One of the things I like doing most with my camera is experimenting with long exposures. There’s something compelling in bending time, and seeing what happens to the light that gets captured. Longer exposures means more light, often meaning you can see things that aren’t visible to the naked eye. Or, motion becomes visible.
start of day: a 30 second exposure, shot without a tripod. I was riding to campus one morning, extra early because I was facilitating a workshop, and something about the quality of the light caught me. So I pulled the bike over, slapped the XT on top of a cement sign, and popped off a long exposure. The lights were just coming on for the construction site where the EEEL building was being assembled, the sun was just starting to light the eastern sky, and the head and tail lights of cars were bright against the darkness. A fun capture, and something that wasn't the way it seemed.
clix: the "bike blur" photo. only 1/125s exposure, but shot wide open on a bike going about 30km/h, with the camera held low and close to the asphalt. motion becomes exaggerated and time warps.
rush hour: a 15 second exposure of rush hour traffic passing underneath the pedestrian walkway leading from the train station to main campus. Not a single vehicle is actually visible. They disappear in the long exposure, leaving an abandoned arterial route, streaked with ghostly light.
purple tunnel: a 3.2 second exposure of evan walking in the underpass leading from the train station to the zoo. the purple lights actually change colour (they shift through the full spectrum) and the longer exposure makes the details of the tunnel visible, while turning evan into a ghostly figure.
english bay: an 8 second exposure, shot in pitch darkness over english bay, using a driftwood log as a tripod. the waves blur into glassy flatness.
train blur: 1/5 second exposure in bright daylight, from a fast moving train. warp speed!
I’ve hardly touched the DSLR in the last year, shooting almost exclusively with my iPhone. Being able to mess around with exposure is the biggest thing I miss. I may have to break out the camera again…
Duncan just wrote an interesting post on the decline of photographic editing. Not pixel-mashing editing, but selecting and critiquing. cringe curating.
Duncan is a professional photographer, who does some amazing work. He works with other professional photographers, who hang out with other professionals. And, apparently, they’re all noticing the same thing. Less actual editing of photos. Finding the best and tossing the crap.
In the olden days, it cost money to take, process and print every photo. But that cost put a limit on the number of photos taken (for most people). Which further meant that editing was more feasible. Fewer photos, easier editing.
During Northern Voice 2011, much time was spent at Sanctuary Studios, making noise and having fun. I brought my DSLR to the Thursday session, to see if I could capture some of the energy.
It was not a large room - we were in the “stage room”, which, surprisingly, has a stage filling half of the room, and a couch/sitting/standing area taking the rest. Not a lot of room, once everybody got in. It was also very dark in there, in line with the B Horror Movie motif for the entire studio (which was awesome). I didn’t bring my tripod, so had to figure out a way to get a decently stable shot. I put on my wide angle lens, and shot at 10mm, wide open (which isn’t very wide, only opening up to f/4) and ISO 1600. Even at that, I was only able to get decent shots with nearly a second of exposure.
We headed out to Peter Lougheed Provincial Park, in the Kananaskis region of the Rockies, to do some camping and hanging out with family.
There was plenty of wildlife in the area - there was enough bear activity that the (awesome) bike paths were closed and completely off limits. They were tracking bears right through our campground, and they came within 100m of our tent. At one point, half a dozen deer (that we hadn’t even noticed in the bushes) scattered right behind our campsite. We have no idea what spooked them, but we didn’t go wandering off to find out…
We headed to Race City Speedway for the day, to watch some of the 2011 Drift Mania Canadian Championship. We’d never been to a drifting race, and Evan had never been to the racetrack. It was a really fun day at the track, between watching qualifications of the drifting racers, then some drag racing, then the actual final-16 and final-4 drift races. Great stuff.
We’ll definitely be checking out the 2012 schedule…
When Alan was in town, we played some music (made some noise) and streamed it to DS106 Radio, where DrGarcia recorded some of it. She later rebroadcast it, where Bryan recorded a copy and then jammed along with us. Very cool stuff. It’s extremely rough (well, at least my part), but so much fun.
We spent a few days last week camping at White Lake, in BC. The campground had a couple of docks that we were able to use, and they made pretty good spots for hanging out, swimming, and fishing.
Dock life is pretty good, at least to this land-locked prairie boy…
I’m dabbling with a contact form plugin (again). There should be a fancy schmancy “Feedback” sliding tab on the left side of the site now. I might want to spend some time tweaking how it’s set up. Not entirely happy with the default text etc… This post is really just a way to clear the static file cache without blowing it all away, so it shows up on the front page…
Just as stand-up comedians are trained to be funny by observing which of their lines and expressions are greeted with laughter, so too are our thoughts online molded to conform to popular opinion by these buttons. A status update that is met with no likes (or a clever tweet that isn’t retweeted) becomes the equivalent of a joke met with silence. It must be rethought and rewritten. And so we don’t show our true selves online, but a mask designed to conform to the opinions of those around us.
Or something. I don’t have the attention span to actually read the article. Or the short article summarizing the article. Or, really, to write a proper blog post about the short article summarizing the article.
I know I think of memory first as query structures. I’d be hooped if teh googel went down.
start of day: a 30 second exposure, shot without a tripod. I was riding to campus one morning, extra early because I was facilitating a workshop, and something about the quality of the light caught me. So I pulled the bike over, slapped the XT on top of a cement sign, and popped off a long exposure. The lights were just coming on for the construction site where the EEEL building was being assembled, the sun was just starting to light the eastern sky, and the head and tail lights of cars were bright against the darkness. A fun capture, and something that wasn't the way it seemed.
clix: the "bike blur" photo. only 1/125s exposure, but shot wide open on a bike going about 30km/h, with the camera held low and close to the asphalt. motion becomes exaggerated and time warps.
rush hour: a 15 second exposure of rush hour traffic passing underneath the pedestrian walkway leading from the train station to main campus. Not a single vehicle is actually visible. They disappear in the long exposure, leaving an abandoned arterial route, streaked with ghostly light.
purple tunnel: a 3.2 second exposure of evan walking in the underpass leading from the train station to the zoo. the purple lights actually change colour (they shift through the full spectrum) and the longer exposure makes the details of the tunnel visible, while turning evan into a ghostly figure.
english bay: an 8 second exposure, shot in pitch darkness over english bay, using a driftwood log as a tripod. the waves blur into glassy flatness.
train blur: 1/5 second exposure in bright daylight, from a fast moving train. warp speed!
