D 102 - Mustang

I know I promised no more photos made by my son, but this one I actually like. A matchbox car on a town street-like carpet.

Equipment

S630 on macro setting.

What I learned

I think that it is the pedestrian crossing stripes and fence that make this photo dynamic.

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 100 - Cute...

First of all I'd like to state that "I know" and "it won't happen again, I promise".

This is one of the first photos that I've taken together with my 2 year old son. We were pointing the camera together, than I held it steady and he pushed the shutter release button. And then we reviewed the photos together. There was much rejoice.

Equipment

S630 in Auto mode.

What I learned

As much as the aim of this Project was to make better photographs in the end, isn't it really just about the fun of photography? It well should be. This therefore makes it at great photo for day 100 of my Project.

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 98 - Disturbing branch

Shooting against the light on an overcast day.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

When shooting for Straight out of Camera publishing, I have to learn how to adjust white balance. This time I had to choose between better colors and better crop. The good crop won, but the photo certainly suffers from brownish hue.

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 96 - Watch the weather change

It would be an awful waste not to take a few shots of this gorgeous clear sky we were having this week. Even more since a storm front is headed our way from Germany due to visit us on the weekend.

Equipment

S630, program mode with +1/2 EV bias.
Some highlight recovery (in the bottom left corner) and sharpening done in Lightroom.

What I learned

I got into a habit of saving photos in RAW files. Subsequently I learned to adjust the camera settings not for directly optimal effect but so that there is maximum information in RAW file for further digital development in Lightroom.

I want some change now. I'm not making any large prints of my photos recently, so I don't need all that 100% zoom clarity. I'm publishing my photos on-line with no more than 1200x900 output resolution. I can afford to go SooC: Straight out of Camera. I'm gonna make photos the old way - only what I set in camera and on scene determines how my photos look, not the (digital) lightroom mambo-jumbo.

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 94 - Foggy morning outside

A shot through my kitchen window.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

I have to keep the spherical distortion more in mind when making photographs of architecture or as in this case through architecture.

D 93 - Geometry

I'm trying to make photos on this blog at least remotely relevant to what happens to and around me. This is a daily blog after all, so why not make it work as a sort of diary, right?

The relevance in this case comes from the fact that since last evening I've been jetting my guts out in a strike of what we call here a stomach flu (and wikipedia tells me that so do you). This beautiful geometry is a ceiling in my bathroom.

Enjoy.

Equipment

E-510 with ZD1442.

What I learned

Keep your hands clean, don't share your utensils and cups, avoid elevators and public transport when possible. I dropped 3 kilos since Sunday and I almost lost my consciousness over the sink, or rather I did but just for a second and I kept on my feet.

The horror...

D 92 - The Factory

This is an old factory being adapted to a modern tenement house with lofts.

Equipment

S630 shot through a car window.
Saturation, sharpness and levels in Lightroom.

What I learned

I had never been a fan of HDR or high sharpness and saturation photos. But when I get a sort of dull colored photo I can either push the contrast and make it a monochrome photo or like today, artificially increase the saturation.

D 91 - Father to son

Taking repose on the park bench, father and son.

Equipment

S630.

What I learned

Portraits do not need to show faces to be meaningful.

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 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.