Month: November 2010

Thanksgiving in Temecula, California

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A few nights ago, I returned from visiting my family in California for Thanksgiving. I had a great time spending time with my brother and sister-in-law earlier in the week; one of the highlights was hiking at Echo Mountain outside Pasadena. For Thanksgiving, my brother departed for his in-laws’ home in Texas, and I stayed in California to visit Bill’s parents’ house in Temecula.

Along the way to a great Thanksgiving meal, we took some time to drive around Lake Skinner outside Temecula. There wasn’t too much to see; camping and fishing are the area’s favorite activities, and there weren’t many people around due to the holiday (and the chilly weather).

You can view a few of the better photos after the jump or view the set on Flickr containing more from Lake Skinner (and a nearby farm) as well as the hiking photos from earlier in the week. For these landscape photographs, a graduated neutral density filter would have helped in order to keep more detail in both the sky and the water. The problem with buying filters is that my variety of lenses have a variety of filter thread sizes, so the process of getting the right filters can be complicated and expensive.

With Canon’s professional lenses, I understand most lenses have the same filter thread size of Φ77mm, so was I upgrade lenses, I’ll develop a full set of filters.

I’m now back in New Jersey, ready to get back to work.

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Hiking at Echo Mountain, California

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Almost every Thanksgiving, I visit my family in California. I was able to spend a few days with my brother and sister-in-law, and we packed those days with a number of activities. We spent a few hours hiking the Sam Merrill Trail to Echo Mountain. It was a tough hike for me — a reminder that I could use more exercise.

The weather was beautiful, however, and the views were amazing. I brought a small contingent of my photography equipment with me on the hike, including my Canon Digital Rebel XTi and two lenses: the 17-85mm and 70-300mm. I used only the shorter zoom, leaving the longer telephoto in my backpack for the entire duration of the hike.

My brother brought his new iPhone. The phone contains an amazing little camera that automatically combines three exposures to create an HDR image. The result is quite interesting, and someone could have a lot of fun with that feature.

I added the three best photos to Flickr, but I’ll include all three here as well, after the jump.

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Nothing Beats Medium Format

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The photographs I’ve posted so far have all been taken with a Canon Rebel XTi, a 10.1 megapixel digital camera several years old. It’s small for a digital SLR, so it’s easy to carry around, particularly when I limit myself to just a few lenses. But nothing beats shooting with a medium format camera, like my Mamiya RZ67 Pro II. It’s a huge camera and inconvenient to transport, especially while hiking on the Delaware & Raritan Canal State Park trails, but the image quality is fantastic.

These photographs were developed by a local lab, who also scanned the negatives. I have since purchased my own scanner (an Epson Perfection V700), so I’ll be doing my own scans less expensively in the future. These photographs were taken on the campus of Princeton University and on trails that follow the canal near campus.

I love the quality of the image I can get with medium format. I’ll of course need to keep practicing my photography skills to make the best use of this, but there is nothing better than taking the time to create an image with a camera that generates a highly-detailed negative. I suppose if there’s anything better than medium format, which puts 35mm and digital cameras with smaller sensors to shame, it would be large format.

Continue reading this post for some photographs or take a look at my Flickr collection dedicated to medium format photography.

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Ben Folds and William Shatner

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Musician Ben Folds, one third of the former trio Ben Folds Five (and medium format photographer), must be BFFs with William Shatner. The former captain of the Enterprise teamed up with Ben for the musician’s side project, Fear of Pop. Shatner has a distinctive style of singing that most people would not call “singing.”

Some time after this first collaboration, William became the spokesperson for Priceline. In one commercial, he played against an evil William Shatner, with the requisite goatee, reminiscent of the archetypal evil twin Spock in the classic Star Trek episode, “Mirror, Mirror.” But more importantly, one commercial featured Shatner “singing” with piano accompaniment. The piano was manned by Ben, practically unidentifiable in comparison with the legendary Shatner. The first time I saw the commercial, I was unaware of the actor’s relationship with Ben Folds and the combination struck me by surprise.

William Shatner is now continuing his domination of television with a show I expected to be horrible: “Shit My Dad Says,” the show spelled, “$#*! My Dad Says,” and pronounced, “Bleep My Dad Says.” How good could a television show based on a Twitter feed really be? Well, it’s not so bad. In fact, a recent episode featured a good criticism of self-help gurus — people for which I, like the writers of this episode, have little respect.

The best part of the show is that the theme music and all of the interstitial music is performed by Ben Folds. Check out the short opening credit sequence after the jump. The full song, “Your Dogs,” is on Ben’s latest album and collaboration with author Nick Hornby, Lonely Avenue.

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TheGoodLife at City Streets

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Earlier this year, my first attempts at concert photography produced a lot of garbage. City Streets Cafe in East Windsor (New Jersey) is a bar and restaurant that has become the home for Bryan Douglas’s band, TheGoodLife. The band performs covers of today’s hot hip hop and pop music. I suggest seeing the band this coming Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, at City Streets in celebration of their first anniversary. I’m going to try to make the show, but I’ll be flying back from Los Angeles earlier that day and may not make it in time.

Getting quality photographs is a struggle at this venue. Like most bars, it’s dark, and with the band’s colorful and hyperactive lighting set-up, you never know what color you’re going to get. In the future, I’ll need to look out for stray spotlights.

Particularly with this shoot, it’s evident that the photographer’s job is not done once the memory card is full and the lens cap is placed back on the lens. My first attempts at post-processing shots from City Streets did not result in normal-looking final products. You can see some of the earlier attempts in the Flickr set linked below.

My post-processing skills have continued to improve though I’m still working on developing (get it?) the best methods.

View some of the selected photographs after the jump.

For the full set — not the full full set, because that would be about 1,200 photographs over three nights — take a look at the best 81 shots in this set on Flickr.

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Beck in AT&T Blackberry Torch Commercial

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This is the latest in a series about good music in commercials, if two posts does, in fact, constitute a series. This is Beck, known worldwide for his memorable guest star stint in an episode of Futurama ten years ago. Also, his albums with groovy beats are quite good. Even Sea Change had a number of excellent tracks.

The music in this ad is from the song “Black Tambourine” on Guero. Listen to the music after the jump.

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Portraiture Class

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A few weeks ago, I completed a class at the Arts Council of Princeton on portraiture, conducted by Peter C. Cook. Most of our class time was spent talking about portraiture, looking at photographs created by famous and non-so-famous individuals, and critiquing each other’s work.

We did, however, spend two sessions working with a model and one session in the darkroom developing our own black and white photography. This was my first opportunity to work with a model and my first time in a darkroom in the last twenty years. The last time I developed my own work was when I took a short session on black and white photography at summer camp as a kid.

I hope the model, Rebecca, doesn’t mind that I’m posting a few of my better shots (after the jump). My XTi produced the less appealing of all the photographs, so I won’t include them here. The best photographs came from my medium format Holga with black and white film and my Mamiya RZ67 Pro II with color negative film.

For the full collection, view the set on Flickr.

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The Doctor and a Dalek on Craig Ferguson

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Matt Smith is the latest actor to portray the Doctor in the long-running British television show, Doctor Who. He was on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson the other night, during which the British actor highlighted his insight on American society.

If you know me, you know I’ve been a long-time Doctor Who fan. I didn’t have high expectations for the latest series, but I was pleasantly surprised. Most of the stories were well done.

In an interesting move, speaking to the globalization of television (and to the fact that most American fans simply download the episodes from file sharing services, distributed by kind British folk, so they don’t have to wait too long before seeing the episodes air on SyFy or BBC America or whatever network airs the show on delay), this year’s Christmas special, “A Christmas Carol,” will air on Christmas Day both on the BBC and in the United States.

With the time difference, the five to eight hours between the airing may not be enough time for British viewers to record the show, encode it, and host it on bittorrent, and for American viewers to download it. Speaking of the latest Doctor Who news, the Children in Need special is airing Friday on the BBC, so check your local bittorrent server this weekend (if that sort of illicit activity appeals to you).

Back to the Craig Ferguson interview, which is available here in its entirety after the jump. Here were some of the highlights:

  • Matt Smith places Las Vegas on “the coast.”
  • He expected to meet more bears in the American suburbs.
  • Bow ties are cool.

Apparently, the cast and crew have been in Utah, filming the two-part Season Six premiere, set in the late 1960s. They should have chosen Zabriskie Point.

Here’s the video of the interview with Craig Ferguson. For those who aren’t familiar with either Matt Smith or Craig Ferguson, they are both a bit wacky. The interview is followed by a trailer for the next episode to be aired.

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Central Jersey Walk for PKD

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In early October, I supported my friends Stacey Trzesinski McClain and Randi Trzesinski with their efforts with the PKD (Polycystic Kidney Disease) Foundation. Stacey organized the Central Jersey Walk for PKD as she does every year, and I brought my camera along.

I prefer shooting outdoors if the weather is nice, so this was a good change from the indoor concerts. It was a little chilly that day in Mercer County Park, but it was a successful event with good participation. Walking undoubtedly kept the participants warm. As you can see from the photographs, the walk is a family event. Teams walked together at this event as a culmination of fundraising to support the organization.

My XTi was on call for the event, and I used a variety of lenses (28mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.8, 10-22mm, 17-85mm). See some of the results after the jump.

Most of the better photographs are being displayed on the PKD Foundation’s Flickr page.

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Massive Attack in Lincoln Car Commercial

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I enjoy about half the tracks on Massive Attack’s latest album, Heligoland, but after the first listen a few months ago I immediately identified Paradise Circus as the stand-out cut. I wasn’t the only one; a unique remix was recently used in a television commercial for the 2011 Lincoln MKX.

I didn’t expect Massive Attack to pop up in such a commercial commercial, but the group has donated all income from the production of music for the commercial to the clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico. This is a responsible way to offset money earned from the auto industry.

The commercial use of Paradise Circus is in stark contrast with the official video (NSFW), featuring a former small-time porn star reminiscing on her video work during the 1970s, against the song as a backdrop.

Watch the commercial — and more importantly, listen to the music — after the jump.

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