Scratches

This is my watch. Not much to look at now. It keeps good time, but I don’t bother keeping the day and date correct. I remember buying it. Sunglasses Hut in the King of Prussia mall. It looked like a man’s classic watch like I had seen on my father's and grandfathers' wrists, but with the new flair and style of smaller hands tracking the movement of days and hours. It was a watch James Bond could have worn, although less expensive. It has a divers bezel, but I’ve never used it for diving. It represented the refined, precision, and classy person I wanted to be, and for $85 I thought it was a steal.

It’s about 15 years old now. In the picture it looks really beat up, but when I glance at it during the day it faithfully declares that time is still passing. Those scratches were earned over the years. It was on my wrist when I played with my daughter in the pool. It smashed into a rock at the Grand Canyon while my girlfriend and I were taking our first trip together. It was on my arm during the 135 m.p.h. crash that ended my motorcycle racing career. It was with me when my wife slid the wedding ring on my finger.

It’s a testament to where I have been and accomplishments I have attained. It brings back memories both joyful and full of pain. It’s become more than a watch. Those scratches are the etchings I have left in time.

Nikon D800 Tokina 100mm f/2.8 macro @ 100mm f/64 ISO 100 30sec.​

City Skylines

I have not taken a lot of city skyline pictures. Not because I don’t like them but because a clear view of a city can be difficult to find. I have seen Philadelphia from the Southwest and took what I thought would make a wonderful picture from a vantage point I had never seen, only to discover that too much surrounding noise was in the way of the miniscule recognizable peaks of downtown. You have to be close, almost within the city. Of course this presents the problem of looking up at everything you want in the picture and having other buildings in the way. I thought at one point maybe I could get a picture looking out of one of the high rise buildings which put me at the approximate altitude, and I could get a nice picture of the building next to me, but that was hardly a skyline. Of course the other problem being inside a building is shooting through the windows. Reflections appear everywhere in your pictures. It’s very distracting to see your camera faintly superimposed over what you thought would be a stunning photo. If anyone knows Philly then perhaps you might be thinking that a trip to the top of the William Penn statue on top of City Hall would do the trick, but to make a cityscape and not have Mr. Penn in it wouldn’t be very Philadelphian. There are (obviously) a few places to get a decent picture. I don’t recommend this one, but it worked. I pulled over on the section of highway where I-95 South turns into I-676 West. By the way, no photographers were harmed in the taking of this image.

Nikon D4 Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 65mm f/9 ISO 200 5 image HDR

Philadelphia Flower Show 2013

On Sunday I had a few hours off so I decided to head downtown to the Philadelphia Flower Show. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society produces the event that is held at the Philadelphia Convention Center in early March annually. There is usually a theme around which the participants create their art. This year’s theme was Great Britain nicknamed “Brilliant”.

It’s been years since I’ve been to the show and noticed immediately that the grand displays were a bit smaller than I remembered, but the venue was just as crowded. (They expect a quarter of a million people every year).

Now a word about flower pictures... I have been told never to include pictures of flowers in any kind of portfolio because of two reasons:

1.) There are billions upon billions of flower pictures everywhere. That is to say, unless the image I took was so memorable that it is head and shoulders above all other flower images most people will see... yet another flower.

2.) A flower is like the manifestation of nature’s beauty, a miraculous gift from God, each blossom is perfect in its own way. So if the flower doesn’t look amazing then the photographer probably made it look worse than it did in real life.

Enjoy.

Nikon D4 Sigma 8mm f/3.5 fisheye@ 8mm f/7.1 ISO 400 1/160 sec with flash

Sigma 8mm fisheye

I don’t talk a lot about camera gear. I think of it as tools for a job. Gear is a very important and costly part of photography and has a specific use in every photo, but for the viewer, it plays a “behind the scenes” role. I’m sure great chefs have amazing pots and pans, but it’s the food people rave about. So here’s a little story about a little lens I used this past weekend, but have decided to return.

The Sigma 8mm f/3.5 circular fisheye is a lens for very specific uses, which I thought I might be able to incorporate into some of my work. But after a weekend with it, it’s not for me. I got to the Philadelphia Flower Show yesterday (and I’ll talk about that tomorrow) and made great use of the lens. 8mm is a very, very wide field of view. So wide that the pictures taken through this lens encompass 180 degree of vision. When holding the camera to your eye, and taking a picture, your feet, as well as what is above you, are in the picture. Since it is circular, this goes from side to side as well, which is great if you’re looking into a big arena:

Photoshop has a quick lens correction button to correct for distortions in most every lens made.  After correcting the picture looks like this.

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I think there is still too much distortion to make the picture good enough to use. I will continue to take multiple pictures and stitch them together.  At the flower show, I found a whole new use for the lens.  Pictures can be taken less than an inch away which gives a different dimension to flower pictures.  Here is the uncorrected:

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And the corrected:​

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I think with a bit of cropping I will like the uncorrected picture better.  Check back tomorrow for the Flower Show scoop.​