Author: ruminator

The Selfie

ruminator

selfie-at-70mphIt’s funny that making a self-portrait took on the coined work selfie sometime over the last few years. Photographers make self-portraits in a number of ways and have probably since photography began. Most of the time it requires a camera on a tripod or other self support that is fired remotely.

I used to use a bulb release that pushed a bit of air that activated a plunger to release the shutter. I’ve also used self-timers with my cameras. Now it’s more common to use a wireless remote because many cameras are equipped with wireless receivers. (My Sony NEX-5N has an infrared receiver, for example.) With a mobile phone front-facing camera it’s trivial.

Probably about 15-years ago, I made this capture with a Canon Elph APS film camera. I was riding the bike at 70 mph on my way home to Lubbock. The sun was setting. I stuck my hand in the tank bag, put the Canon’s lanyard around my write, turned it on, held it at arm’s length, and depressed the shutter. I took a couple of frames to be sure I got a decent capture.

This is one of my favorite self-portraits, or selfies. It was a fun capture near the end of a long day’s ride and something unique to my history. That’s a good thing.

Nobody’s Home

ruminator

nest
On walkies the other afternoon the Girl I paused by this empty nest we see almost every day. I believe I had the Bausch & Lomb 100mm f/2.3 mounted on my D300. I probably used a stop of about f/5.6, which is a sweet spot for this lens.

Bausch & Lomb

ruminator

fp1fp2My friend Les loaned me this old Bausch & Lomb 100mm f/2.3 lens. He added a Nikon F-mount and focusing helicoid to it. I took it out and spent some time with it. It’s obvious from the image at the right that the lens is a bit soft wide open, but is much better by f/4 or f/5.6. That is shown in the second image below, that was shot at about f/5.6. The background is not quite as pleasant, but the image is much sharper.

The image quality is quite good and the bokeh is pleasant (smooth). It’s a good lens. The iris fascinates me — so many blades. So the aperture is nearly circular throughout the full range of stops.

It’s a really neat piece of vintage glass.

Valentine’s Day 2014

ruminator

Lost LoveWife and I always celebrated St. Valentine’s Day, although it never was a huge thing for us. I think we saw it as another opportunity to celebrate being together and to do something a little special for the kids.

I dropped the ball this year and let the day creep up on me. I know my kids are all old enough that they no longer need a heavy dose of sugar from their dad. But I still remember the day and the celebration of close relationships that it represents.

Happy Valentine’s Day, all.

Support Group

ruminator

locksI went to the bereavement support group for the second time today. There were about eight women and two men. That told me something right away (well, a couple of things actually). They asked me to introduce myself, so I did. Same for the other male.

The coordinator had a couple of printed packets she wanted to work through. So, she started and then gave each person there an opportunity to say something regarding each topic. She asked people if they’d done their homework.

Some of the widows there are quite close to their loss. Many of them lost their loved one a couple of months ago. A few of us are farther out. I think all of us are trying to accommodate our new status.

We shut down after about an hour and a half. The women gathered about to visit. It is the way of women to deal with their grief by sharing it in this fashion. Most men prefer to deal with grief in private (where it’s safe) and by doing things. That’s one of the big things I learned in my reading.

I’m also a lot farther down the road than most of the folks there. I don’t mean that to be bragging — because I don’t have it all together. But I did the work to address my loss and am still doing the work.

As I left, I thought “This really isn’t for me. Maybe it would have been six or nine months ago, but not any more.” I still have work to do and I have a good idea where that work is. But I don’t think I need the group to do that work. I just need to keep my eyes forward, deal with my grief when it rises, and continue working out my plans. I think it’s going to be more about deciding what I want and then executing that from here on forward. I can do that.

Edit: Since finishing this piece, I got started thinking again. I left the meeting this afternoon feeling pretty good — as in buoyed. I wondered about that in the context of what I learned by going through this second meeting. I finally figured out that what made me feel good was making a life-decision. I decided not to attend more meetings. They aren’t the right thing for me to do.

Then I figured out that when I make a life-decision that is both logical and feels right, I feel better. I get a boost from making a decision… taking an opportunity that I perceive to be moving forward. This is a good thing and I’m glad for the little boost.

Discarded

ruminator

Discarded

While walking my Girl, I often come upon interesting (read odd) things. One afternoon while heading out to the sagebrush lands, I found this old aerosol can half-buried in the soil. I like the juxtaposition of tones and textures, so I paused to make the capture.

Mandelbrot

ruminator

Mandlebrot

One morning a couple of weeks ago, the Girl and I went walking. It was a cold, frosty morning but I had my D300 along with me. The frost pattern on the neighbor’s car reminded me of the Mandelbrot set, so I made the capture.

Later, I decided the image might be interesting if processed as a black and white shot, then toned. It was used for a class assignment and the result was interesting, at least to me.

Icy

ruminator

Icy

This was a capture made on morning walkies. The icicles were just gorgeous with the sun shining through them. The capture was made with my D300 and a 105mm f/4 micro-Nikkor. The black and white conversion and toning was done with Photoshop.

A Pair

ruminator

A Pair

A couple of weeks ago I made an attempt to photograph wildlife. Out of about four hours spent in the field, I came home with a couple of decent captures. This is one of them. It was shot with my Sony-NEX5N and a TEVE Berlin lens converted to Nikon mount.

Modern Photography

ruminator2 Comments

Pentax 645Many years ago when I first began making images seriously1, my grandmother bought me a subscription to Modern Photography. It was probably my first exposure to a fan magazine, a magazine that floats the area somewhere outside the professional’s trade magazine or journal. It was a source of a lot of information that I used as I learned how to handle a camera.

The good parts were that they reviewed and tested a lot of cameras, lenses, and films. They also had a solid testing regimen. (I’ll get to that in a moment.) All the big boys advertised in it and the back was filled with the discounter’s advertisements. Those were places I spent quite a lot of time, because I had a lot of time and no money. I do not recall if I ever bought anything from the big-city discounters. But I sure poured over those multi-page advertisements.

I hadn’t realized it, but learned this morning that Modern Photography is long gone. When I read about that this morning, I felt that old familiar sadness that seems to come more these days. Something good is lost. That is the nature of life. Everything dies. It’s a good thing to remember that and enjoy those things that come into your circle. Because they are fleeting and might be there for a moment or a lifetime. But they will pass.

While researching lenses, I came across an interesting site, adaptall-2.org. This is a Tamron fan site dedicated to Tamron manual focus (best I can tell) glass. They have a lot of data posted and comparison test results with many legendary OEM lenses.

The Modern Photography connection is derived from the adaptall-2.org connection. The site curators are on the lookout for test results published by Modern Photography because the magazine’s testing regimen was more, um, regimented that that of the other big fan magazine, Popular Photography.

So, my experience with Modern Photography has come full circle, it seems. I started out reading (voraciously) the contents of that magazine decades ago. I lost the thread somewhere along the line, although I still read an issue now and again. Now I find myself back as a very serious amateur, researching cameras and glass once again. The work the Modern Photography staff did remains pertinent because my love of the art is not in the modern auto-everything technology, but in the technique and art of using cameras (analog or digital) and good glass to capture something interesting.

The camera is only a box that holds film or sensor. The magic is in the intellect, soul, and skill of the photographer. The connection between medium and subject is the glass. The box has to do its job — carry subject to medium and provide the exposure the photographer intends. The glass is the key connection and the better the glass the less distorted the image will be on the medium.

And that is my circle. Decades ago I was exposed to the slick pages of Modern Photography. We parted ways somewhere in between as my life changed and life imposed itself on me. Now that I’m back after the image again, I find myself confronted with the ghost of Modern Photography through the curation of the adaptall-2.org site owners. That fascinates me.

1I don’t do very much that I don’t do seriously — grammar Nazi, parse that!