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 87 - Does not apply to trams

Just a scene as seen from a car.

Equipment

Samsung s630.

What I learned

Any dirt stains on the windshield can be made irrelevant by putting the lens very close to the glass. Reflections however are a big concern and difficult to avoid when the shot must be done quickly.

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 85 - You smoke?

An older photo, from February. But it matches today's weather perfectly.

Equipment

Nokia 6233 phone 2MPix camera.
Selective color saturation and sharpness in Lightroom.

What I learned

If you know how to use yours, the mobile phone camera is your best friend.

I love the reflections from convex surfaces. They are even better than fish-eye lens shots.

D 84 - Red Hole

I got myself a new toy!
Three macro distance rings for m42 lens mount. This allows me to use my Helios and Pentacon lens as excellent macro equipment.

With all three rings attached Pentacon 30 3.5 focuses from about 1-2 cm from the lens surface and the Pentacon a maximum f/22 aperture. I must measure what magnification factor it has effectively. But this looks like about 1:1 or even larger.

Equipment

E-510 with 3 macro rings and Pentacon 30 3.5 at the end.

What I learned

Gadgets are a fuel for inspiration. I myself regret to conclude this but this is a verified fact.

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 82 - Not only Berlin

Szczecin. A port city in Northwest Poland. 10 km from German border.

I was fascinated by this half devastated brick wall on the edge of a run-down neighborhood. It seemed to reflect the difficult history of this German city after WW2. Who sheared those bricks from the wall? how? and why?

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
Color mix, levels, crop, noise and sharpness in Lightroom.

What I learned

With overcast weather none of my attempts to show the fascinating texture of scraped bricks worked out. So I have stepped back and shown a contrast between damaged and untouched bricks, adding some perspective.

D 81 - Getto dining

I made the light at a dinner table more intimate by lowering the lamp to some 50 cm above the table level.

Equipment

Samsung S630.

What I learned

Even though I long to have a good flash, I love to use natural light for photography.

D 80 - Pencils

I just love pencils sharpened with a knife. They are to the automatically sharpened pencils the same what hand written letters are to emails.

Equipment
Samsung S630.
Edited in Lightroom.

What I learned

When going for macro, tripod is a must.

D 79 - The Loop

The place where the city ends? The end of tramway line. Anything further on should be considered suburbs.

Equipment

S-630.
Edited in Lightroom.

What I learned

I wish I jumped the little fence and came up closer. It wouldn't do any harm to anybody and the shot might have come out better.

D 78 - Women's Day

It is Women's Day today. So all the best wishes for you girls. Stay beautiful (chauvinist part) as you all are, on the outside and inside (feminist part). You are the best thing, that we - men - have in this World.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 44-4, hand held.

What I learned

Wikipedia gave me two surprises about this holiday.

First is that it begun in the USA while now it is mainly popular in the ex-Soviet block.

Second is that the English speaking countries have an abbreviation for it, it's IWD (for International... ).

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 76 - Snow'o'seum

Another beautiful day with fresh snow and warm sunlight. Another morning walk with my son. Another park. I'm still far more satisfied with the walk than with the photos I took there.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

Snow cover works as a natural reflector while bright blue sky and yellowish sun enhance both cold and warm colors.

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 74 - Crude oil went up again

I keep the Samsung compact camera with me all the time. I just have this pesky lock on my bag in which I carry the camera, so usually before I get it out and running it is too late.

The automatic gas distributor didn't run away.

Equipment

Samsung S630, slow sync flash, +0,7EV exposure bias.
Channel mix, levels and crop correction in Lightroom.

What I learned

I must keep the compact camera in my pocket.
Even on my way to work by car opportunities fly in front of my nose.

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 71 - Ouf of the corridor

Scarce light and high contrast.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442 on a tripod.

What I learned

Some tripods are better and some cost a fiver. Mine is the top of the line Chinese crap but it doesn't fall over or collapse under the weight of a DSLR. So it is useful. I wish it had a ball-head for easier framing and an option for mounting the head on the under side of the shaft for frog perspective shots.

D 70 - Father to daughter talk

When the daughter is away on her birthday.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.
Sharpening, levels, crop and color mix in Lightroom.

What I learned

Such candid shots call for a lot of quick thinking and you still need luck to get the composition right. And it never feels completely right.

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 65 - Neuroplant

Those hairs on twigs of this plant were intriguing me for few days. They are bright red and make a nice contrast against green body of the plant. The moment I changed it into black and white photo and manipulated the color mix in Lightroom a bit I found it to take alien, electron microscope look.

Equipment

Samsung S630 on a gorilla tripod.
I manipulated color mix and contrast and cropped the photo by about 50% in Lightroom. I added some yellow/green hue by split toning.

What I learned

I need a macro lens with a 1:1 magnification for my Olympus E-510 DSLR. I used to scorn macro-photography as a strange hobby for insect hunters but it does open new spaces for abstract works.

D 64 - By accident

Not much to explain there. A play of words.
I was looking for a shot with some pattern, a rhythm.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

I have reconciled with my standard zoom kit lens.
It has no less than two very good alternatives in Olympus E-system, but I'm on a tight budget and this is a decent piece of optical equipment to say the least. It was unfair to hold against it the fact that it is made of plastic and has more adequate brothers in the family.

D 63 - Nothern

I love to be reminded about how far North and East Poland lies compared to the rest of EU. I helps me to remember about this other part of me that cares about solstices and thunderstorms more than about career and bills.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

Recently I read on... pardon my memory but I can't recall. Anyway I read that landscape photography is not about the objects but the light.
Confirmed.

D 62 - Washed away

This time I went for one of my all time favorites - soft photo with pastel colors.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 44-4 lens.

What I learned

More like 'what I'd like to learn' this time. I can't catch the conditions required for such pastel-color effect. I know it when I see it but I can't make it happen when I need it.

D 61 - Through the looking glass

It looks like I get into a habit of running late with posts on the weekend. I think that it may become a regular thing since I try to devote my weekends to myself and my family. Photography is included in this package but editing and posting is not.

I should post those weekend photos en masse somewhere between Sunday and Monday evenings.

This one shows my use of ad hoc filters.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD4015 lens made through a foggy window.

What I learned

I just noticed that "family", "kids" and "portrait" tags usually come together. Don't I have any more family than my son?

D 60 - This ugly meltdown

The mercury bar jumped above the melting point for the first time this year. Some winter it has been.

As everything in life this boon also has its downside. With this much snow changing to water, we are bound to get mud. Loads of mud.

Equipment

Samsung S630 on manual settings.

I did some tonal curve adjustment and faded out the buildings (by local adjustment of contrast and clarity) in Lightroom.

What I learned

I tried to separate a single bush sticking out from the snow cover, then I tried to catch those heaps of snow as mountains striking against the sky but none of those photos came out well. So I went for this one with buildings oddly contrasting with the mountain-like snow formations.
If at first you don't succeed try again.

D 59 - Hide behind

Ah! The beauties of my city. Major chimneys can be easily used for orienteering in the industrial areas.
This one is the same one that I can see from my window. "Blink, blink!" my son calls them, for the red lights they flash against the night sky.
Here it is seen from a platform in front of my office.

Equipment

Samsung S630.

I didn't like the way it looked on the camera LCD and with a 3Mpix I shot it with (for the sake of saving memory card space) I didn't think it would be any good.

In Lightroom I cropped it by around 20% and pushed up saturation a little. The clouds merged with sky too much, so I had to adjust levels and increase clarity. I also used a gradual filter at the bottom which increased contrast but took off some saturation and clarity for the smog look.

What I learned

I must admit that I'm a bit confused by what to think and what to say about if my photographs have been "photoshopped" or not. I don't ever use Photoshop, when I need to work on layers I go for GIMP, which would be the same thing actually. The thing is I don't use it on more than 1% of my photos.

It would seem that I don't edit my pictures, right? But I do. Not a single photo on this blog can be called straight-out-of-camera. I adjust levels, sharpness, white balance and quite often I re-crop in Lightroom (usually by less than 10% of the frame size). This was why I started to shoot RAW in the first place.

So what is the real photo and what is "photoshop" work? Not that is matters to me, but people ask and I always hesitate what to say.

D 58 - Not productive

One of those moments at work, when you would give anything to just be somewhere else, doing something more like... more like you, really.

Equipment

Sony-Ericsson W810i.

What I learned

I'm not quite satisfied with this one. Even casual photos made with your mobile phone (the best camera, as in 'the best camera is the one you have with you') should be somewhat planned and redone if not good enough at first.

D 57 - Winter boots

Still sharing stuff from the weekend. Hope you find it's worth it as much as I do.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

Only few posts ago I found out that I can change the contents of http code with link so that click on the photo shows it in the full browser window instead of redirecting to Picasa album.
Now you can easily access higher resolution view of my following photos.

D 56 - And when you see a tunnel, don't follow the light.

A passage out of Jurassic/Fairy Tale theme park. Yes, that means dinosaurs and Cinderella standing shoulder to shoulder.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

The aperture...
I left it at 1/3.5.
And it shows.

I usually worship the rule of thirds. The only repetitive exception I notice in my work are photographs of alleys and portals of various kinds, when I see the central composition to be the only fitting.
I should try this conviction one day and put such object in a golden mean composition for example.

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.

D 54 - They once stood proud

Orchards must be revitalized every few years, to keep the fruit harvest optimal. How corporate.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

Snow with heavy clouds flattening down the sunlight need strong contrasted subjects to be interesting. There are barely any shadows. The World seems like one big photography tent on such day.

D 53 - Charming the Spring

Another photo that sort of came out in green-yellow hue. Looks like someone here is looking forward to the snow melting away.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios lens. Longer exposure in place of flash.

What I learned

In body stabilization of Olympus as compared to better high ISO performance of Nikons and Canons is a double-edged thing. It's a pain in the back when you want to catch your kid running around or other scenes with people in motion, because it allows you to shoot at longer exposures but it doesn't compensate in any way for the motion within the frame.

However in such cases as my today's photograph it is great to have an old manual lens stabilized and shoot just slightly softened picture at 1/6 second shot from hand.

D 52 - Mistletoe's Log

Today I tried and tried again to catch an interesting triangular composition. Not entirely without successes but while I was doing so I encountered another fantastic frame just waiting for me a hand reach away from my front door.

A mistletoe hanging on here since Christmas with a part of poplar branch which it fell down with.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios 58mm lens. Flash with softbox.

What I learned

My triangle shaped compositions are getting better and better.

Prime lenses force you into seeing the world through their focal length. I shot for last 3 weeks almost exclusively inside my apartment but I did it with 30mm Pentacon (60mm after 2x crop factor) and few times with my Zuiko 14 - 42mm zoom.

Once I put on the 58mm lens (116mm after crop) I found new photos in the very same places which I exhausted with shorter focal length(s).

This forced perspective limitation provokes creativity and exploration. This makes photography fun and even adventurous in a way.

D 51 - Cheesy moon with strings attached

Today I was trying to catch a triangular composition.
But I failed. It was quite ironic that I suddenly saw interesting compositions in all but triangle shapes.

I can't complain, I got at least two nice photos from the other shapes that exposed themselves to me so aggressively.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30mm.

What I learned

I'm not sure why couldn't I get the tonal range in the background, which I saw on the camera's LCD, from the RAW file in Lightroom. It came out almost uniformly black.

Vintage lenses with their lomo effects should not be shunned but embraced and explored. And getting special effects from your lens isn't the same as editing the photo in Photoshop, really.

My Pentacon does pretty poorly against the light when counting objectively. But with the photos I'm making it doesn't bother me a single bit.

D 50 - The World, spinning around

Big day today.
We cut our son's hair... and he ain't like it a little bit.
Fortunately he quickly forgot about it and went on having fun all around our apartment.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442, flash on slow synchro, softbox.

What I learned

Slow synchronization of the flash is a fun technique. It works great with panning. The thing is to make a good balance between natural light coming on the sensor and the flash strength.

D 49 - The air is thick

Another thing I had on my mind for some time. Because of photography and because of that I need to clean it, of course.
I joined it with horizontal rhythm theme I was looking for today.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

Another photo left for the 5 mins after I intended to go to sleep.
When will I learn?...

D 48 - The Grays

I promised myself to photograph this perspective of the block already some time ago. I missed an opportunity to catch it with some streaks of snow being blown out of the roof by high winds this for a few days week. I don't know why I was always figuring out how to set up my tripod in on my desk to reach up to this slim window just under the ceiling (a dictionary suggest to call it a 'ventilator' but I resist). This was done from hand.

Why the title? It looks the same in color as in black and white.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30 mm at f/11, ISO 200.

What I learned

Don't get stuck at initial assumptions about technical requirements for a photograph. Give it a try instead.

Never walk by a frame you just discovered or imagined because 'you could always shoot it later'.

D 47 - High

I'm glad. It looks like I start to like my own photos. Another afternoon walk with the son.

Equipment

Samsung S-630.

What I learned

"Be careful!"
As I reached for the camera to my inside pocket of the jacket, kept there to keep the batteries warm, I was following my son with my eyes. I took the camera out in my woolen gloves and as I shifted it to my right hand I accidentally caught the short line attached with one of my left hand fingers and dropped the camera into the snow.
Nothing happened, lucky as I was, and I could go on making photographs after I cleaned it with a tissue. Still the lesson learned is to be careful with the camera.

D 46 - Bad news

No staged shots on this day again.
So this is true story: bad news on the phone.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30m, flash with softbox.

What I learned

There is a fine line between catching real emotions and being a voyeur with a camera. This is particularly sensitive issue when you are shooting your own family. What can you show and what you mustn't?

The problem isn't that simple because people photographed would feel offended not by the way they look in the picture but by how they felt at that moment. And that isn't always easy to judge for the person behind the camera.

This is just a thought. Actually this news, reception of which I photographed, was bad but not like a surprising tragedy.

D 45 - Blue as a boy can be (in January)

Today I was having some more practice with shooting without looking through the viewfinder or on LCD. Some shots were quite nice but I'm posting this one from my walk with son simply because it was shot with point-and-shoot camera. I like to think of a p&s as my handy second camera. It is no worse than my DSLR for taking pictures because it isn't the gear but the man behind camera who makes a photograph good or bad.

Equipment

Samsung S-630, "Program" mode with disabled flash and exposure corrected by +1 EV.

What I learned

I wasted about 30% of the shots while trying to find out what this Samsung can and what it can't do in the snow. I was lucky (as a photographer, not as a father) that the harsh sun became overcast about 15 minutes before we got out. Otherwise some more shots would be wasted by burned highlights probably.
Anyway the camera didn't do as bad as I might think.

D 44 - 'Banana'

"Banana!" This is just how my son over there demands to get some fruit.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442, flash with softbox.

What I learned

Sometimes there isn't just time to sit to work it out properly and any photo must make do.

Another thing is this funny effect that I get when making a photo with exposure time around 1/20 - 1/5 of a second with flash. I wonder how to use it creatively.

D 43 - Oh, it's snowing! again...

Oh boy!
I learned today that not only you can go outside, you can also go somewhere by a car. Even to another town (or in my case - village). You may not have time to shoot anything when you are there but a snapshot or two, while in traffic can be fun.

Equipment
E-510 with ZD1442, handheld from a car which was almost stopped.

What I learned

Always have the camera on you and always look out for opportunities. In this case at first I thought that the photo would be horrible if shot through a snow-stained window in a moving car without any way to stabilize the camera body. But I gave it a try and proved myself wrong.
Maybe not entirely, because two out of three shots were blurred. But it was worth it for the sake of that remaining photo.

D 42 - The Doors

Oh man, is it good to break on through to the outside. After so much time at home I was finally able to get out to some daylight even if it was just being 'devided by the night'.
I never even had to get any further than half a mile from home to get some great photos.

Equipment

E-510 with Pentacon 30 lens.

What I learned

There is no one thing more important in photography than health. If I weren't stuck home for the last two weeks I'd be able to get out with a camera at least three or four times a week.

D 41 - Happy Birthday, Gosia!

For she's a jolly good fellow (or 'gal' I should say)!

As requested by today's birthday celebrator I present: Toucan contrasted with something soft.

Equipment

E-510 with Helios lens, flash with a softbox.

What I learned

The pleasures of contracted work. Perhaps this contract was quite peculiar but still I was asked to do specific photo in limited time. I was surprised with how tough it is to create something satisfying in such conditions.
I wasn't at all surprised however that I started doing it after 10 p.m. That's just me.