My Dim View of Mill Pond

Before I took the light painting shots in the previous post I walked around the Mill Pond with my 35mm 1.8 and took shots of shady areas in the dim light of sunset. The lens grants an impressive ability to shoot in low light and I was surprised with what I could get away with while hand-holding the camera.

1. A swan. I'm still waiting to get a pair together in a remotely interesting shot. I like this one by itself. It had a very strange way of swimming; it bobbed unusually high in the water with each thrust of its legs; yet at a slow pace.

2. I liked the lines and angles in this shot.

3. This rock is for sitting, and had some interesting light play on it as the sun set.

4. For some reason the lone pine was totally lit by the setting sun; but nothing around it was. I was wishing for my 18-200mm for this one; there was no way I could close on the shot with my 35mm without getting very wet.

5. I've decided to make shooting empty benches a 'thing to do'. Notice the fall colors on the trees; some are getting an early start!

6. I liked the juxtaposition of the horizontal lines in the bench and the vertical lines in the grass. That being said, it looked like the most uncomfortable bench ever.

7. The 35mm 1.8 lens handled low light fantastically. If I ever get a full-frame camera, I will definitely get a 1.4 35mm or 50mm lens for the versatility in low light conditions.

8. A lone duck watching the fountain.

© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.

I Have Terrible Handwriting

I wanted to do some low-light shots with my 35mm 1.8 to learn what it can do. I walked to the Mill Pond because the weather is crappy this weekend and it didn't really clear up until almost sunset, making me reluctant to leave the apartment. While at the pond I took a couple of semi-interesting pictures and I got a little depressed about pre-colors Fall.

On the way home I tried tackling the problem of taking photos without looking like it. Sometimes it doesn't pay to point a camera at a group of people or person, because it's either intrusive or awkward. Plus, I'm really not interested enough in shooting strangers to talk to them and ask permission.

As I walked down the sidewalk I took a single photograph with my camera from where it hung around my neck, at about waist level. I wasn't expecting much, and I didn't get much. There was a car on the road and I got a very dark photo with the cars headlights as the only point of light.

So that got me thinking... what if I took a series of long exposure photos as I walk, not stopping so it doesn't look like I'm taking photos, and try to do fun stuff with lights?

I had a blast! This photographic technique is (generally) called light painting. But in normal light painting the camera is stationary and people move the lights, giving a very controlled effect. If ever you are bored, head to Flikr and see the fantastic things people can draw with colored LED flashlights.

What I did is more abstract; I was moving, the lights, in some cases, were moving, and sometimes I also moved the camera to try to make additional changes to patterns. Here are my results:

1. Abstract, yes, but if you look behind the light layers in the bottom right corner you can see a house. There are details that are hidden by the glaring lights in all of these photos.

2. I had the camera's white balance set to auto for most of these, and the selection turned the road pink most of the time, likely reflecting the streetlights.

3. Those with low-contrast monitors won't even see the reddish patch of road balancing the white light in this photo.

4. Sky, trees and street lights. I do not know why the light lines are dotted, but I'm guessing it is because of my walking motion.

5. Car tail lights paint a beautiful red-orange, and do not have the dotted effect... so maybe the dots have something to do with the type of lights, as the street lamp in this photo is clearly dotted.

6. Drawing with a camera, as mentioned before, is not the right way to go about this. I tried to draw some triangles but not having a frame of reference and the sensitive movement of the camera make it difficult.

7. Three light snake people chase down another light snake person. One of my favorites.

8. Shrinking these images down for this blog sometimes loses a lot of detail apparent when the images are larger. There's a lot of subtle background detail that got lost in the reduction.

9. A car driving down the road, with a swirled camera motion.

10. I liked the implied motion in this one.

11. More crazy trees and the appearance of purple.

12. Geese taking off from the pond, captured in someone's porch lights.

13. Crazy light hand, grabbing the road.

14. Streetlights on a cool blue sky. I was standing still when I did this one, and the patterns match the movements I made with the camera, and lack the motion blur of shots when I'm walking.

15. Another shot standing still. Nice lens flare from the unprotected (no filter), 35mm.

16. There's some slight photoshoppery happening in this one. I took this photo with my camera's white balance set to tungsten, to see what it would do to this street light. But I used Lightroom (it's like Photoshop but focused on photo development) to change the white balance to shade. It brought out the greens and made the road more red, while leaving a cloud somewhat white.

17. I wasn't going to try to spell out my whole name because it'd be too easy to lose my place as I drew all 13 characters, so I drew my initials instead. My handwriting with my camera is as bad as my handwriting on paper. Fun.

© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.

Angels Have Weird Toes

Today I picked up a new batch of gear, and included in it was a Nikkor 35mm 1.8 DX lens. It is super cheap, but after my first outing with it tonight, I have to say a bargain for the money. It has some hefty distortion but the images I took (when they were in focus) were very sharp. It focuses slower than I'm used to but I can't blame my out of focus shots on that. I've never used a lens with an aperture larger than 2.8 and I now want every lens I own to be bigger than 2. Come on, lottery!

I went to a local graveyard to shoot (where else would I be on a Friday night?), one that I've walked by hundreds of times over the years but never visited. I was surprised to find some of the graves dating back to the early 1800s, their marble surfaces almost worn away.

Due to a line of trees, and my timing - I was a little late - most of the graveyard was in shadow when I arrived. There were occasional pockets of light where the suns rays broke through the trees. I went from one to the next to try to compose shots that made use of it, with some success.

I'll definitely be going back to visit again, but probably in the morning when the graveyard will get unobstructed light from the east.

This angel was riding the tacky line but it did not have questionable toes.

Tried to frame here, in hindsight I should have held the camera lower to the ground. I was sitting when I took these, so that would be interesting. Regardless, this shot is one of my favorites.

This marker was the strangest. At first I thought the top part was sculpted skulls, but as I got closer realized they were flowers.

Some of the evening's good light on the plain but pretty-in-the-light church.

I met this angel. She had some skin issues but she was pretty. I think she was older than she looked.

She was hanging out, doing what angels do.

This shot is probably more creepy than a graveyard deserves; the rot approaches from the left to finish the job. Or it's a tree. Could go either way.

The toes in question. Weird!

At first I thought, damn, I over-exposed the shot! then I took a closer look and thought, hot damn, I over-exposed the shot!

She was either praying, or begging me to come back and re-shoot her with a stronger sunset. Perhaps a bit of both.

Riding the theme of empty bench shots from my last post, this one has so much symbolism attached to it, it's symbolism overload!

© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.

Central Library, Comrade

Tonight I went to the Richmond Hill Central Library, which is just down the street from where I live. I did not expect much, yet I wound up having an awesome shoot and got some results I'm very happy with. The Mill Pond is getting boring and a new location was just what I needed to spice things up. I found color, and I hope to find more as Fall progresses.

Fire hydrant... Richmond Hill is tough, we chain them down.

Tough and messy; as you can see we leave hoses lying around. Richmond Hill has many fine plants in the downtown core, and the city watering crews need to fill up somewhere convenient.

The bit of weirdness on tonight's outing - a basket.

The Richmond Hill Central Library is an ancient building. I got a chuckle out of the date stamp until I did the math and realized I'm not that young any more.

"I love lamp."

When I first got to the library, I was unimpressed with what I saw. I sat on a bench, and took a long look around me, searching for something to shoot. I started with benches and tried to get neat perspectives, half-imagining there were people sitting on them for portraits. This angle would have made the person small and squished, depending on how they were sitting. I picture old lady by herself.

Old man feeding pigeons. Or maybe squirrels.

As I looked around I started to notice detail, like this colorful moss highlighted by the setting sun. This was the beginning of the good light, but I didn't realize it because it was also very harsh.

And then I found the rotary sun dial. Donated by the Rotary Club. It was made of metal, and the vertical portion was ground brass, I think.

I switched from my 18-200mm to my 105mm macro (putting the 18-200 down face first on some rocks without a cap - I is smart), and got close.

Whatever the metal, it was reflecting beautiful colors from the setting sun. The colors were made more interesting by a tree between the sundial and the sun. Its branches were blowing in the wind and its leaves were disrupting the sun's rays as they moved. No two shots of the sundial were the same color because of the leave's shadows.

Still life macro never really interested me, but I'm looking forward to getting into it over the winter. The colors and detail in this case are fantastic.

I started working with shapes and composition, trying to give the images some flow.

The lines on the dial proved to be awesome depth indicators.

The light only lasted for about 10 minutes, and the best of that light for about three minutes. Near the end the rich bronze colors mellowed to cool blues and yellows.

I liked the circles in this image because it reminded me of water droplet rings.

I took a couple of shots of the setting sun as I walked home.

They're always so hard to pass up!

© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.