no editing here, although I had to fight myself not to correct the exposure with Lightroom sliders. I broke at noise removal and did some.

D 95 - Cone

A spruce cone, one of the treasures gathered while walking in a park with a two year-old.

Equipment

E-510 with 6+15mm extension tubes and Pentacon 30. On a tripod.
Changed to monochrome with selective color mix, adjusted levels and sharpened in Lightroom.

What I learned

I was considering publishing this photo in color, it had such a nice warm colors:

But all in all I decided that colors are stronger in the background than the cone and divert attention from main focal point.

I was surprised when while taking this photograph my camera refused to turn on the long exposure noise reduction. I was changing modes back and forth and it was the same everywhere. I knew this option was active when I was doing the same kind of shots before. Only later I realized that I'd changed shooting mode into a series of shots and that (go figure) blocked noise reduction.

D 90 - Not all that glitters is gold

Macro close-up on a hand sharpened pencil.

I'm trying to make some improvements to the visual side of the blog every once in a while. I think that the dark borders around photos help to frame the compositions within them.

Equipment

E-510, 6-15-27mm extension tubes and Helios 44-4. Flash with a soft-box, aluminum sheet reflector.

What I learned

Not every macro proves to be as fascinating as those of thorny chestnut skin. Perhaps most man-made objects are just a very poor imitation of mother nature.

If you look at natural objects you will find them showing new fascinating textures from naked eye view all the way to atomic structure. At every level there is an organization of elements because the nature "made" them as a bottom-up designs - the characteristics of the smallest particles forces specific arrangements at higher levels.

When man designs and produces an item, he thinks top-down. He knows what he wants in the end and then works out what materials and arrangements to use at smaller scales. And there is no particle in this universe that would naturally form itself into a blender, bicycle or a Zuiko Digital lens. So at some structural level man-made things have to be clumsy, simplified, dull and ugly.

Or so says Zarathustra.

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 86 - Chestnuts

Macro festival goes on.
These are some dried chestnuts skins from the Fall. I never thought that they had so much texture and color in them.

Equipment

E-510 with 15mm (the 1st photo) and 48mm (the 2nd one) macro distance rings between the body and the Pentacon 30 3.5. Tripod
Aperture f/22, exposure 30+ seconds. Mirror lock-up.

What I learned

Distance rings are excellent but they severely decrease the amount of light reaching the sensor. So do very small apertures, which are necessary to get some depth of field.

I had some wild ideas today, one was to put the distance rings between the camera body and the Tair 300mm lens. I got a 1:2 magnification factor from a distance of about 2m from the sensor. But the lens is so heavy that I can't hold it steady enough for macro.

D 73 - Make ends meet

The last due photo because of weekend slacks. Another take on the candle lit clock.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442, on a tripod.
Cropped and sharpened in Lightroom.

What I learned

Maybe I can skip posting on weekend but I'll try to take photos to post on Monday. Catching up for half of the week is not very inspiring.

D 72 - Already dreaming

Shooting late at night as usual. But cutting sleeping hours to just make this 'one more shot' from another angle seems like a noble sacrifice.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442, on a tripod.
Cropped and sharpened in Lightroom.

What I learned

Discarding out of camera JPGs as a rule is not always a necessary thing. When you have little time left to make, edit and post a photo they are sometimes just good enough. It's not like I'm doing large prints here, where every little difference counts.

D 69 - Lightpainting

Light painting was another technique that I don't really care for much. Some works with it are stunningly beautiful but they need a level of planning and directing on the set which is just as intimidating.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 on a tripod.

What I learned

I hoped to achieve a 3D effect with a short focal length. But it either needs wider lens than 28mm or some additional treatment of the light source to make itself more 3D.

D 68 - Contrast, Cord and Candle

HDR is for the people.
It's a tool to master, just as I thought. Can be used to benefit a fitting scene.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442. Tripod.
RAW files edited it Lightroom and merged to HDR in Qtpfsgui.

What I learned

I don't have a comfort of having a vacant room for a photo studio. So any arrangement including a backdrop and an arranged lighting takes a few minutes to set up. I have scarce time for photography with a 2-year old child running around and this extra time feels almost like wasted. The results of taking time to set up are evident but it arranging objects in space isn't what I love in photography. It's a necessary burden.

As long as photography is my hobby, not my job, I'll tend to do only the most fun part of it.

D 67 - Yatta Elefante

As I said, I will fool around with HDR some more. This is single light source photo.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442. RAW files edited in Lightroom and merged to HDR in Qtpfsgui.

What I learned

I think that at least one of the photos has to un-clip even the deepest shadows. Because with the brightest photo in a series having black areas I get this blue noise in the HDR again.

It is either that or the result of some noise which my Olympus does tend to make.

D 66 - What the Hell?

I never liked HDR. It was just another gismo filter to me. So I decided to give it a try. You never know, maybe some day I'd need it and it'd be good to have some practice.

Aw...

I sat for an hour trying to get rid of some ridiculous blue noise in the shadows of my photo sequence. And I couldn't tell why they finally disappeared.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 on tripod. Qtpfsgui open-source program for HDR.
Yes, that's the name of a software, not demon.

What I learned

I may be wrong.
I might have done something wrong while I shot the photos for HDR.
Maybe the contrast was too high or something.

But as far as I see it today, results of HDR making are random. You just toss your photos into this giant pot of sliders and parameters and options and see what you get. Than you stir the mixture and look at the new result.
Trying to understand the meaning of all those parameters seems like a science of it's own.

It was a nightmare.

I'll try again tomorrow!

D 55 - House on a hill

It was at the begining of evening golden hour. Go figure. With those clouds above, it could be midday as well.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 on a tripod.

What I learned

Tripod can be used as a monopod as well. Just keep the three legs of the tripod together.