113:365 - Casterings Director

113:365 - Casterings Director

Image by Nomadic Lass
“OK’s, I’s been thinkerings, and I knows the most perfectest job for me with the upcomerings Ugly movie. I can be’s a consulmatant for all thingys Ugly and be’s the casterings director!! Nows, I gots a lister of all the possimable actors to players me, and I evens addeded some that all my gooder friends recommendeded. Whatever one I don’t pickers (Russell, I haven’t heards from you…callers me, baby!!) I’ll assigners to the other Uglies.

Oh, and Tray has alreadies requesteded Angelina Jolie. Anyone gots her number??"

Our Daily Challenge ~ center of attention

96th Street subway, uptown side, Oct 2009 - 09

Image by Ed Yourdon
Note: this photo was published as an illustration in an undated (Nov 2009) Mahalo blog titled "How Long Does Swine Flu Last," at mahalo-dot-com-slash-how-dash-long-dash-does-dash-swine-dash-flu-dash-last.

Moving into 2010, the photo was published in a Feb 5, 2010 blog titled "NYC Subway Safety Tips for Women." It was also published in a Jun 8, 2010 blog titled "Imma Make You Have My Baby." And it was published in a Jul 18, 2010 Cool Women Tips images blog, with the same title as the caption that I used on this blog page. It was also published in an undated (mid-Oct 2010) blog titled "Seen on the train." And it was published in an undated (late Jun 2011) blog titled "Dr. Martens 2295W1661-UK8 Blk Stl Wellington Sz9 Industrial Work Boots."

Moving into 2012, the photo was published in a Jan 4, 2012 blog titled "Flu shots for babies?" It was also published in a Jan 22, 2012 blog titled "Where can I get a flu shot for my 14 month old?"

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The streets were wet when I got up this morning, and the weather forecast called for rain throughout the day. As it turned out, the forecasters were wrong; but not wanting to expose my digital camera to a potential downpour, I decided to spend my half-hour of free time, during my lunch-break, down in the local subway station, where I knew I could stay dry. It was also my second opportunity to try out the combination of a new 70-300mm VR full-frame zoom lens with the high-ISO capability of my Nikon D700 full-frame camera. So I set the ISO meter to 6400 (yeah, yeah, I know that the newly-announced Nikon D3X can go all the way up to ISO 110,000 -- but 6,400 is still a pretty awesome to me), found a quiet bench on the downtown side of the 96th Street IRT line (as opposed to last week's adventure on the uptown side), and sat patiently to see what would happen across the tracks, on the uptown side...

For the first 15 minutes, I didn't see anything at all worth photographing. But then, little by little, interesting people began shuffle past, or sit for a few moments on the wooden bench across the tracks. Or maybe they were there all along, and maybe it just took me a while to get "in the zone" and begin to appreciate why they were interesting and photogenic. I got a consistent sense of solitude, isolation, wistfulness and even loneliness in today's collection of subjects; maybe the gloomy weather up above made them all pensive, or maybe they were just tired at the end of a long work-week. Or maybe they just had a lot on their minds, what with the economy and the swine flu and all of life's other frustrations and disappointments. Whatever the reason, there were only one or two cases where I saw people laughing, smiling, or chatting cheerfully with one another.

I also took a couple of shots of people inside a subway car -- sometimes through the window of the uptown train on the other side of the track, and occasionally of the downtown train when it stopped right in front of me (temporarily blocking my view of the activity across the track). In one case, the subway door opened right in front of me, and a young woman stared vacantly in my general direction while various other passengers wandered into, and out of, various subway cars. I pointed my camera in her general direction while I sat on the wooden bench, opened up the zoom as far as I could -- i.e., 70mm -- aimed it in her direction, and pushed the shutter button. With a wide-angle lens, this kind of "hip shot" often works reasonably well, even if I have to do a lot of cropping; but it was sheer luck that I got the woman framed almost perfectly with the 70mm setting on the long-telephoto I was using today.

As with the last subway group that I shot at ISO 6400, there's a little bit of noise/graininess in these images -- but I decided to leave them that way. I did adjust the "hot spots" (areas over-exposed from the fluorescent lighting in the subway station) and "cold spots" (shadows and dark areas), and punched up the color a little bit. But aside from that, this is yet another view of the typical daytime scene on a typical NYC subway line...

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Over the years, I've seen various photos of the NYC subway "scene," usually in black-and-white format. But during a recent class on street photography at the NYC International Center of Photography (ICP), I saw lots and lots of terrific subway shots taken by my fellow classmates ... so I was inspired to start taking a few myself.

So far, I'm taking photos in color; I don't feel any need to make the scene look darker and grimier than it already is. To avoid disruption, and to avoid drawing attention to myself, I'm not using flash shots; but because of the relatively low level of lighting, I'm generally using an ISO setting of 800 or 1600 -- except for my most recent photos with my new D700, which are all shot at ISO 6400.

I may eventually use a small "pocket" digital camera, but the initial photos have been taken with my somewhat large, bulky Nikon D300 DSLR; and today's were taken with an even bulkier Nikon D700. If I'm photographing people on the other side of the tracks in a subway station, there's no problem holding up the camera, composing the shot, and taking it in full view of everyone -- indeed, hardly anyone pays attention to what's going on across the tracks, and most people are lost in their own little world, reading a book or listening to music. But if I'm taking photos inside a subway car, I normally set the camera lens to a wide angle (18mm) setting, point it in the general direction of the subject(s), and shoot without framing or composing.

So far it seems to be working ... we'll see how it goes...

Dad & me... (Part 2)

Image by steveleenow
Another badly faded photo of my Father with me as a baby at our old home in Williams Lake, British Columbia.

The photo is even more faded than appears here. It will require a lot of restoration work in Photoshop which I don't have time to do today - and to be honest, I'm not that familiar with how to use the various Photoshop tools towards restoring a photo to its former glory.

But you can see how the photo sat in a frame for the past 30 years as the edges show the portions of this polaroid that weren't exposed to sunlight or other elements.

To this end, I've ordered a couple of books that deal specifically with how to do this and I eagerly await their arrival so I can bring this photo back to its former glory, more closely to the brightness of the colours you see along the left hand side of this photo. It would be nice to be able to give Mom, as either a Christmas or birthday present, a restored print of this 31 year old faded photograph.

he's, like, a bunny!

Image by ethan.john
If there were an award for Mom Who Most Thinks Her Baby Is Totally The Best Baby On The Planet, Gabby would win. I realize that most mothers probably feel this way but she is on another plane of existence compared to them.

I'm pretty sure that Tycho was thinking, "SRSLY WTF" while he was wearing these, but I mostly got the impression that he was thinking that every time he looked around. Like he was constantly thinking HOT DAMN THE WORLD all the time.

photo stuff

It's funny to look back over our wedding photos with a Photographer's Eye. There are exceptionally few that I would award 5 stars. Maybe 2 or 3. But he shipped us 900 photos (counting black+white/color duplicates) and every one was 2+ stars (1=keep it, 2=print it, 3=put it on the iphone, 4=wow, 5=perfect).

That's what I'm going for, and this photo is a 3 in my world. You wouldn't waste space on the iPhone for this because of the obstruction in the lower right of the frame, but you would totally print it for 10 cents and keep it in a shoebox. Completely fascinating that this is the way I think about things.

I'm thinking that pretty soon my scale will change to accomodate "Archive as RAW" and "Archive as JPG". My 18mp camera can easily generate just shittons of data and my little 750gb (little???) hard drive is already having trouble keeping up.