THIRTEEN

Today I am playing around with black and white conversions. The mountain scene was taken in Glacier by Tim or Rohan. I'm still up in the air about NIK Silver Efex Pro. It is a lot of moola for doing what I could do anyway in photoshop. However, since they let you download a complete working demo for free, you might as well give it a try. I guess when I don't have as much time as I do right now, the time savings would be worth the cash.  

Mountain and Clouds in Glacier National Park



I did a nice black and white conversion of a macro shot of an orchid, but for some reason blogger will not let me upload it. I have used up all my free Flickr space for the month, so I have to upload directly to blogger from my computer. Slow and crappy.


Kathryn at Lolo Pass After a Double Hand Amputation
IMG_4423_2



Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens for Canon SLR Cameras
Smiling is my favorite. This is my new favorite. 
The pictures I posted on Flicker of the family were taken with the Canon 100mm Macro. This is not the IS version, but what is the point on a lens that will be on a tripod 90% of the time. It does make an awesome portrait lens and I see no reason not to use this for people photography. I love the way the background melts into blobs of color. When used on the Rebel this is the same as a 160mm. That is a great lens for portraiture. (BTW, I love my Rebel. It is light, powerful, and 3.7 fps is plenty for me)

I will be playing with Canon 100 Macro lens a lot for the next couple days.  -5 F for highs with 30 MPH winds will keep a person inside. Plus, it is snowing like crazy, and my photo gear is not weather sealed so it can't play outside (I wonder what I'm going to do when I go to Big Sky with Jack next week). This lens is so cool, I can't believe I lived for years of photography without a Macro lens. I also can't believe I've had this for a couple months and haven't tried it out more. I've just been shooting wide with the kit lens. I wanted to do the photos of my friend's family with this lens, but I couldn't get back far enough without stepping in a stream, plus my flash sync cord was only 15 ft. long. 

Since it has been snowing so much, I've been watching ski movies. Today, I was watching one that features a tribute to Shane McConkey. He says something that I get a lot more today than I did 5 years ago. 

"I get up every day and I am stoked to go to work. That does not suck."

Just 18 months and I'll be saying the same thing. I'd say it now, but school doesn't pay quite enough.

Blu-ray in Deep
Worth the 30 bucks to get in BluRay

MSP ski movies are awesome. They are so much better than Warren Miller. It seemed to me that a bunch of (incredibly talented) kids were flying around in helicopters and jumping off stuff with cameras in their hands. Then I found out I was right.


Look for Macro shots soon!



Comments

  1. travis pitcherNovember 23, 2010 at 8:06 AM

    I love the Macro 100mm too. It is an amazing lens and though it is not the most used lens, I always tell people they need a wide lens, portrait lens, zoom lens with IS and a good Macro. With those you can do most anything.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tim LindsayNovember 25, 2010 at 9:41 AM

    Great lens. Great bokeh. What are you using for a flash setup?

    I took the mountain with clouds shot.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ChrisNovember 25, 2010 at 10:50 AM

    Tim, just used on camera flash dialed down a stop.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Choosing where to live.

Image
Not knowing where we will be next year is starting to take its toll. On me, on my family, probably on my performance at work.  I obsess about it. "Where do we want to live?" I have my list. My goal is to find a community that maximizes the number of things on that list. Polly has a list, but it is much shorter, or contains secret elements that I don't know. Her list, as far as I can tell is: 1. Access to grandbabies. 2. Church members in adequate numbers that we don't practice our faith on an island, or in a fishbowl. That is a short list. My list is more complicated. It has lots of items, and the those items change in relative importance as the seasons of the year, and my life, change. I like the outdoors- that has always been and will always be true. I find that I get depressed fairly quickly if my senses are deprived of the outdoors. The sound of the wind through the trees, the smell of woodsmoke and pine, the simultaneous sensation of a warm sun on my bac...
Read more

CPAC Soccer Game

Image
I was finally able to attend a soccer game and watch Kathryn play. It was so much fun to watch Kathryn and the other girls play so aggressively. They have completely dominated the first two games, outscoring their opponents 9-1. I was surprised on how big the pitch was. Those girls were running! Kathryn is playing on a U-11 team. About half the girls are playing up from younger age groups because our club is brand new and just starting out. Watching the younger girls play tough on (sometimes much) bigger girls was inspiring.  The team's coach, Ian Hill, is really quite different from other youth sports coaches. He coaches with Love. Sounds corny, right? It's not touchy-feely namby-pamby stuff. He is teaching the girls accountability to your teammates, coaches, and parents because you love them. He makes them run at practice until its uncomfortable (maybe even some tears) because he wants them to know what it feels like in a game to keep going when you think you can't run...
Read more

EIGHT

Image
Purple Mountains and an Emerald Lake I am just now starting to go back through the photos from my backpacking trip through Glacier from a year ago. When I first got back, I was too miserable and sore to even think about it, then I got busy. Then I forgot. Now I'm procrastinating school work. This was such an amazing trip. I wonder how people used to do it, slogging along with some external frame, canvas pack that weighed a ton and absorbed  water and if I had to guess, it probably didn't even hold every thing you needed. I used an Arcteryx Bora 90 which kept my stuff dry, organized and on my back. In fact, the only thing wrong with my pack was it was too big. You never want to be the guy with a 90 liter pack when everyone else has a 60 liter pack.
Read more