Just a quick heads up to those who check out the site regularly...  I'm about to totally clutter up my Flickr photostream.  We went out to an off-road park this weekend and I'm going to be uploading all the shots to my Flickr account so that others in the club can snag the ones they want.  They're going to be "naked", which means no correction or editing right now...  Just a big ole' dump of 400 or so pictures of dirty vehicles.  If some are good, I'll correct them and repost them in all their glory later.

I'll edit this post with a link to the set once I'm done exporting and uploading it.

Update: My work machine couldn't handle importing, converting and exporting all that stuff, so I'm starting it on my home system now.  I'll get them uploaded as soon as it's done crunching (probably late tonight or early tomorrow morning).

Lousy composition, but decent colors in the sunrise. There's lots of ways I could have done this better, but I don't feel like getting into it right now (I ranted enough this morning).

Just a neat line up of police bikes I spotted the other day.  Could have gotten a better picture, but I was being harassed by the White House officers as it was and I didn't think whipping out the tripod was such a good idea right then. ;)

Warning: This is another one of me just spouting stuff off.  It's probably going to be long and wander all over the place.

I really am not sure where I want to start this post, so I'll just jump right in and see where it goes.

It's almost a guarantee that if I'm in DC and taking pictures (especially at night), someone will ask me if I'm a photographer.   My normal answer is "No, I just like taking pictures".  I don't know why people ask me this...  it might be the camera bag (which I don't often have), the camera (not that impressive, looks like just about 90% of other decent cameras, IMO), or maybe it's just that they see me taking pictures of stuff other than the usual tourist targets.  Anyway, the reason I'm going on about this is that I was thinking today about being (or not being) a photographer.  Note to wife: Don't worry, I'm not talking about a career change or anything.

When exactly does one consider oneself "a photographer", as opposed to just being a geek with a camera?  Haven't really come up with any kind of decent answer for that.  The reason I was thinking about it is because of my train ride this morning.  Occasionally, I'll get on the train and think about which side I want to sit on, in case there's a decent picture to be taken on one side as opposed to the other.  I think "Photographers" think about stuff like that all the time...  Geeks with cameras rarely do.  If I were a "photographer", I would have been thinking about that this morning and might have been able to get a picture of one of the most incredible sunrises I've ever seen in DC.  Hence, the title of my post... 

If I were awake enough to be thinking, there's a small chance I would have remembered to sit on the right side of the train.  The views on the left are fairly boring, especially in the morning.  The right side has a nice view when going over the Potomac.  Even if the windows are dirty (which is usually the case), you can generally get a decent shot if you use a wide aperture.  However, I was barely moving, let alone "awake", so I didn't think about any of that until I saw an absolutely incredible picture waiting to be taken that I missed.  Theoretically, being awake might have been a good thing this once.

Warning: Sudden topic change below!

Here's a few of the "technical difficulties" I was talking about in my previous post...

Starting tomorrow, I'll be in the woods with a bunch of other peeps driving over and through stuff, trying not to break my Jeep.  Unfortunately, my Jeep hasn't been behaving very well, so I've had a lot of work to do on it this week.  Hopefully, I've done enough to make sure I'm not stuck in the woods with a broken Jeep.  If not, I'll have spare parts and friends with me. ;)  So, I've been busy wrenching whenever possible.

Unfortunately, that has been interrupted repeatedly by work.  We're on our third messaging server failure this week (and it's only Thursday!).  The first one wasn't that bad, and was easily fixed by beating up our virus scanner.  The second one was critical (one step short of complete meltdown) and took a lot of time to fix.  Today's crash we're still investigating, but it looks like a simple memory leak that has gone undetected till now.  Anyway, troubleshooting and fixing all this stuff has sucked a fair amount of time as well.

Add Shmoocon to that and I've pretty much got no time left at all.  On top of all that, toss in a computer that doesn't want to recognize my USB reader and the chances of getting some pictures up are pretty much gone.

In spite of the universe conspiring against me this week, I have a full 2GB card and a half full 4GB card of images from my camera!  I'll see what I can do to get at least one up today...  Might be able to pull a few off during lunch.

See ya!

Err... due to some "minor technical difficulties", I may not be posting a picture for a few days.  I'm still taking pictures, they're just not anywhere I can get to them.  Basically, I hosed up smthng on my system pretty good and can't get anything off my camera right now.  I could use my laptop, but the display is pretty bad for editing photos, so I'll save everyone the agony of looking at bright green pictures... "But, it looks fine if you tilt the laptop another couple of degrees." 

However, I may post the odd rant or two.  I might also possibly dig up some older pics that I've already imported just to keep you all occupied.  Laters!

Don't think I've done many water pictures yet... here's a good one I took yesterday. 

This is again outside the National Museum of the American Indian.  It's one of the fountains they have on the north side of the building.  I waiting quite a while for the light to be right for this one.

This was taken with the Tamron 75-300 lens and a tripod... I couldn't have gotten a shutter speed slow enough to blur the water with my other 28-85 lens.

Thursday, March 22, 2007 10:06 AM

Warning... this is probably gonna be quite a lengthy post!

This is the US Capitol Building taken this morning around 7 am.  The light on this building can be really cool in the morning.  This probably would have been better if I could have waited another 30 minutes or so for some more sun, but I don't remember what time they turn the lights off on the dome and I didn't want to chance it. The other morning, there were some gorgeous oranges and reds, but I only had my short lens and couldn't get the framing right.

Speaking of lenses, this is the first shot I've posted that I've taken with my Tamron lens.  It's functionally equivalent to 480 mm at this zoom level (yes, I took my tripod to work today).  This shot was actually taken about 4 blocks away from the building (check Flickr for the map if interested).  While I like the zoom ability, I'm going to have to become accustomed to dealing with lens flare with this lens.  You can see the flares as a couple of little pink dots to the left of the dome.  Those are presumably from the closest street light, which also has a few flare spots in it if you view the full size version.

This shot is totally unmodified, other than resizing for Flickr.  Hence, it's a touch on the dark side (I normally underexpose a little bit to get shadow details and then use Photoshop's levels to get the exposure back up).   The colors were still good and the picture is pretty sharp, so I'm glad I took the time to set everything up and get this one.  If the weather is similar, I may go back tomorrow and wait a bit longer to see if I can get some better light and/or find out when they turn off the lights.

BTW... since I have all of these historical and political buildings on my blog, some of you may have gotten the impression that I'm in to politics.  I'm not... at all!  But, the buildings are cool.  I really couldn't care less that this is "The Capitol Building" (sorry Mom), to me, it's just a cool building with good lighting. ;)  This is DC... it's nearly impossible NOT to take a picture that doesn't have some kind of political drama surrounding it.  Trust me, they're just pictures. 

BTW... thanks to my nameless friend for pointing out that I forgot to include the actual picture.  He's not nameless because I'm protecting his identity or anything... he just doesn't deserve a name any more. :P

This is a piece of the National Museum of the American Indian.  I believe this is the newest building on the National Mall.  It's right next to the US Botanical Garden on the Capitol Building end (if you click the pic and go to Flickr, it's mapped if you want to know exactly where it is).

It's a pretty neat building.  Hopefully I can run by there on the way home tonight and get some more pictures (I have a tripod today).  Sometime real soon the wife and I are going to have to go and check it out.  It's one of the few national museums we haven't been to yet.

Just a neat little scoot.  

Sunday, March 18, 2007 12:18 PM

This is another picture that I have mixed feelings about.  Let me cover the good first, since that's pretty short...

The good...  It's a really cool building.  It's also got some fairly rich detail and color, although my photo doesn't show that.  The garden is also quite nice when it's "alive".  Right now, it's pretty much all dead other than the yellow things that are just starting bloom.  This is the Smithsonian Institution Building (commonly called Smithsonian Castle).  I forgot what's inside it, but I just like the building.
Before I get into the bad stuff, here's the pic:

Ok, let's get on with the bad parts.  I've already mentioned the dead looking trees, so I won't harp on that.  I was walking to work in the morning because I knew it was going to rain on the way home.  Normally I walk to the train in the evening if I have time, so I'm used to evening light conditions, not morning.  The lighting here is horrible.  Everything is faded and washed out.  The colors were incredibly weak and I've boosted them quite a bit just to get some kind of contrast out of this picture.

It's an "I was here" picture.  While the composition technically fits the "rule of three" (er... well, it did before I cropped it), it's a dead-on shot with no interesting angles or anything.  Could it possible be any more symmetrical?  BORING!

Now the sky... WHAT SKY?  I wasn't using the polarizing filter, which might have helped slightly.  Ah, who am I kidding?  A polarizer would have gotten a slightly bluer tone to the sky, but it still would have been drab and boring.  There was absolutely no texture in the sky... it was a dull and dreary day. 

Finally, there was a bit of barrel distortion caused by my lens.  I had to tweak that a bit with Photoshop by altering the perspective slightly.  No big deal, but it unfortunately put a few "jaggies" in on the right tower windows.  Hard to see on the picture here, but if you click on it to go to Flickr and then view the large size, they're definitely there.

In short, I like the building and the picture isn't terrible.  I'd never waste my time printing this though.  While there are quite a few negative bits to this picture, they all teach me something about what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong.  That's pretty much the point of this whole exercise, which is why I ended up posting this one. ;)

Now I'm off to go take some shots with my new Tamron lens.  Laters!

Posted by smthng | 0 Comments [Edit]

Friday, March 16, 2007 7:10 PM

Schweet!  It finally arrived at the local shop and I went to pick it up after work today.  What is it, you ask? Ok, maybe you don't ask, but I'm gonna spill anyways...  My Tamron AF70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di LD Macro 1:2 lens! 

I originally started this entry to talk about my new lens, but I'm going to do that in a separate post a bit later.  I want to talk about lenses in general now.

For those not familiar with my new lens, let me first qualify that the name "Tamron" is generally associated with the word "cheap".   "Sigma" is generally not quite as cheap, but is also firmly planted in the realm of cheapness.  Tamron and Sigma make lenses for just about every model of consumer DSLR known to man.  Canon, however, makes lenses only for Canon cameras.  Nikon (Nikor) generally makes lenses only for Nikon cameras.  So, the general rule of thumb is that if you want a new lens, it's probably going to be from either your camera manufacturer, or Tamron or Sigma.  There are exceptions, but I'll leave that explanation to someone else.   Pretty simple so far.  So, if you're an amateur on a budget, you drool over some of the manufacturer lenses and save forever to spend what is usually an ungodly sum of money for a really slick lens, or you decide which Tamron or Sigma you can afford and you plunk down your duckets and get yer lens.  This does get a bit more confusing however, which you'd already start to realize if you've REALLY been following my blog. ;)

Because... not all manufacturers lenses are better than the so-called "cheap" brands.  Case in point... my Tamron vs the closest equivalent Canon lens.   The closest Canon lens I can find to compare with my Tamron is the Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III.  I blogged about that earlier.  It's junk...  Three day old carp!  I can't believe Canon is putting their name on that.  You get the idea. 

The Canon and the Tamron cost about the same.  The Tamron has a macro mode, better internal mechanics (I'll talk about that in my next post about the lens itself), and a lens hood.  I'm not going to get started on how much Canon wants for a simple lens hood, but suffice to say, it ain't worth it when you're working with the bottom of the barrel lenses, IMO.  

Ack... I'm rambling.  What's my point? Not all manufacturers' lenses are great.  Not all "cheap brand" lenses are junk.  Do your research and make sure you use a shop that will let you try stuff out and take it back if it doesn't work or you don't like it!

Note: I'm not bashing Sigma or Tamron, if they weren't in the market, I wouldn't have my current lens.  By the way they do have some really NICE lenses too...  Like this monster.

Hey ho...  This is just a cool building near the White House.  I apparently have an affinity for red buildings, but most of them don't turn out so good when I take shots of them.  It's an exposure thing... I keep getting sucked into exposing for the background which normally underexposes the darker red building.

Anyway, this is one of the shots I took the other day with a circular polarizing filter.  Polarizing is smthng you can't do in Photoshop, so I generally try to make sure I've got a polarizer with me whenever I'm out shooting.  Polarizing does two distinct things that I know of... the first is easy to define... it gets rid of a lot of reflections.  This is why sunglasses are offered as polarized.  The other thing it does (which I don't fully understand) is to bring out details in clouds and shadow areas.  I don't know why or how it does this, but I'm glad it does.

I took another shot of this building without the polarizer and it looks like carp.  The sky is all washed out and the clouds are nothing more than pale streaks.  It's a pain to have to switch filters on a regular basis, but sometimes it's worth it.

BTW... I'll have another shot in a few days that I really like.  It's near the Washington Monument, but it's not of the monument.  It's another polarized shot with some really cool clouds.  But, the clouds look even better after a little Photoshop love.  I'm not quite done with my PhotoChopping, but it's looking pretty sweet so far.  I'll post it up when I'm done.  See ya!

Ok, back to regular pictures...

I spotted this little smart fortwo at the metro station yesterday and had to snag a pic.  Too bad it wasn't a cabrio!  These are cool little cars and if the quality is anything like the Euro models, it's worth every penny. 

We rented a smart forfour on our vacation a couple years ago in Mallorca.  A little diesel stick shift jobbie...  That little critter would hustle, even loaded down with four people.  We drove that thing all over the entire island and only gassed up once.  These are really sweet little cars.  I'd snag one in a heartbeat if I needed another vehicle, although I'd REALLY like to get my hands on the roadster BRABUS. ;)

On a slightly separate note...  I processed this pic with Lightroom instead of my usual Elements.  Looks a bit washed out to me in IE, but looks fine in Lightroom.  That might be a calibration thing here, but I'd be interested to know what others are seeing...  Rich colors, or all faded and washed out?

Not much to say today, just have to toss out the occasional motorcycle pic.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 9:18 AM

...currently on my flash card.  ;)

I have been taking pictures, just slacking on the posting a bit.  I do have a fair amount of decent ones that I'll be posting up this week.  I just haven't had the time to get them processed and uploaded yet.  I took a bunch yesterday that I think are going to be reasonably decent.  I decided to use a polarizing filter to get a richer sky, so that will be interesting.  I haven't even looked at them yet, but with the time change I actually had a decent amount of light to work with.  I expect they'll be worth the effort.  See ya!

Nothing fantastic, but I thought this was too good pass up. ;)

A little change up here...  I'm posting a 1024 pixel image up tonight.  Sometimes they just don't look right at reduced sizes.  This is one of those...  It looks even better at 3569 pixels, but I'd eat up my Flickr space if started posting those.  If you've got a small monitor or are stuck in 800x600 resolution or something... well, sorry about that. ;)

Heyya,

Real quick one for you today...  Just a shot I grabbed when I ran past this building.  Nothing extra special, just kind of cool.  I haven't mapped this one in Flickr yet, but will eventually.  Also, I'm hoping to get some posts up this weekend.  Cyas!

Ok, I'm kind of cheating again, but in a different way.  I've had about 4 days of really poor shooting and I haven't been posting often (I'm almost done with DST so I'll get some time back soon).  So... I'm doubling up this time.  Not really a bad thing, since these two were similar. 

First, a tree (probably a Japanese maple of some kind).  I was mostly playing with the depth of field (DOF) and focal lengths here.  I like the way it came out because this pretty clearly shows the DOF you can get on a high-contrast picture.  You can get a slightly narrower DOF by using a wider aperture, but that would have sped up the shutter speed and the snow would have been shown up as specs on the picture.  You takes what you gets and you lives with it sometimes.  The B&W conversion was done in Elements... it does a better job than the on-board engine.

The second is a vine (yes, I know it looks a lot like the tree).  This is a pretty poor picture.  But, it shows the falling snow the way I wanted it to.  You'll probably have to go to the larger sizes in Flickr to see it, but it's there.  The snow flakes are streaks, not specks.  The snow was falling much heavier in this shot compared to the last one, which is why you can see it.  I did this the easy way...  I just took a bunch of shots at different speeds and this one worked. Ain't digital great?  :)  It just so happens that this was taken at exactly the same aperture and speed as the previous shot.  Dumb luck.

BTW... I know it's out of focus just a hair.  That was camera shake caused by me.  I was getting a bad case of "wet camera fear".

I am managing to stick to my plan of taking a picture every day.  But... I've found a bad habit that I have to break.  I tend to take very high-contrast photos without realizing it.  Generally, the contrast is high enough that it's impossible to get a decent shot without taking multiple exposures or doing some major dodging and burning to get the detail back to a reasonable level.  The included pic is a prime example.

I did a LOT of things wrong here!  First, I was in a hurry and didn't get a good shot to start with.  Nothing technical there, I'm just really cramped for time until work backs off a bit.  I chose a subject that has a lot of contrast and a lot of detail.  Really heavy and dark shadows on the bottom of the globe, really bright highlights on the top and in the background.  This confused the snot out of camera and I made the mistake of trusting it.   Finally, I didn't take multiple exposures to compensate for what I clearly should have.  The instant I popped that picture up on my computer, I knew instantly that I'd messed up.  So here's a fairly poor picture for you to use to laugh at me. :P

By the way... this is AFTER doing a lot of work with levels and curves in Photoshop.