rotation, baby.

Love me some cheap-ass hack-job rear sway bar.

That aside, had a chance to flex the D40 during my stand-around-doing-nothing heat. I missed the first set of runs (and half of the second) since the relief workers for my station were a bit late, but I still managed to nearly fill up my memory card. The camera really put on a show with the shot-to-shot times... instead of having to precisely choose the one (two if it's a long/slow/long+slow corner) moment to release the shutter, I could fire off a volley that'd cover the entire sequence from corner entry to exit.

I'll also have to give props to the continuous autofocus... only maybe 20% of my throwaways was b/c the AF-C didn't keep up during a fast set of panning shots. I just left it on AF-C the whole day without doing the old focus-on-spot-then-recompose drill.

Anyway, onto the shots (plural, since I just realized that I didn't post anything yesterday...)!



While getting a good shot was... rather easy, actually, I found myself kinda..bored by a lot of them. In the process of sorting out interesting photos, the corner entry shots overwhelmingly had the most chance of showing some excitement. The dynamics of cars coming in hot--such as the tricycling civic above--just naturally make for more interesting subjects compared to the stability (thus boring) of most shots taken during the mid-corner/apex and exit phases.



Despite the fact that this is the slowest part of the course--after the finish, where cars are crawling at 5-10mph--I feel like this shot has a lot of visual drama. You have this tiny Miata against the enormous backdrop of FedEx Field just looming over the course. Then there's the contrast of this severely-sloped foreground against the monolithic stability of the stadium.



Now here's a testament to frames-per-second... locked the front left tire whilst diving into the corner in tripod mode... fantastic. Would've easily missed a shot like this on my point-and-shoot.

geese!

geese!, originally uploaded by edfooliu.

I'll have to cop to being lazy (and not wanting to get my gear wet). when I
came back from lunch, I had a _much_ better opportunity to get a nice
closeup, and I even entertained the idea of a drive-by-shooting. had I not
been lazy to whip out the cam, said driveby wouldve resulted in a fantastic
moment captured. The nearest goose was just staring off into space as I
rolled by, and as I pulled up right beside him--literally about 6-8 inches
off his beak, he had the most hilarious snap-to-surprise. Alas..

more framing

more framing, originally uploaded by edfooliu.

Mmm... cavey.

Steph and I were watching "Primer" (if you like movies that do all the
exposition for you, stay the hell away... if you find those movies
insulting/patronizing, this film is gloriously intricate and leaves
everything up to you to figure out), and he commented at one point about how
the movie likes to switch between warm tones and cold tones in its white
balance for different scenes. I'd taken this shot earlier in the evening,
and it's got a similar warm/cold thing going on. Much like my last
'framing' shot, the physical window makes this two distinct scenes, and the
contrast between them does something to strengthen the mood of the subject
(the living room here, the picnic in the last 'framed' shot). I like how
the light from my living room spills out, as if the warmth is radiating into
the cold.sort of muddying up the division between the two.

week never ends

week never ends, originally uploaded by edfooliu.

but getting up early enough for breakfast seems to help.

I don't have anything to say about this one except that one gets a lot more
strange looks taking photos of one's food with a slr in hand than a
cameraphone. Now if I were quicker on the draw, I'd get shots of those
strange looks.

just to spite stephen

hows that for underexposed? Neener.


Anyway, took a few of these this morning from the gym. The rest are more...normal..attempts, and you can find those on my photostream. The problem I was having--and what led to trying shots like this--was that I wanted to get the rather nice view of the sun peeking out from behind some clouds as it rose above the hotel. It really was a pretty scene since I normally don't ever make it out of bed before 8am. If you look at the other shots, the sky is all washed out, and while they're more accurate to the amount of light out, the one above gets a _bit_ of the play between the sun and the clouds. You can actually see what's going on in the sky. I _think_ I'm supposed to use a polarizing filter for this sort of thing, but I find "buy more stuff" less interesting than figuring a way to do things with the hardware one already has, I thought it might be an interesting experiment.

This is just begging for an HDR treatment, but for now I'm sticking to learning how to do things without postprocessing.

catching laughter

DSC_0163, originally uploaded by edfooliu.

One huge advantage of my upgrade to the D40 is the speed of continuous shooting and continuous autofocus. This paid huge dividends in capturing shots like this... It's fantastic to get 10 shots of a single moment shared by a group of people and find several where the expressions and body language harmonize.

It's particularly satisfying to soak in the socially-amplified excitement and fun of oldschool starcraft after a humiliating beatdown of a football 'game', but I digress.

What let most of my shots down was the AF's difficulty picking up the right/desired subjects in the low lighting conditions. Cranking the shutter down to 1/10 or thereabouts also proved a poor solution to the lighting--nearly all my throwaways were due to camera shake or subjects moving (you can see this in a lot of the raucous laughter shots). I probably should've given up and gone to higher ISO earlier in the night.

fun with mirrors

fun with mirrors, originally uploaded by edfooliu.

Probably something worth saying, but dead tired so this is all you get.

combining arts

Neither of which i'm any good at...



Decided to shoot some pics of my guitar/amp after playing a bit tonight. The cables and shadows are a bit distracting, but a) I'm lazy and b) I prefer photography that doesn't actively manipulate the subject (AHEM steph). I'm developing a bit of an obsession with empty space and what it can do for a shot. It seems real suitable for this one, and the warm, dim lighting contributes to the tone. The flashy hardware gets subdued by that space and light, which is sort of the feeling I have when I'm playing in my dim, empty, cave of a basement. The perspective on the amp also caught my attention among the shots I had. Something about that angle gives it presence.



Not a whole lot to say here; I just adore that body contour. The colors/light/shadows playing off its surface is just a fantastic visual for me.


I'm also pretty impressed with the low-light shooting (of course, this after telling steph it didn't blow me away). While I still pine for a faster lens, most of my shots tonight were done at 1/6s and 1/10s shutter speeds, and it surprised the heck out of me that I was able to get that slow by hand (just bracing against my body). I know the larger, more massive body and lens help stability and reduce shake, but by this much? I couldnt manage anything slower than 1/30s on my point&shoot...

night on the georgetown

night on the georgetown, originally uploaded by edfooliu.

Having TWICE forgotten to take my camera out of the car to join steph in
annoying our cohorts, I figured something special/cool was in order.

aaand sleep.

various experiments

In the first shot, I was trying to do something with that double pointer
cone. Not entirely sure what I hoped to accomplish, but I wanted to capture
how drivers would lock onto this key cone as their apex. Instead of
focusing on the cars, I tried focusing on the cone and letting the cars blur
a little around it. Not sure I actually _did_ that, as my camera probably
focused on a point closer to me. but I think the composition also throws off
the goal.

So, to copy stephen, I did some cropping, and I think it helps a lot.
Again, I'll have to fumble through _why_ this is, but cutting out most of
the foreground and background takes away most of the distraction. The empty
space--and, helpfully, that one diagonal white marking--creates something
like a tension...like a vacuum the car ought to fill. It seems to do
something to strengthen the relationship between the Stig's eyes (or at
least his visor, since he doesn't have eyes) and the double pointer cone as
the fulcrum of the car's arc.

Ok, that's all nonsense, but the cropped one is better somehow.



Moving on... third shot I'm also not sure about. I thought it'd give a
sense of urgency and speed to shoot the finish with the cars flying by, but
like the miata shot above, there's some drama missing. I feel I had more
success with the tracking shots across the finish like in yesterday's post.
Maybe it's just the angle...dead-broadside might just be a little
too...clinical.

Anyway...

Oh, (to pull the now-cliched steve jobs move) one more thing...hee.

<3 shutter priority mode

, originally uploaded by edfooliu.

The great thing about auto-everything on a camera is that it imparts upon
the novice opportunities disproportionate to his skill. Much like
electronic nannies on a car like stability control, you wont get anywhere
near a well-prepared and skillfully executed manual shot, but you also won't
be killed to death when something very unexpected happens very quickly.

Case in point, the photo above... ah, the joys of life without stability control [swoon]...
and the joys of a shutter priority mode that gave me a chance at a fleeting
shot I would otherwise muck up. I was completely unprepared, having powered
off my camera, but a quick bootup and a quick-ish* autofocus at least saved
me from missing it entirely. Results are... less-than-spectacular, but again,
it's a rather large improvement in quality over a no shot at all.


In sadder news.
Shortly after this shot I went to secure my camera in my car for video
during my runs, and in the one moment of vulnerability between the security
of my neck strap and the security of the car mount, I managed to drop it
onto pavement and jam up the lens (or otherwise break the zoom/focus
mechanism). sooo. we may have to milk my autocross shots a while longer
whilst I sort out my camera situation.

* interesting to see the delay/lag of the autofocus/shutter in action--the
focus point was the nose of the car, but by the time the camera sorted
everything out and took the shot, the nose had moved a good 7-8 feet beyond
that point.

moving targets

moving targets, originally uploaded by edfooliu.

Sunday was the first in a glorious, three-weekend burst of autocrossing.
This one was a WDCR SCCA event, and these always host upwards of 250-300 drivers.
Consequently, there tends to be an awful lot of standing around waiting for
your run or work heat (wherein you do an awful lot of standing around
waiting to run with car or feet). Usually I simply fix my camera to my
in-car mount and just languish in the boredom (though honestly, I still very
much enjoy watching cars thrash around the course), but this time--and to my
later undoing--I took it with me for some practice with action
shots.

The first challenge is getting the bloody subjects in frame.
Cars flying by at 40mph give you a very small window of opportunity, and
this is compounded by the lack of a direct zoom control and a continuous
shooting speed measured not in FPS but in SPF. Needless to say, autofocus
is about as useful here as an overweight K9 unit. Endearing effort, yes,
but relevant to the goal, not even close. A quicker shutter speed was
necessary to get the fast-movers, but this demanded even more precision with
focus since my aperture had to open up accordingly. The only way I could
manage was to pre-focus on some area of the course and time the shot for
when a car would pass that point. This is followed, of course, by the
intended subject taking a different line through the corner about 15 feet
from the focused point.

One thing that did produce fairly
pleasing results was making do with a slower shutter and simply tracking the
cars better through the viewfinder. Naturally, 90% of these were
throwaways, with noses and tails clipped or entire shots blurred out of
intelligibility. When successful, however, there was a lot more sense of
action and speed to the shot, with the background and course motion blurred.
The mustang above isn't the best example of this--the car is slightly out of
focus (or just blurred a bit from my horrible tracking)--but I like it a
lot. The cones give a sense of speed, and having the frame trail the
braking car a bit adds something else.

framing

framing, originally uploaded by edfooliu.

Idyllic.

I can't imagine this shot working without the 'obstruction' of the
door/window. It feels like it's abstracting away (and hiding outright) some
of the more tangible/'realistic' elements by making the shot about looking
_into_ a scene rather than simply _at_ a scene. I think the little
illuminated detail helps this effect. I can't quite say why/how.

a bit of macro

a bit of macro, originally uploaded by edfooliu.

After driving one, I was so enamored with the R8 that I immediately ordered
one*.

* /forty-thirds

hi. also, misguided forays into amateur photography.

hi. also, forays into amateur photography., originally uploaded by edfooliu.

So in the throes of a friday-morning, coffee-induced stupor, I foolishly
agreed to keep a daily photoblog--a companion photoblog to my pal steph over
at rebelyang .

Test post from fone

Test post from fone, originally uploaded by edfooliu.

Pretty.... I drove the black r8 with a stick.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.