Tag Archives: Photography

Downtown Tulsa – Doing the Lartigue Shuffle

I own a lot of cameras. Three of them are pretty good the rest are just plain weird. At least to some. One of my favorites is the Takashi Digital Effects 521 camera.  It is a 5 MP digital camera with fixed focus, several special effects modes, and most intriguing, no shutter. Yep, that is right no shutter. You press the button and the sensor scans the image. So what you say? I’ll tell you what. If you get the camera moving while the sensor scans you can get an interesting effect named the Lartigue Effect.

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So I can make all the buildings sway to the left.

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And I can make them lean to the right.

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Or I can make them shimmy in place.

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The camera can take regular pics. They are kind of fuzzy just do the low fi nature of the device. I have to tell you that I love the look of the photo above.

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Or I can make it shoot in a negative mode.

I have fun with my funky little low tech over priced camera.

What do you have fun with?

Instagram Love

I’m addicted to Instagram. I like creating and uploading pictures and I like looking at photographs of the people I follow. It is crazy the number of photos out there. Every once in a while a company will repost a picture of mine. (After asking permission of course.) That is great because they typically have a lot more followers than I do and the pics get more recognition. Below are two such examples.

Instagram - Quik Trip

Quik Trip is a Tulsa based convenience store chain that IMHO beats the crap out of any other convenience store I have ever seen. One rainy morning I was filling my car with gas and thought that the store with the wet parking lot and ominous clouds might make a decent pic. It did and I got a few dozen “likes” (Likes are like crack to us Instagram addicts). Quik Trip asked permission a couple months later to repost it and it got a pretty good response.

Instagram - NewsOK

This pic is kind of grainy. I was downtown yesterday morning and noticed that the colored drunk-driver-proof fountain and the blue Christmas lights make a decent pic. So I went up there and tried to get an interesting pic somehow. These guys came walking by headed off I think to the Iron Gate ministry to get some breakfast and I took a pic of them walking by the fountain and then cropped it close. (That is why it is so grainy.  NewsOK, the online arm of the Daily Oklahoman reposted the pic

I have about two thousand pics on Instagram, some good, many bad, and a whole bunch in the muddling middle. I find it a lot of fun.

Philbrook Museum’s Tempietto

Tempietto Topaz Impressions Colored Pencil I

Sometimes I think I take too many photographs of some scenes. LIke the  tempietto in the gardens at Philbrook Museum of Art for instance. I think it is one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever seen especially with the reflecting pool in front of it.

Based on a tip from Spare Parts and Pics I downloaded the  Topaz’s Impressions program. It converts photographs to look like a painting or drawing. The above pic uses one of the “Colored Pencils” presettings. The program is a little expensive, at least for me, so I’m “messing” with it on a 30 day free trial. Let me know what you think of it. For comparision the original photo is below. It is not SOOC though. It is an HDR composite. Just in case you are new to this blog I need to tell you that I don’t worship pics straight out of the camera (“SOOC”).

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Let me know what you think!

Linking with Water World Wednesday

 

Skywatch Friday – Neighborhood Sky

#sunset in the neighborhood #best_skyshots #tulsa #oklahoma #igersok

The family went out to eat this weekend. When we got home the sky was ablaze.

And I cheated a little bit. The free generic android phone I use has an in-camera HDR function and I amped it up a little more with my favorite camera app Snapseed. Plus a car turned down the street at just the right time to add an exclamation mark to the whole thing. And then I posted it to Instagram and Facebook. So I’m a multiple non-repentant cheater.

Have you ever cheated? Tell me about it. I promise not to tell anybody but my closest thousand friends. Confession is good for you.

Skywatch Friday

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Foto Fun Friday – Sting Edition

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This week’s number was 1414 and what came up for me was Sting. Heather and I found him in concert at an Indian casino in southern Oklahoma just north of Dallas. I took my good camera to the concert and endured numerous finger waving ushers to put my camera away. You kidding me dude, you charge this much for tickets, and no pictures. No way Ray!!

I put together a blog post and I got a tweet from Sting’s tour that they liked it and another tweet from the tribe that owned the casino that they liked my post also. So…. I’ll keep taking pics at concerts. I mean they are selling music not photos right!! Plus we had cocktails with Sting’s keyboard player David Sancious. He is a very nice and gracious guy who got his start in Bruce Springsteen’s E street band. This year he toured with Peter Gabriel in Europe and is now touring with Sting and Paul Simon on their tour “On Stage Together.” We spent a lot of time talking with Mr. Sancious  and I had my camera and I was not going to ask him for a photo. Sorry, it didn’t feel right.

Foto Friday Fun

Skywatch Friday – Dogwalk in the Greenbelt Edition

Skywatch Powerlines
I don’t live out in the country or spend much time on a beach or anywhere else where I have unimpeded views of the sky.  I live in the burb’s of south Tulsa so my views of the sky are pretty messed up I guess. I’ve got powerlines and telephone lines and light poles and cell phone towers, ugly ass bradford pear trees, and my neighbors houses, and all sorts of other stuff occluding my view.  I don’t worry about it though, that is where I live for good or bad. I’ll pick my shots to avoid the as much as the noise that I can and go with it .

I don’t worship unfiltered SOOC images either. I use all sorts of filters, effects, and treatments. Sorry about that but often the image doesn’t match what I see. I don’t even know what SOOC means any more with all the in camera processing available now.

Anyhow we were on a family dog walk in the greenbelt the other night and the sun was going down but I had all these powerlines in the way but what the heck!!

How about you? Do you go for the pure shot or settle for less?

Skywatch Friday