I’m not real big on photographing people…

But, you know… sometimes it’s nice to try new things.

Steven wanted some profile pictures for Facebook, so I obliged.

The reason I don’t really care much for photographing people is that I prefer more literal photos of people, and more artistic photos of non-people. Unfortunately, a lot of folks don’t like real literal photos of themselves (I don’t either, for that matter). So, now you’re having to do a lot of touch up and composing on the photos, and this takes a lot of time. Not only does it take a lot of time, but you also have to be careful to ensure that the result still looks like the person in the photo. That’s a fine balance to have to strike, and I admit that I’m not real practiced at it.

All that aside, portrait work can be rewarding. It’s tough, but when you get a good result (and I don’t claim that I have here) it’s very satisfying.

On the topic of retouching portraits, I stumbled onto a couple of really cool tutorials/videos today, by way of http://www.ilovephotography.com.

First is a site with some great tutorials of how to do skin work, and other touch up stuff. You’ll be shocked at the adjustments and how they are made. The techniques are great.

http://www.christyschuler.com/retouching

From her site, she also links to a really neat video which will show you just how much work can be / is done on a person before you see their face on a magazine cover/billboard.

http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.ca/bblank.asp?id=6895

Now, here are my most recent work. I’m putting up some before editing shots just to show the differences in what comes out of a camera compared to what I consider “finished”.

New Daylily…

I’m not sure what this one is. Looks like a double of some sort.

Nice firey look though.

W00! New Lens!

Ok, so, my new 24-105mm F/4L IS (I guess I’ll have to explain what all that means later, I’m too tired right now) came in today. I promptly went about trying to find something worthy to christen it with.

Here’s the first shot I’ve gotten jpg’d. Now, understand, I haven’t really spent any time photoshopping this. It’s just cropped, and adjusted ever so slightly in RAW, then spat to JPG. There’s been no crazy Photoshop sharpening, only a little of what’s available in Lightroom. Ed. note: I only just now noticed that there’s a bug on the ovary. Sweet.

Now, I know, you’re probably thinking, “Yeah… kinda looks like all the rest of them.”

And there’s where you’d be dead wrong.

Now, yes, for web viewing, there’s very little difference, but now I’ll show you where the glory shows up. Here’s a full crop of the above image. Check the detail on the stamen (cobweb!) and petals. You can’t see stuff like that in web pictures, because if I put the whole picture up like that it’d be four or five megabytes. I try to keep all my pictures at less than 500kb if I can help it. It keeps you people from having to endure five minutes of page loading.

Now, also for comparison is this, the full uncropped photo. Now you can see why the detail is so surprising, as that’s really a relatively small portion of the picture. In fact, I just sat down with the calculator, and the above crop is a little larger than 1/16th of the original image size. So, yeah… the crop’s file size is a little over 500k. That means the full file would be around 6mb I figure. You would save a little file size on the large amount of black space… there’s not much information to capture in “a big freaking black spot”.

So… I dunno. I’m happy. You happy?

Facebook’s Targeted Ads

Don’t you love these things?

I pulled up my profile today, and FB plopped in this on the side to greet me.

The title was “Flabby 27 year old?”

What’s funny is that below each ad, you can click a link that takes you to more ads. I got curious. Turns out, that ad above doesn’t say “27 and Overweight?” when you look there. I think that’s because you can report inappropriate ads, and that might look a bit like a condescending tagline. So, on the ad page, it just talks about energy drinks.

They certainly feel justified in calling me chubby on my own page, however.

Some of the other ads I’ve had were for “Coeds” or “Gay and Single in New York.” Obviously, the first one would presumably take you to pornography or things of that nature. I really don’t want to speculate on the other one.

The thing that bothers me is that these ads are obviously targeted at me because Facebook knows my age, sex, and relationship status. I mean… that’s a bit intrusive, I feel. Not to mention that I’m straight like a machinist’s edge (queue “straight pride” fistpump). So, they certainly missed on orientation.

But the real humor in the situation, to me, is that if you were to use these types of inflections in your workplace, you’d be fired in heartbeat. If I presented someone a card insinuating that they were fat, or asked if they were interested in a homosexual encounter, or proffered free porn (or things of that nature) they wouldn’t be able to get me out the door fast enough.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I really don’t care. If that happened to me in the workplace, I’d probably just laugh. But American culture is declining toward a situation where in ten years we’ll have to hand someone a note asking for their signature of permission before we can wish them “Good Morning!” I mean, you can’t really do or say anything publicly anymore. Not anything with meaning at any rate. I think this is why all our politicians seem so fake. They aren’t able to actually talk like real people without being lambasted for it. I’ll get into that later.

Advertising though… it’s a bastion of free speech and expression, even if what it expresses is dumber than a box of hair.

So, what are the stupid/inappropriate ads you’ve had targeted at you?

Playing with Soft Focus…

Messing around with some shots I took a while back.

I wanted to try something different. I had some pictures with some softer light in them, and wanted to try to accent the delicacy of the image. I know… that’s a bit artsy fartsy coming from me, but hey… it’s worth a shot.

So. Here’s what a normal image I output looks like.

And here is after I used a “Soft Focus” action in Photoshop.

It’s a subtle difference, but I like it.

Here are the rest of the ones I took. I really like the little magnolia.

Ian’s Guide to Shopping

Yeah, that’s right, I said it. Shopping. Aka, where to get deals.

I reckon I’ve been on these intarwebs for about 12 years now, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that people go online to buy stuff.

Actually, if there’s one thing I know, it’s probably that America is being ruined by poor perceptions and lack of self control regarding sex, food, and money, but that’s another rant. Today, it’s about spending the cash. Or electronically transferred monetary instruments, but you get the picture.

Ok, so in that vein, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that people go online to buy stuff. The second thing I know is this: shopping specific search engines like Froogle, or Pricewatch frequently yield poor results. With that in mind, here are the things I’ve learned in my experiences with shopping online.

There are all of about 14 billion online webstores, so figuring out where do go can be a real pain in the rear. What I’ve found is this, it really all depends on what kind of items you want to buy. Are you looking for new items, or will used be ok? Big ticket, or low dollar? Hobby specific, or directed at the general consumer?

We all know about Ebay, but what a lot of people don’t know is that it’s generally difficult to get a great deal on Ebay without doing a lot of research and spending a lot of time hunting around. Why? Shipping and handling, and selling fees. Ebay sellers get to tack on extra S&H on top of the ending price. Also, there are certain overheads involved with selling on Ebay that result in “new” items almost always being available in a regular online shop at a cheaper price.

Lilium

Ok, so, here are a few shots I took today. These are of true lilies, as opposed to the day lily in the post below. Just FYI, lilies are pretty much my favorite flower. Even these, which are fairly plain jane white (actually, they look a lot like ‘Casa Blanca,’ an oriental hybrid) lilies are beautiful. Something about them always strikes me. Anyway, I took about 30-40 shots and ended up with these three that I liked. One thing I’ve learned about photography… take lots of pictures. You can sort out the bad apples later, but if you don’t shoot enough, you’re almost always disappointed.

Second verse, same as the first…

Or other things of that nature.

So, I’m currently working on revamping my lens collection a bit. My first lens was a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX. It’s a decent lens. It’s got good reviews. I paid $400 for it. Check it out here. if you like.

Side note: I’m a huge Adorama fan. It’s one of the top online stores for photography equipment. Great service, great prices, and it’s pretty easy to use the site. I’ll probably do an “Internet Shopping” post in the near future and outline places that I feel offer the best online shopping experiences. For a brief preview: Adorama for photog specific stuff, Newegg (best webshop ever!) for computer or miscellaneous electronics, and Talkbass for used bass guitar stuff.

Ok, onto our story…

The issue I had with the Sigma is compound. One: It’s soft wide open. Which means, at wider aperatures the lens is less sharp than when it’s stopped down. For a brief overview of aperature and it’s effects on photography, please consult Wikipedia. Two: It’s a fixed length lens. No zoom-zoom. Now, many people will tell you that if you have a specific purpose in mind, a fixed lens will out perform a zoom lens. This is probably true, however if you’re not someone who takes the same types of shots over and over and over (such as in portrait work), then zoom lenses solve a lot of problems.

The 30mm lens is kind of a generic focal length. My specific Sigma lens was made only to work on APS-C cameras. It will not work on a “full frame” sensor camera. Basically, it’s a lens designed specifically for Canon’s cheaper DSLRs. Because of the crop factor, the 30mm length yields a field of view similar to a 50mm lens on a normal 35mm format camera. For years, a 50mm lens has been considered a standard walkabout lens. It isn’t wide angle, it isn’t telephoto… it produces shots similar to what the eye sees when you’re just looking around.

So, here’s the summary for point #2 above,  I find the 30mm length to be very limiting. I am continually running into shots that I either need a little more length, or a little wider angle.

Quick blurb: Shorter focal lengths give you a wider filed of view, longer focal lengths yield a narrower field of view. Thus, at an equal distance, a 300mm lens would give a 10x larger subject than my 30mm lens, but my 30mm lens would put a lot more “in the frame” so to speak. That’s all pretty intuitive if you’ve ever used a camera with a zoom lens, but I didn’t want anyone sitting there wondering what I was babbling on about.

So, my answer is selling the Sigma and now buying this. Without going into detail, that lens will do everything the Sigma would do except for one thing (freezing motion due to a large maximum aperature which leads to faster shutter speeds), and that’s something I don’t really need. So, in the near future, I hope to be dazzling you all with superior shots of grandeur from across the countryside… or whatever.

So, I needed a place to store some thoughts…

and so I get to thinking, “I need a blog.”

This, in and of itself, is probably normal. I mean, lots of people do these things nowadays, and they aren’t all highwater wearing dorks.

So, you see, what this is, exactly, is a spot where I can let loose a bit. Maybe I’ll toss up some photos, rant about politicians, debate racism, or espouse religion. You never can tell with these things. I figure, mostly, I’ll just vomit out whatever happens to be on my mind at the moment. Thus, the title… “A turlet for my mind.”

That way, I can always flush it all away.

We’ll get things started with some photos. I’ve been a little irritated with Facebook, because they compress the crap out of any photos you upload. So, with that said, here’s a few from the past that I’ve always wanted to put up in a larger format.