I'm starting to feel a little desperate for some photography... being kind of lazy lately. I'll have to think of somewhere we can go this weekend...
Took this shot to test my SD card. I recently experienced some weirdness with a card that I've been using for almost two years. At a friends house I took some shots, but when I wanted to show my wife, some shots disappeared! I quickly freaked out and put in the back up card everything was normal again. So at least I know it was the camera being flakey. Back at home, I was able to download most of the images and I started to research why my card was failing. My conclusion of the problem is that I've been deleting images in camera instead of reformat it. Many more knowledgeable people have recommended a in-camera reformat every once a while because simply deleting images doesn't always clear out data. Sure enough, once I reformatted the card, it was functioning normal again... *phew*
I'm starting to feel a little desperate for some photography... being kind of lazy lately. I'll have to think of somewhere we can go this weekend...
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My nephew, Kevin, as you see above, asked me to take a few photos of him and his date, and a bunch of their friends before their homecoming dance. Of course, I obliged. Little did he know what kind of pressure it puts on an amateur like me. I've wrote about getting out of my comfort zone before, but this time, I felt more ready, since I've had another year of shooting under my belt. We went to a local park around 5:30pm, and I had the 50'Lux mounted the whole time. The whole day was kind of gray and cloudy, but we did catch the golden hour when sun fell under the clouds. Boy, what a glorious sunset it was. I don't think the kids could have asked for a better back drop. Since I was shooting into the light near the end, the camera was under-exposing quite a bit. I tested and manually set the shutter speed at 1/250 sec, and had to lower it as it got darker. I think I realized that to shoot portraits well, you have to be good with people. I felt as I talked to them more and cracking jokes, I was able to get more relaxed poses and more natural smiles from them. That's definitely something I'll have to work on. But for now, it was truly a learning experience and I'm pretty satisfied with the results. To see the full set, it's [HERE].
OK, a huge opinion-based blog entry... since you might actually find my less touristy pictures to be, well, touristy :) However, it's a question that was constantly at the back of my mind when I travel to places. I think my way of solving this dilemma is: get the touristy shots out of the way first. When I'm at a famous landmark like the Golden Gate Bridge, I simply can't help myself but to take a few shots that are framed and composed just like thousands other pictures of the bridge. But once I get those shots, I'm free to create and look for other less common angles. You won't get many interesting shots if you plan to visit a place to take a few snaps and leave, sort of been-there-done-that type of attitude. I try to allow myself some time to explore, look at the subject from different views, inside and out, try to find its hidden beauty. If you look in the whole set of our trip to San Francisco [HERE], you'll find plenty of touristy snaps (I usually take them first), and once in a while, I'll be able to take a photo that's more "interesting" to me.
I got a chance to go to the Couchbase[SF] conference in San Francisco this past weekend (on Friday the 13th, no less!). We decided to take the whole family up for a mini weekend vacation. While I'm in the conference all day Friday, wife and kids went to the Exploratorium, which is amazing from I've heard. Then we did the SF tour on Saturday, drove back on Sunday by swinging by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I thought it was a jam-packed super fun weekend, but you wouldn't know it from all the whining and complaining about the long drives from my son and nephew. I'll probably split the post into three parts, showing the SF and Aquarium pictures later, but you can see all of them now [HERE]. As for lens choices... I wanted to take the 28-50-90 combo that I've been familiar with, but since the 35'Lux still has the "new lens smell", it bumped the 50'Lux off the list, and it stayed on the M9 for probably majority of the time. I have come to appreciate the versatilities of the 35mm focal length and the low-light capabilities of the 'Lux. It's a bit unfair, because now I'm treating the 28mm and 90mm focal lengths as a special occasion only option. Things will probably balance out later... I'm thinking maybe when I do bring multiple lenses, next time I may stick with one lens per outing just so I can get in the groove with each.
In French, it means "against daylight". In photography, it describes the type of shots when shooting toward a light source, or backlit subjects. Lately, I find that I like the look more and more, especially in black and white. I especially love it when the light glows and creates an outline of the subject's face and body.
One thing checked off my bucket list. Valley of Fire State Park, about 1 hour outside of Las Vegas, has been a place I've read plenty about and I have been wanting to visit for a long time. Out in the middle of a desert-like terrain, lies large groups of brick-red sandstone formations. Most of its surfaces are full of small holes and caves caused by extensive erosion, dating all the way back to the age of dinosaurs. We got lucky... because it was partially cloudy that whole day, it alleviated one of my biggest concern: the desert heat. We arrived there around 5:30pm, and stayed a couple of hours until the sunset. The visitor center did not open, so we didn't have a map of the park, but we did manage to find most of the points of interest, except for the Elephant Rock. One thing I noticed after reviewing the files was that white balance can be tricky shooting a color-biased scene like this. In many shots, I had to manually tweak the WB back to what I remembered the scene was. I think next time, I should just set the WB to "day" so at least the files will have the same starting point and I can apply the same adjustment to the whole set. Here's a 6-shot stitched panoramic photo of the sunset:
The latest 35mm Summilux has been on my wanted list for so long that sometimes I feel it's just a wish that will never come true. It doesn't help that during the lens shortage of the 2011 and 2012, people were selling them at $2000 above retail. However, lately we finally started to see some transactions in the normal range and even below retail. I simply could not hold myself back any longer when I came across a deal for a never-used copy at well below retail price. So here we are... I'm now a proud owner of this fabulous lens. Upon receipt of the lens and testing it, I quickly noticed a problem. When focusing at near distance between 0.7 and 0.8 meter, the rangefinder patch stopped moving as I turn the focus ring. Since I've never experience this with any other lens, my first thought was "Oh man... I got a lemon!" However, since I bought it from a reputable seller, I wanted to make sure the problem isn't with my camera. Since a new Leica store has recently opened in Los Angeles, I decided to take my lens and camera in to test it with their bodies and lenses. The lens worked perfectly on their demo cameras! The manager explained that perhaps my camera is just barely out of the tolerance and I should send it in for a CLA. I guess that's the price of owning a mechanical precision equipment. The shots above were taken at the Leica store. Afterwards, we headed to The Grove for lunch and gave me a chance to take some first shots with the lens. Since the problem only happens at the nearest focus distance, I was still able to use it without problems. It wasn't after getting home and loading the files in Lightroom did I realize how incredible the images were. The sharpness, the colors, the contrast... all perfect! As part of my workflow, I usually like to click on the "Auto" adjustment and see whether it improves the image, and with this lens, I almost always prefer the image straight out of the camera, that is just amazing. I get the same feeling that I get when I shoot with the 50'Lux... "Magic!"
Here are some more shots from today... and in case you're wondering, the f-stop number is wrong because I added a 0.6 (2-stop) ND filter. We were sitting in Islands, the awesome burger restaurant, but I had the 90mm MEM mounted. The decisive moment was fleeting so I had to take a quick shot. Although my son's chin was cut-off, which is probably a big no-no in portraiture, but I still love this intimate shot... Sure, I could be biased :) By the time I changed lens and tell my son to try again, he's no longer interested. That's just how it is with kids, there are more decisive moments to miss than shooting on the streets.
One year ago from yesterday, was the day that my M9 arrived at my front door and thus my journey begun. This incredible ride has met all of my expectation and more, in addition, the M9 and all the lenses I have accumulated along the way have never disappointed.
The famous Henri Cartier-Bresson (HCB) has said: "You first 10,000 photographs are your worst". I just checked the shutter counts and it seems that I have shot over 6,100 images in the past year. I definitely feel that here are still much to learn and explore. My framing and composition are still amateur at best, and my post-processing skill still leaves a lot to be desired and lacks my own style and signature. With that said, though, I have gotten lucky a few times, and that has been enough to fuel my passion and keeps me going. Discontent is a sign of ambition and a necessity of progress, let's see what the next year will bring! I've been experimenting with my black & white processing lately, trying to reach some understanding in what works for me. If there's a BW look that I prefer, I don't know it... or I don't know the exact attributes so I can consistently produce it. Mostly, I just keep playing around with different settings and sliders until I'm content. I recently watched "Manhattan" by Woody Allen again, and this time I was paying more attentions to the BW scenes than to the plot. In many of the night scenes around New York, I find stronger contrast to be attractive. There exist both deep black and white highlights that are close to being blown. Trying my theories out... I have these 3 images to show. First one, on the left, is shot from the family room with the afternoon sun casting shadows on the sliding door and floor. The scene was already high contrast because of the strong sun light in a dark room, but instead of bring back the details in the shadow, I just left it alone to give me the deep black that I wanted. The next two is captured at LAX. I noticed this well defined light and dark separation and took a few shots. In processing, I actually darkened the scene a little bit more to make it more contrasty between the left and right. I think it came out quite well, making the image unmistakably split right down the middle. The second shot is of the overhead monitors in the waiting area, and I just wanted to accentuate its curves. |
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May 2023
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