Category Archives: photography

Seeing the world through my viewfinder.

photos 1 Comment

Inflatable Snowman


[also available on flickr]

I was coming home from my 45 minutes of photographing Christmas lights in the ‘hood, and I had just about given up. An occupant of the first house I had photographed had come to the door, ostensibly wondering what a honkey with a camera and a tripod was doing in the dark in front of their house. That kicked up my normal photography paranoia an extra notch, and really threw me off for the rest of my shoot.

Anyway, as I said, I was coming home after not having gotten very many good shots. I almost turned the camera off, but decided that I would leave it on until I got back to my house (another block away). Almost as soon as I said that to myself, I saw this wonderful inflatable snowman and his tree-friend.

This turned out to be the best shot of the evening.

photography

Thoughts on Flickr

I had mentioned earlier that I wasn’t sure how often I would actually use Flickr, being that I have my own MO for posting pics.

Tonight, I discovered the Flickr Groups.

This is going to be a treasure trove of project ideas. I’ve joined groups like Nikon D50 Users, “I love my cat,” the Tips From The Top Floor podcast group, Night Images, Bowling Green OH, Toledo OH… and, finally, one for which I WON’T be using my D50 to take photos, “Camera Toss.”

If I ever run out of ideas for things to photograph, I need only pick a group, and I’m on my way.

photos

My Grandparents, May 2003

As promised, a photo of my grandparents at my wedding. I think they look pretty damn good for being 70-whatever years old.

Aaron and I, on the other hand, were 50 pounds overweight. Yeesh. Too bad the wedding photos had to be the “before” pictures.

photos 1 Comment

Christmas Ornament Self-Portrait


[Posted on Flickr by dianaschnuth].


So, I finally succumbed to the Flickr thing. Actually, I didn’t succumb — I think it was Yahoo that automatically signed me up for a free Flickr account somehow

I’m not thinking I’ll be posting very many pics to Flickr, or posting photos to my blog this way, as I can’t set the category to “photo” from Flickr itself, and I can’t post photos in my preferred 480-pixel width.

Still, though, it’s a cool function. If I decide to start an honest-to-god photoblog someday, this might be a quick and dirty way to accomplish that.

test rolls

Brownie Bullet Test Roll

This should be a familiar sight by now, as I take this photo as one of my basic test shots with every camera, it seems.

After some online research, I discovered that the going price for developing and printing 127 film is about $15. With this in mind, I opted to order a proof sheet from Main Photo, instead of individual prints, just to save a couple bucks. Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to me that this would totally eliminate any chance the lab had of adjusting the tonality of individual frames (that is, making sure all the different pictures came out right).

So, I now have a particularly dark proof sheet, all but the above picture, and three negative strips that won’t fit into my scanner. However, I did some experimenting with the scanner, and discovered that scanning black and white negs in reflective mode isn’t a complete loss:

Although I don’t think my scanner has a very professional… what’s it called? Delta-V? It’s been a long time since VCT 208 or whatever it was. Anyway, I don’t think my scanner is terribly good at capturing the differences in grays, especially when scanning transparencies in reflective mode, but it’s a decent enough scan to help evaluate the camera, I think.

Basically, if I’m planning to do some shooting outdoors, in sunshine, and decide to go all artsy, maybe I’ll get some more 127 film and bring the Brownie as a backup. Apart from that… I’m not in love with it. Maybe I’ll change my mind if I get some reprints made of a few of the images on this roll, or if I try taking some snowy winter pics and get real prints made.

My opinion as of this moment, though, is that the Brownie Bullet is merely a neat and functional art-deco knick-knack I got for super-cheap at the thrift store.