Speaking of hands

An old image of mine, redone for the photoclub competition this month.

From M C Escher's Drawing Hands..

but my hands, and a massive amount of Photoshop work.

Who do you capture?

When you take a portrait, whose personality are you capturing?

insomnia

For the "minimalism" topic for the photo club...

Ascend...

Gone...

Misty, rainy day today, and no crossfit early this morning... so went for a drive to take some photos.

The idea for this one was borrowed from one of my friends at TPS.
It is still not exactly what was in my head, but close...

Flashback

A few older photos.
Ruth on the New Zealand Trip at Lake Tekapo, and the Church of the Good Shepard there.  Both playing with a flash.

And a photo of Zak from earlier this year.  He has grown up so much since then!

All the photos were grabbed from older shots because the topic of the month for Toowoomba Photographic Society is "Use of flash".

Hiding from myself

One I have been meaning to do for a while...
The topic for the photography competition this month at TPS is "Selfie"... so I thought, why not?!


Photogeeking:  This photo took several years of planning... 4 or 5 years ago, I started developing a clone of myself (he is the one in the red shirt)...  he is not much good for most things, but was useful for this.  He sees things fairly simply and spends a lot of time cranky, so convincing him to do this was not hard.  A flash through an umbrella was used for the blue me... a direct flash for the red me, with another one filling in some of the detail.

New development

There is an area of the middle of our town that is being redeveloped.  A Shopping center is gaining weight.... a lot of weight.... so it is spreading over the street, engulfing the library and enveloping another shopping center.

So here are the photos of one of the parts that will be ripped down to fit it in.  There is nothing particularly nostalgic about it, but the Photo club had a little field day there to record what it is at the moment, before it all changes and we forget.

Away...

Well the set subject for my photography club back home is "solitude"....
If the theme was "birds" or "blue skies" or "family fun" then I would have some trouble....
but solitude.... yeah.... there is plenty of that around if you want it...

PSAM

If anyone is interested... here is the mindmap I used in a talk a couple of months ago....
Asked to do some sort of "for people new to photography" talk...

So I talked on the modes of the camera....

It is summarised in this diagram:  I am not sure if it means anything without me talking about it as well..... but there could be something in there that is useful?

Me at the conference

Me presenting at the PSQ conference..


I am exceedingly difficult to photograph on stage, because I spend very little time where I am meant to be.... I tend to wander around all over the place, doing cartwheels and handstands to try to make a point.

With this in mind, thanks to Bob Britcher from Ipswich Photographic Society for managing the difficult task as committing me to a still image!

you can love your iPod (or Android...)

but it doesn't keep you warm.......

Worked Well..

Well the talk I did for the Photographic Society of Queensland must have been vaguely ok, cause I have been asked if I would do a talk for next year's conference which will be held in Mackay...

I of course said that I would love to (cause I do really enjoy doing this sort of thing).

There we all sorts of interesting conversations going on in groups after my presentation, so I felt pretty happy.

Still justifying....

Last night I worked my way through all the digitial entries... today I took a vacation day to get some things done including the judging of all the actual prints....  Well over 100 shots in all.

Presenting "my findings" tonight... hoping I get out alive!

He who Justifies...

I am sitting here tonight judging photos.... not that I really think I am truly qualified to do so - apart from the fact that my "spirit name" is "he who justifies".....

The set subject is ABSTRACT! How on earth are you meant to judge abstract photos???

More Portraits...

Ruth's brother and his "not quite finished" car restoration...

Our Niece

Photogeek stuff:

Top photo - really wide angle lens, one flash coming from camera left, nearly level with me and aiming through the back window of the car, another one above and to the right pointing straight at Paul from outside the car.

Bottom photo:  Ruth is standing at the fence with a flash on a radio trigger.  As Rhi rides past i am shooting with a fairly long lens from 20m or so away.  The camera is in manual mode on its max speed for a flash (without doing tricky stuff) to try to get the sky fairly moody, and I adjusted the aperture to get the exposure right in combination with the flash.

more boy shots

In the vacant lot beside our place, looking out over the valley....
Must say, it is all very lovely.
You understand I mean the view... not the boys.

moonrise

Roof, meet Moon... Moon, say hello to Roof.





Photogeek stuff:
To shoot the moon you need to be really really zoomed in.  This is at the long end of my 200mm zoom (300 in old speak).  As well as being WAY further away than it looks, the moon is also brighter than it looks....  so where you think you are going to get the nice shot of the unlit foreground with a moon with some detail in it in the background.... well good luck with that.
So I cheated and found a building with lights on it, a long way away.... full zoom, hand held deliberately underexposed.
I really liked the yin/yang of the two circles with the line through the middle.  The seeming timelessness of the moon with the (what seems to me) very transitory nature of the buildings here.  But I am going into silly waffling territory now....

Arrogant and Presumptuous Photography Portrait.

As it turns out, I am going to be a lecturer for the 2012 Photographic Society of Queensland Conference.  Giving a talk about something that is far too complicated for me to get my head around, so I am hoping my confusion will come across as "arty"....
As part of the program (to populate the fairly sparse website above among other things), I had to submit a portrait of myself for the program. so I got the boys to help me take one this afternoon....

(There was no way in the world I was going to put a photo of me with a fuzzy lip up there!!)

I think I look a little Arrogant and Presumptuous (A&P).... but I have been (deservedly) accused of being A&P before - so it is probably fairly accurate.



Photogeek stuff:  Taken out the front of our house, into the low sun by Xander while Zak stood off to my right on a box pointing the flash down at me from just outside the frame.  A tiny bit of desaturation and vignetting in photoshop...

my boys... but nice looking...

these pictures look just like Xander and Zak... but these boys looks sweet.....

Geek info: 2 flashes... 1 behind the boys facing the cream wall to blow it out.. the other in a stand off to the side and front a little...  tiny tiny but of playing in photoshop and out pop the results...