September, 2005:

nothing ever stays

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Irving’s Heritage District.

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated, as always.

a new way out

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Your comments and suggestions are appreciated, as always.

her arms in the setting sun

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This was taken just after sunset about 30 miles north of Dallas, TX facing South West. These clouds were the outer most reach of Hurricane Rita’s western edge.

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated, as always.

a reward from patience

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I almost didn’t wait for this one. The thick line of clouds was hiding the sun. It was over 30 minutes after “sunrise” and still, I’d seen nothing worth looking at. I was ready to pack up and find a spot to shoot in the other direction using the sun as light instead of as a subject. But, I decided to wait it out, at least 30 more minutes.

Not 5 minutes later, the sun pushed out from behind the clouds and this appeared. Patience is key and has such beautiful rewards.

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated, as always.

Stefanie 7

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I think I’ve given up on titling basic poses and portraits. If I were to name this, I guess it would be called “girl crouching with hand to cheek” but, that’s just as interesting as “Stefanie 7″.

This is a shot from a very fun shoot held on September 1st. I had such a damn good time at this shoot. Stefanie did too and you can tell she was a lot more comfortable by the look on her face.

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated, as always.

all of this space

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This is my first attempt at stitching photographs together. This is 6 separate images all overlapping and then combined backed together.

Done entirely in Linux using Hugin, Autopano-sift, and The Gimp.

Certainly not my best work, but historical and noteworthy none the less.

Of course every photograph in the world is best viewed big. But there’s more detail in this than usual because of the sheer width. If at all possible, look at this one “large”:http://static.flickr.com/30/43819106_97d64bf53d_o.jpg.

Since the EXIF data is sort of misleading, it’s not included in this image. All of the shots composing this image were taken at 18mm for 1/25sec @ f/8.0. They were all taken over the course of about one minute.

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated, as always.

not too close

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This is a very experimental shot. I wasn’t too sure out using barbed wire — out of focus, no less — to frame a shot like this, but I went for it. I like the way it turned out but I also acknowledge that it is quite edgy.

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated, as always.

Jess and I went on a photography trip yesterday. We went down gravel roads behind silos, cemeterys, and chicken coups. We found cows, and horses, and donkeys, and goats along with giant fields, bails of hay, and hard bright light from the West. All in all, we had fun.

But the best part was the new lens I bought on Tuesday — the “Sigma 18-50mm f/3.5-5.6 DC”:http://revjim.net/item/10512/. This lens is *outstanding*. I shot with it all afternoon switching only if I needed a higher powered lens and I am nothing short of impressed. The contrast is outstanding and it’s very sharp, even in the corners. It’s certainly sharp enough for digital. The range it has is fantastic for general shooting with a 1.5 cropping factor. It has a a healthy bit of distortion at 18mm, but certainly not any worse than my Vivitar Series One 19-35mm f/3.5-5.6. The AF is a tiny bit slow and a bit noisy. But, manual focusing feels great and the zoom ring has just enough give and take. For $109 it it well worth *every* penny and I can see no reason to hang on to the Vivitar any longer unless I ever wish to shoot film again.

I wonder if the Sigma 18-125 and the Sigma 18-200 are even close to this. The difference in cost is substantial (not in a pure dollars sense, but in relation to one another) over double for the 18-125, and over triple for the 18-200. But, with that kind of range, it would be well worth the cost. I only wish I could get my hands on one of these for a few days without having to pay for it. Granted, even the most expensive of the three is only $400, but, there’s no point in spending $400 on junk. Unfortunately, people aren’t really willing to rent glass as inexpensive as this.

don’t look away, I want this to last forever

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Your comments and suggestions are appreciated, as always.

curious

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This is Amy, one of “Gloria’s”:http://flickr.com/photos/revjim/tags/gloria/ beautiful daughters. It is also my first attempt at photographing an infant. I think I did pretty well, considering. It helped a lot that her mother was there. I need to work on my “making babies smile on command” skills.

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated, as always.