The heavens parted and the sun shone down on me today as I learned it possible for me to own my very own L lens.

Next week, I will have the Canon 135mm f/2L lens.

f2

Seriously fast, going to be awesome and versatile on so many levels.

My grubby little photography obsessed hands cannot wait.

I took these in Feburary...Geez. It's already the middle of April!

The bassist from Esther Macomb is using my photographs, P.F.I.C and Upright Animals are as well. It's fun seeing your work other places than your own journal.



( Cut for amount of photos )

Work is growing so hectic, I'm not posting my work...



I don't necessarily like the composition of this one. I'm going to have to go back and reshoot.

On the way home from Downtown, my friend and I passed by this partly torn down house. We had to stop and I jumped out and snapped a quick few. Good thing they were quick, because the house next door had two mastiffs in the back yard. They were not nice doggies.

I did almost pee my pants.















LOVE ABANDONED PLACES. Will do more once it warms up.

I had another lesson with Kelsey today, and it went well. We had fun, which was the most important thing.

I'm sort of bummed that I didn't TEACH her more this time. It was mostly about me finding shots and her following along. I'd love to see her eventually take initiative and search on her own, but I have to remember she's only 13. She is improving drastically and has already won some awards.

I'm very happy to have had such a positive impact on her. I hope I can continue to mentor her, she has some real promise.

Here are my shots for the day, they are really much better viewed bigger, but if you want to seem them that way, you can check my deviantART, I will upload them soon.









Flooded, almost the entire riverfront.




















My lone color shot














I love St. Louis. There is just something inherently beautiful about the urban area that I think goes mostly unnoticed.

Well, not really. More like shooting stones, I suppose.









y/n?

The title of this is: Mumma, I did a bad thing.

I arrived back this week from NYC. It was a fantastic trip and here are the photos from it. I took over 200 and these are the 109 that I kept. For the sake of not having to re-post all of these again, I'll give you the run down and just link back to this entry.

I will give you a bit of dialog and take you through what I did. Most of the photos were taken with my wide angle so they are best viewed bigger. So, keep that in mind as you view them, some of them are 900 x 600. And if true to form, Photobucket probably mis-loaded a few and they will be huge.

( Manhattan, Brooklyn, Union Square, Oh My! )

The Great Forest Park Balloon Race is tomorrow and I wanted to go to the balloon glow.

So did everyone else. It took me more time to get into Forest Park than it did to park, walk, take photos, have enough, walk back, and drive home.

It was frustrating, so I only have photos of the Energizer Bunny Balloon. There were thousands of people there, and it made it impossible to get up close. I was not wading into that mess.









It was a shame, I love hot air balloons.

It's going to take a lot of getting used to. For one, it is double the size of my XTi. Second, the camera is laid out completely different. Third, it is much more hefty and weighty. But, the body feels so much more sturdy and real.

As far the the camera goes, I've only had it for less than 24 hours and have used it for maybe a half our of shooting. My initial thoughts are this: This camera rocks.

It is laid out very similar to the 1D and the 5D where the Rebel series had everything along the back by the LCD screen. All of the settings are on top of the camera instead, for easier use and changing of settings. No more metering and holding the camera out to change stops and WB and ISO. That is all done easily while looking through the viewfinder and knowing the buttons. It's very nice.

The software, on the other hand, is quite complicated. Canon with this camera gave their own manipulation software. It is very much a new interface for me and converting a RAW file to JPEG was incredibly tedious and a bit difficult. Obviously, I figured it out, but there are many more steps than I expected. Plus, the newest versions of Photoshop do not support the software yet, because CS3 came out before the 40D so it does not recognize the RAW files. But, I really do like the Canon manipulation software a bit better than Photoshop.

I'll elaborate more later when I've had more time getting to know my 40D (which I've named Barnaby) But, for now, here are two photos I've taken with it.

He'd like to show you his nose.




He was sleepy and therefore, peaceful.

Comments?

The music was fantastic. Just phenomenal.

There are 60 photos, so take your time.



( I Trust You to Kill Me. )

A awesome event I went to sponsored by Aalim Bellydance Co.

Picture heavy, so I'll cut.

( Shimmy shimmy now )

I had some problems with lens flair, but I was able to photoshop some of the more distracting bits out. I am overall very pleased!!

It's a good thing I have a human subject who doesn't mind me sticking my camera inches from his eyes.

Playing with DoF and extension tubes.



( Several more, varying subjects.. )

I had problems with low light and grain, but I think it went pretty well overall.

( About 30 images more )

This is an idea I have been wanting to do for a while, and last night as I was working out, I saw that the sky was full of stars, and this is in the city. I knew if I found the country, there would a huge amount more. This is what resulted.

This was just a minute nine second exposure.


This was a 10 minute exposure.


I would have gone longer, but my battery died. It was full charged, and two 10 minute exposures killed it.

I noticed that some of the shots were incredibly noisy, while others were very crisp and clear. I varied between 100 and 400 ISO and found 200 worked the best. 100 kept things way too dark and wasn't picking up the stars and 400 was way over exposed.
Some at 200 with f3.5 were still really grainy. Any answers as to why this was?