Category Archives: Photography

Tilt Shifting

Have you ever heard of Tilt Shift? I hadn’t until I got interested in how bloggers can make some photos appear like miniatures, such as this of Columbus Circle in New York City.

Columbus Circle NYC fake tilt-shift
(image by “avhell” on Flickr, Creative Commons License)

Here is my first attempt. I know that it is kind of rough.

Tilt Shift Exp 2

Basically it is an optical illusion created by blurring the edges of the photograph. It can be done via a special lens or various software. It seems to work better on photographs with an above ground perspective.

It is an interesting effect. Have you ever tried it?

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My new Takashi 521 FX Camera

Takashi Picnik collage 1

I got some money for my birthday a while back so I used it to by a new camera. It is a Takashi 521 Digital FX.  It is digital camera that simulates an analog camera. It has several built in modes. One can take pics in a “normal” mode and also black and white, sepia, negative, and various color tints. So its a fun camera to play around with. I’m still working with it and these are some of my first pics.

Takashi Picnik collage 2

As you can tell it is fairly low tech but I think that I’m going to like the old timey feel of the pics.

Takashi Picnik collage 3

Have I taken leave of my senses? Probably! I’ll still be using my high tech digital cameras and my low tech Diana Mini film camera. The Takashi will be another tool in the bag so to speak.

SuperPizzaBoy’s Camera

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I have been going through SPB’s camera looking at the photos he has taken the last several months. These are some he took at Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum at a gathering of family of friends in honor of his grandmother Nana’s birthday.

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That’s Nana to the right, Sweetie, Me, and then family friends Donna and John.

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I think the boy is doing ok with his camera.

Analog Photography

This year I am ringing in the New Year by adopting the technology of toy cameras from the 1960’s.

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Nana, (aka “Greatest MIL in the world”) bought me a new camera for Christmas. It is a Diana Mini. It is very retro and very low tech. It uses 35mm film, no autofocus, no auto exposure, no auto nothing. You have to manually set the focus and guess at the exposure, you even have to advance the film manually. It’s made out of plastic, even the lens. I just love the look of film and have been attracted to Lomography, the art of low tech analog photography.

I’ve had a lot of fun with it, although my first roll of film was a complete disaster, between forgetting to take the lens cap off, not advancing the film, not setting the focus right, and other problems the first roll of film was a complete mess. For professional assistance contact the video production company in San Antonio. However, I salvaged one photo. I call it: “The Spirits of Christmas.”

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I think the bottle was empty when I took the photo, I really don’t remember.

I had a little more luck with the second roll.

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There is something about film, especially low tech film, that I just love. The colors seem deeper and the photos seem to have more “immediacy” about them, plus they seem like they are from a long time ago. I know that I’m not making much sense. I just like them, when I remember to take the lens cover off.

The processing is pretty cheap. I go to Walgreens, they charge $2.99 if all you want is the CD and no prints. I think they feel sorry for me. “Well we tried Yogi.”

If you are geocacher there is the added bonus that the plastic containers for the film are great cache containers. They are waterproof.

I’m still a learning. For such a low tech device it is taking me a while to get the hang of it.

By the way, I wish you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year!!

Microsoft Image Composite Editor

Microsoft Image Composite Editor is a free handy tool from Microsoft that combines multiple images into one such as panoramas.

I was at the airport picking somebody up today and I took pictures of a mural depicting various people in the energy business. The mural was too big to fit into one shot so I took five photographs with the idea of combining them somehow.

The result

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All I did was open the photographs into the program and it did the rest.

It’s free, check it out at the link above.