prospect hill

prospect hill
Originally uploaded by mehampson

cone of spookiness

cone of spookiness
Originally uploaded by mehampson

I got the mottled background by placing the flash behind the shell and the pine needles I was using as a backdrop, and firing it through a DIY diffusing box. I slowed the shutter speed to 1/125th with an aperture of f/11, and the needles were backlit in this strange way. To keep the shell from being partially silhouetted, I had a strip of posterboard on the left that was acting as a reflector.

little cup

little cup
Originally uploaded by mehampson

Finally, some green starting to show outside. And rain, too -- not always great for photography, but I love a rainy spring day.

curious

curious
Originally uploaded by mehampson

This one took a bit of thinking to make it work. The basic problem was that the bird, great as he is, was completely lost in the bush. Camouflage and all that. Plus, the branches completely overwhelmed him. My solution was to dodge the sparrow slightly (about a half a stop) and burn all the foreground branches by the same amount. This made the image more visually cohesive -- less chaotic -- and also a bit more dramatic by giving the sparrow a spotlight.

pine

pine
Originally uploaded by mehampson

Off-camera flash

The most cost-effective piece of equipment any photographer can buy is a flash unit that can be triggered off-camera. Learning to use one effectively will do wonders for the quality of your photography, and Strobist is the place to learn it. (I mean, besides "wherever you use your camera". Obviously.) One of the main sponsors of the website, Midwest Photo, has just released the LumoPro LP120, a new flash that looks to be an excellent piece of gear.

The LP120 is completely manual -- you have to think about how you're using it and how you're making your exposure. But this is really not as hard as it sounds, and Strobist makes it pretty simple to learn. In exchange for being a little further up the learning curve than a TTL speedlight, it's a fraction of the price without sacrificing any of the control. It has many options for connecting to your camera, six power levels, the head zooms and swivels, and it has a two-year warranty backing it up.

I've shopped at Midwest Photo before and have been quite happy, and they're actively involved in the discussions at Strobist and on Flickr. It's great to see this kind of win-win situation, where we get good, inexpensive equipment, and a company worth doing business with makes a profit. I wish I could justify picking up an LP120, but I just got a Vivitar 285HV not too long ago. It, or the next generation, will definitely be the next flash I pick up though.

Grand Union

Grand Union
Originally uploaded by mehampson

set sail

set sail
Originally uploaded by mehampson

A mural in Harvard Square.

curled

curled
Originally uploaded by mehampson

A leaf photo I just realized I'd never uploaded.

flight

flight
Originally uploaded by mehampson

Another ring-billed gull. Bird photography is not easy without super-long telephoto lenses but I'm quite happy with some of the ones I've been getting. They're not detailed portraits of shy and wild animals but I like this form quite a bit. In no small part because I can actually do them.

gull, clouds

gull, clouds
Originally uploaded by mehampson

I was walking along the bank of the Charles River when this ring-billed gull flew overhead. I basically just hit the autofocus button and took the picture, hoping for the best, and it worked -- one of the advantages of having a lens with a ring-type ultrasonic motor for its autofocus, besides the aesthetically-pleasing silence of it, is that it's fast and accurate.

the charles, the weeks footbridge, cambridge

the charles, the weeks footbridge, cambridge
Originally uploaded by mehampson

I went on a photo walk today with the 28-105mm zoom, a new knock-off ebay lens hood, and a Hoya Pro1 DMC circular polarizer.

The lens hood is not the easiest thing to get on and off of the lens, but it was about a third of the price of a genuine Canon hood, so I'm not complaining. It does what it's supposed to do perfectly: it shades the front of the lens from light coming in along the sides. That light doesn't form part of the image, but it does affect it by reducing contrast or causing irregular splotchy bits of light to appear. Canon doesn't ship lens hoods with most of its lenses (the professional L series are the exception) and the prices they charge are frankly ridiculous, so I'm all for getting the imitation off-brand lens hoods. The one I got even has soft black flocking on the inside, to help further reduce any reflections off of the plastic. A nice touch.

The circular polarizer is not an item I would buy cheaply. Essentially they work by filtering light based on its polarization, a characteristic the human eye can't really detect. Glaring reflections tend to be regularly polarized, for example, and light in the blue sky, so using a circular polarizer on a bright, sunny day can seriously enhance the color and contrast of your images.

Cheaply made circular polarizers are not worth the money: they can change the focus point of the lens, reflect light back and worth between itself and the sensor, color the image, and so on -- and that's not getting into quality control problems.

Anyway, it's getting nice enough to actually get outside and take some photos. That's a huge relief. I can't wait for spring, so things start to green up a bit.

sparrow, house

sparrow, house
Originally uploaded by mehampson

It wasn't the best light or the best camera setup for bird photography, but on a walk around the neighborhood this bold little house sparrow let me get within a few feet.

seiko 2

seiko 2
Originally uploaded by mehampson

A second watch photo.

chronotography?

chronotography?
Originally uploaded by mehampson

My fantastic little dive watch. Good lighting practice, and a shiny little thing to look at.

Potatoscape 1

Potatoscape 1
Originally uploaded by mehampson

Someone actually googled 'potatoscape' and it brought them to my Flickr page. So I checked, and I am the number one search result for 'potatoscape'.

That's cool.

traces

traces
Originally uploaded by mehampson

Trying to repair an old Quantaray flash, I decided the circuit board made for a better photograph than piece of my lighting kit. I made this by holding my working Vivitar flash behind the circuit board, setting it to full power, and taking a normal exposure.

more diodes

more diodes
Originally uploaded by mehampson

More and more electronics. So many tiny things to photograph.

Comment troubles and Strobist

For some reason, Blogger isn't letting me comment on my own posts. Curious. But I do appreciate the ones I've gotten so far.

And for some actual photo content, check out the latest post on Strobist, about a photo shoot done in the Large Hadron Collider. Strobist has done more than practically any other resource to improve my photography in the past year, and every post is required reading, but this one involved Physics, so go read!

Schottky diodes

Schottky diodes
Originally uploaded by mehampson

More electronica.

resistors

resistors
Originally uploaded by mehampson

We had about a foot of snow dumped on us yesterday, so I've been staying inside and taking photographs of some electronic component parts I have sitting around.

Tibet Travel Photos

Check out this excellent photo blog of a trip to Tibet taken by its author in 1987. It's not terribly long, but any street photography that has Mt. Everest in the background has my attention.

silicon garden

silicon garden
Originally uploaded by mehampson

The sharpness and detail of my macro photography has been seriously improved with my recent tripod and ballhead upgrades.

squirrel

squirrel
Originally uploaded by mehampson

Shot with the EF 28-108mm I reviewed.