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Jeremy  > Photo Diary > My 40th Year
This gallery is a complete chronicle of my 40th year, starting on my birthday in 2008. I posted one photo each day for a year. The photo-a-day project continues in this gallery here.
Gallery pages:  <  1  2  3  4  5  6  >  >>
< 18 of 365 >
Jeremy > May 12, 2008; Day 10. I'm not always a big fan of foreground bokeh but I think it works here. Thanks to my friend Raymond for lending a hand.
Jeremy > May 13, 2008; Day 11. This is my house in Concord, NH as seen through the Sigma lens at 10mm. This house is a classic "New Englander" design which means the roofline runs perpendicular to the road. I'm standing on a stepladder in the driveway so that the rhododendrons don't block the lower windows. Unfortunately I did not have time to wait for the lovely blue sky of dusk. That would have eliminated some woefully hot spots. You'll see this again when I can get it lit just right.
Jeremy > May 14, 2008; Day 12. I’m hosting a small dinner party tomorrow, so tonight I clean. Oliver suggested that this might be a good time to re-attach the camera to the vacuum. I said I would only if my new 10.5mm Fisheye lens arrived. It did. I think I'm finally happy with my lens collection, which means I can finally put together a “my gear” shot when I have more time.

This is my kitchen, my favorite room in the house. That’s a tin ceiling and see-through cabinets. My sister, her husband, and I installed the wallpaper. The camera is taped to a flat section above the main canister of the vacuum. The blur in the photo is due to my actually vacuuming the floor here. A sponge provides vibration dampening, needed since the vacuum is running. Luckily Nikon didn’t adopt the term “vibration dampening” for their lenses…
Jeremy > May 15, 2008; Day 13. Nothing completes a dinner party quite like a cordial. I was drawn to the backlit blue in this shot and probably should have gotten even closer. I’m holding a heavily snooted incandescent bulb at camera left to light up the label. You can easily see the stark color difference between it and the faint remnants of the on-camera flash (which apparently does contribute a little bit of light to the exposure even when you tell it not to).

Note to self: Backlit patina is really bright and noticeable!
Jeremy > May 16, 2008; Day 14. For most of the year, this gallery will try to focus on the art of making a picture. But today, it really is a diary.

Seven years ago today, I took delivery of my Audi TT. I photographed it heavily on that day, including the instrument cluster. I realized that if I continued to photograph the cluster on the car’s birthday, I’d accumulate some interesting information:  miles driven each year, climate change, and patina accretion. (“Patina” is a much better word than “dust”!)

Don't believe me? 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Coincidentally, I had the car in the shop today to replace the cluster, just in time for a badly needed patina “reset.” While the cluster was broken, I probably lost 5000 miles off the odometer. I told the dealer this but they didn’t care.

For fun, I also shot it with my fisheye. The neighbor’s cat didn’t want to be left out either.

I like the way Brian Hart lists his post processing steps. I will too:
Raw: Clarity +100
PS: Color Balance: +15 yellow to blue
PS: Saturation: +50
PS: Unsharp mask: 20-30-0
Jeremy > May 17, 2008; Day 15. Self portrait with the guys of the “Bad Dog Down” yoga group. If you’re into yoga, you’ll recognize that our name is a play on the “downward dog” pose. I thought it might be fun to get a group shot with the new fisheye lens.

The fisheye is not a flattering portrait lens, but it’s fun with group shots since individual people don’t have to be quite as close. Also, if the surroundings fit the subject, it’s nice to include them (mats scattered about on the floor, straps on one wall, blocks on the other).

I didn’t notice what was happening in the mirror until after I got home. If I had seen it in the viewfinder, I almost certainly would have recomposed the shot to eliminate ourselves. But after thinking about it, I’ve decided that if I’m going to embrace the fisheye lens, I need to fill that frame with stuff worth looking at. Here, we’ve got the main shot and the “setup shot” all in the same frame! I wish I had arranged us so that you could see the camera itself better.

Also, I wish I had taken a shot of everyone sitting in a more yoga-like pose. Namaste would have been a good choice. Dolphin would have been a bad choice.

Raw: Exposure +0.3
Raw: Fill Light +5
PS: Color Balance: +15 yellow to blue
PS: Saturation: +20
PS: Unsharp mask: 10-30-0
Jeremy > May 18, 2008; Day 16. Peter and I visited a new friend today. Charles LaFond has been a master potter for 25 years and now resides fairly close to us. Here he's guiding Peter through his first pull. The wheel throws a lot of clay and water around, hence the splatter.

Another image from today's shoot was submitted in my Art of Composition class.

Raw: WB to 4150K
PS: Color Balance: +10 Yellow to Blue
PS: Saturation: +10
PS: Unsharp Mask: 20-30-0
Jeremy > May 19, 2008; Day 17. Every Monday night I catch up with friends in the basement of this magnificent structure, South Church in Portsmouth. This time of year, dusk falls while I'm there so sometimes I sneak outside to photograph.

This HDR is a little noisy, and it suffers from too many light sources of different colors - dusky sky, bluish-white street lights, and sodium vapor street lights. But I do like the lighter sections of this shot.

Note to self - Check ISO before you shoot.  ISO 400 might explain some of the noise here!

Here's the middle exposure of the set for reference.

PS: Unsharp mask: 10-30-0
Jeremy > May 20, 2008; Day 18. This idea has been stuck in my head since March. I took a class on the "art of seeing" and our last assignment was conceptual photography. We were given a list of words and were asked to pick 3 of them and locate representative subjects. The trick: No people or animals.

This was my idea for the word "Loss". But back then, there were no cherries in the store. Now that I've shot it, I must admit, the lone cherry doesn't look very sad about losing his twin. Conceptual photography is tough.

In the class I had mixed success with the words I had picked: Access, Abandonment, and Risk. (Risk should have been disqualified since I put a person in it.)

Anyway, even if your ideas end up being only so-so, you've got to shoot them, or you'll never get them out of your head! Since I came up with ideas for all the words, expect more conceptual photography in the months ahead.

Raw: Exposure: +1
Raw: Saturation: +30
PS: Color Balance: Yellow to Blue +15
PS: Unsharp Mask: 10-30-0
May 20, 2008; Day 18. This idea has been stuck in my head since March. I took a class on the "art of seeing" and our last assignment was conceptual photography. We were given a list of words and were asked to pick 3 of them and locate representative subjects. The trick: No people or animals.

This was my idea for the word "Loss". But back then, there were no cherries in the store. Now that I've shot it, I must admit, the lone cherry doesn't look very sad about losing his twin. Conceptual photography is tough.

In the class I had mixed success with the words I had picked: Access, Abandonment, and Risk. (Risk should have been disqualified since I put a person in it.)

Anyway, even if your ideas end up being only so-so, you've got to shoot them, or you'll never get them out of your head! Since I came up with ideas for all the words, expect more conceptual photography in the months ahead.

Raw: Exposure: 1
Raw: Saturation: 30
PS: Color Balance: Yellow to Blue 15
PS: Unsharp Mask: 10-30-0
 > May 20, 2008; Day 18. This idea has been stuck in my head since March. I took a class on the "art of seeing" and our last assignment was conceptual photography. We were given a list of words and were asked to pick 3 of them and locate representative subjects. The trick: No people or animals.

This was my idea for the word "Loss". But back then, there were no cherries in the store. Now that I've shot it, I must admit, the lone cherry doesn't look very sad about losing his twin. Conceptual photography is tough.

In the class I had mixed success with the words I had picked: Access, Abandonment, and Risk. (Risk should have been disqualified since I put a person in it.)

Anyway, even if your ideas end up being only so-so, you've got to shoot them, or you'll never get them out of your head! Since I came up with ideas for all the words, expect more conceptual photography in the months ahead.

Raw: Exposure: +1
Raw: Saturation: +30
PS: Color Balance: Yellow to Blue +15
PS: Unsharp Mask: 10-30-0
May 20, 2008; Day 18. This idea has been stuck in my head since March. I took a class on the "art of seeing" and our last assignment was conceptual photography. We were given a list of words and were asked to pick 3 of them and locate representative subjects. The trick: No people or animals.

This was my idea for the word "Loss". But back then, there were no cherries in the store. Now that I've shot it, I must admit, the lone cherry doesn't look very sad about losing his twin. Conceptual photography is tough.

In the class I had mixed success with the words I had picked: Access, Abandonment, and Risk. (Risk should have been disqualified since I put a person in it.)

Anyway, even if your ideas end up being only so-so, you've got to shoot them, or you'll never get them out of your head! Since I came up with ideas for all the words, expect more conceptual photography in the months ahead.

Raw: Exposure: 1
Raw: Saturation: 30
PS: Color Balance: Yellow to Blue 15
PS: Unsharp Mask: 10-30-0
Camera: Nikon Corporation (Nikon D80) |
More details: exif |
Original size: 3872px x 2592px |
Current: 400px x 268px |
Other sizes: Small • M • L • O |
Share photo: links, forums, blogs |
Keywords: food lightbox 90mm commander mode concept project
Gallery pages:  <  1  2  3  4  5  6  >  >>
< 18 of 365 >

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