Red Buoy In Fog

One kind of image I’ve always been partial to is “a little bit of something in a lot of nothing.” This one is an example of a corollary, “a little bit of color in a lot of non-color.”

You can practice looking for situations like this and thy it out with your own photos… a little bit of something in a lot of nothing… a little bit of color in a lot of no color…. a little bit of one color in a lot of another color.

To paraphrase George Zimmer, you’re going to like the way it looks; I guarantee it.

Full disclosure: I took this photo back in January - there isn't a lot of fog in our area this time of the year. 

"Bad Weather Makes Good Pictures"

Following the advice that his father gave to the young Sam Abell that “bad weather makes good pictures,”  we didn’t let the fog get us down.

This is another photo I took on that day back in January. The location is Fells Point in Baltimore, with the old Domino Sugar factory across the outer harbor. Fells Point, once a down-and-out area, has had a revival over the past 20 years and become rather hip. 

Barns & Nobel Shadows

I headed crosstown the other day on a mission to Barnes & Nobel. The day was brilliant, and the sun was just about overhead - not normally a great time for photos.

But when I saw the pattern of shadows on the stairs, I thought it might make a good background for some people in an HCB-like setting. I took several as people came and went - this is my favorite of the bunch.

Taken with a Canon S90 digicam and converted to B&W via Channel Mixer in Photoshop.

The Babe - By The Dawn's Early Light

This one is for Eric, our favorite baseball fan ;-)

July Project: Otakon 2010

It's that time of year again in Baltimore, when waves of young people arrive at the Convention Center in amazing costumes for Otakon

I brought my Big Gun camera with me today so that I could try for some interesting shots during lunch. Here's my best one - a lucky grab shot that seems as if it were perfectly composed!

This one is almost straight out of the camera with just a tiny bit of fill light in Picassa. It looks pretty good in B&W as well, but I'll wait til I get home and use Channel Mixer in Photoshop to do it right.

Potbelly Chair Shadow

Walking eastward on Pratt Street after work today... the sun was just right to cast fabulous shadows from these wrought-iron chairs outside the Potbelly Sandwich Shop.

Wish I had taken this last month! ;-)

Photo Archaeology

Here's a scan of a 37-year-old negative. If I remember correctly, I tried to print this one back in the day, but never got a good image out of it. The negative actually is fine, with a lot of detail. If I had to guess, I didn't have paper that was high enough contrast to do it justice.

I took this picture one Sunday at Penn Station in Baltimore, back in the days when you could wander around the platforms without causing anyone any anxiety. It was just a few days after I bought a Leica IIIc and a Canon Serenar 50mm f/1.8 lens.

Tonight, I scanned this negative, along with some others, on my Epson V500 scanner. I've only used the scanner for documents up until now, but its raw specs implied it would do a good job on negatives and slides. I cranked up the resolution to its maximum, 4800 dpi, and it yielded a 28-megapixel file. I noticed in Photoshop that it was 26" x 17" at 240 dpi. Just a little manipulation in Photoshop to adjust the blacks was all it needed to make a compelling image. I didn't even apply any sharpening, as the scanned image just didn't need any.

On-screen and on the web, I think the image looks great. I'll have an 18x12 print made from this file to see how that looks, but for the time being, I'm very happy with the film-scanning ability of the V500.

Late Night Light Rail

Channeling Dave Beckerman, I snapped this Friday night on the way home from Karaoke (yes, I suffered for my music, now it's your turn!)

Again, it was a nice test for my new Canon S90. At ISO 800, f/2.8 at 1/15 sec, its a very clean and sharp image.

Baltimore City Hall

I got to take some "landmark" photos after all. Having a pocketable camera sure helps.

I went to a karaoke meetup late afternoon yesterday. The bar is just 1/2-block from the back side of City Hall, and the dramatic lighting of the dome prompted me to get a shot for our forum.

At ISO 800, the resolution and lack of noise is remarkable. The exposure was f/4.5 @ 1/25 sec with a focal length equivalent to 60mm. The lack of motion blur testifies to the effectiveness of the modern digicam image stabilization.

This is image was taken as a jpg, but I decided to open it in Camera Raw to see if it needed tweaking of exposure, color balance, etc. I just gave it a smidge more exposure (interstingly, left to its own devices, the camera did not blow out the highlights on the dome) and left everything else the same. In Photoshop CS3, I only used the Distort filter to correct the vertical perspective. Then a little cropping.

The only sharpening I did was after I did a Save for Web, in order to counteract the inherent softening in the resizing process.

To so some more pixel-peeping, click on this image to see a screen capture of a portion of the photo viewed at 100% in PS C3.

First Day Out with Canon S90

Thursday morning, I put my new Canon S90 into the little Tyvek® envelope in which it came and slipped the package into my pants pocket. That was the whole point of getting this thing, so I could take it everywhere and never be without a camera.

So here's Dev, who along with his wife owns and operates the Loft Deli a few blocks from where I work. Dev always has a smile and a good word for me whenever I stop by to buy a sandwich or some trail mix.

Aesthetics aside, from a technical standpoint, the image is remarkably good for a compact digicam. The EXIF data says 1/30 second at f/3.3 and 10.7mm (which is almost exactly equivalent to 50mm on a 35mm camera.) More importantly the ISO is 800.

If you click on the screen capture at right, you'll see a pixel-peeping section of the image, displayed at 100% in Photoshop.

What impresses me is how little noise there is at this ISO value. With a typical pocket-sized digicam at ISO 200, and certainly by ISO 400, I would expect to see quite a lot of noise in areas such as Dev's face and the even-toned wall to his right.

Another nice thing is that this is the .jpg almost exactly as it popped out of the camera. I had only made very tiny tweaks to exposure and color balance at this point, and no sharpening.

So far, so good!

St. Michael the Archangel Ukranian Catholic Church

I've seen the golden onion domes of St. Michael from various places elsewhere in Baltimore, but it was only yesterday, as I drove down Eastern Avenue, that I got to see the church close up. In the bright late-afternoon sun, it just knocked me out.

Captain James Landing - Canton

I've driven past this unusual restaurant, Captain James Landing, many times before. But today, I had my camera with me, so I parked the car and took some photos.

As I often do with interesting flat vertical areas like this, I framed an image and waited for someone to walk into it. Several people did within the next 15 minutes, but this young woman made for the most compelling photo.

8-Ball

Another artifact I pass every day, less than a half-block from the door to where I work. I just noticed the nice arc and the "8-Ball" for the first time two days ago.

Uncle Sam

I saw "Uncle Sam" while attending the Tax Day Tea Party in Baltimore today. Ultra-soggy weather notwithstanding, the turnout was decent.

I took this one with my beat-up, carry-everywhere-in-my-pocket 5MP Canon SD400. The moon must have been in the Seventh House and Jupiter must have been aligned with Mars, because this is one sharp image. The difference between it and almost every other exposure I made today is amazing.

The Babe Approves

A statue of Baltimore-born Babe Ruth watches over the crowds heading into the stadium for yesterday evening's game against the Yankees.

Vintage Camera Day - With a Gift From Warren!

Here are some photos I took using Warren's generous gift to me of a Nikon FM. It's the first time I've shot film since August 2003!

I took my "new" Nikon to today's Vintage Camera Day outing of my photo group, Shutterbug Excursions.

The Nikon handled beautifully, and as you can see, the results are quite sharp. We all took our film to a Ritz 1-Hour photo place a block away from the Inner Harbor, and they did a decent enough job on 4x6 prints. I also had them scan the negatives onto a CD for an additional $4.00 per roll. Unfortunately, the scans were dissappointing - an average of only 1MB per photo. There's no reason they shouldn't be at least 3000 x 2000 pixels using modern minilabs, so I won't use Ritz any more.

But overall, my first film experience in almost 6 years worked out well. And best of all, our gang had a really good time.

Thanks again to Warren for the great camera!

La Cirque et Moi

La Cirque est arriveé!

I didn't know Cirque du Soleil was coming to town, but as I was leaving Baltimore today, I saw the striped, conical tents and detoured to see what was going on.

Now I myself would never attend a performance of Cirque; the snippets I've seen on TV scare the crap out of me. It all looks very postmodern and Frenchified to me.

Kind of like Cats on steroids.

Non, merci.

Superman!

I stopped by Geppi's Enertainment Museum in downtown Baltimore yesterday to scope it out for a photo assignment this weekend - I'll be shooting the bar-mitzvah dinner and party there Saturday evening. It was the first time I'd been there, and I was gobsmacked by the amazing display of popular culture. Geppi's displays and artifacts go back to colonial times and continue through the era of radio, the early days of TV (Howdy Doody anyone?) and up to the present.

The thing that attracted me the most yesterday was this slightly larger-than-life statue of Superman. I grew up with the old Superman TV series. Superman, airing for a half-hour about 4pm, was the only thing I was allowed to watch on TV when I got home prior to getting my homework done.

I was nine when George Reeves killed himself, ending the old TV series. In 1978, I heard about a new Superman movie, starring Christopher Reeve. The screenwriting was pretty awful, but Reeve was just right as Superman. For me, at age 28 and still a kid at heart, he became Superman, and remained so until his death at age 52 in 2004.

Constellation Duck

The corner of Harborplace formed by the two main pavilions is a hangout for these dabbling ducks. They're always looking for a handout from us humans, and they're worth it, as they provide a lot of free entertainment.

This one didn't seem bothered by me at all as I took over a dozen photos up close and personal, down on the deck with my Canon A620 - the articulated LCD is great for this sort of thing.

The green in the background is the historic frigate USS Constellation.

By the way, I can't quite figure this duck out. It looks like a female Mallard, but the beak is yellow, rather than orange and black, and I didn't think the females had any green on their heads. If you know from ducks, please enlighten me.

Double-T Diner

If you're a long-time Baltimorean, you remember the original Double-T Diner in Catonsville. Founded by the eponymous Thomas Doxanas and his partner Tony, Double-T always was the place to go for good food, plenty of it, 24 hours a day.

Since 1987, the diners, of which there are now seven in the area, have been owned and operated by John, Tom and Louie Korologos. The food is still great and an excellent value.

This Double-T is in Pasadena, MD, about 20-plus miles south of Baltimore, on the way towards Annapolis.