Holiday break

Turns out I've been too busy to bother posting, expect things to pick up again next week or the week after.

Happy holidays!

Let there be light

I made a small addition to my small collection of photography gear today (if it even qualifies as a collection).

That's a Nikon SB-400 "Speedlight" ("Speedlight" is apparently what Nikon calls a flash to make it sound cool.)  It's roughly the most basic add-on flash on the market, but it's a fairly big improvement over the flash that's built into my D40.  Case in point ... the following two pictures:

A mannequin's arm with the D40's built-in flash

The mannequin's arm with the SB-400

Ignoring the fact that neither of these pictures are good, the first one has very obvious hard shadows under the table and behind the arm, as well as a bright reflection on the elbow and pretty complete wash-out of the table surface.  The light also falls off a lot toward the edges of the picture, and this wasn't even taken as a particularly wide shot.  The second one, by comparison has much more natural looking light.  Both of these pictures were taken using the camera's TTL (Through The Lens) system to let it automatically set the flash intensity, but with the SB-400 I was able to tilt the flash to point upward from the camera to reduce the intensity of the light hitting the arm and table.  From where I sit it looks like a pretty huge improvement for the zero effort it took to get the better shot.

The wash-out in the first picture has been a very large problem for me when trying to take pictures of people and objects, so I'm pretty excited to have just a little bit more flexibility in my lighting.  The SB-400 can also be moved off-camera with a cheap cable, so my photo taking capabilities have just improved fairly notably.

Sell fear to the sheep

Wherever you happen to be located, and since you're reading this I'm fairly confident in the assumption you're not living isolated in the woods, there are almost certainly great bands making great music in your community. You walk past their posters every day on the street, you probably "know a guy who knows a guy who's in this band". Do yourself a favour ... go out and see them play.

Friday night I went out to see Suburban Syndrome play (the second time I've seen them) and it was an awesome show.  Not only a great local band, but one of the best metal bands from anywhere I've heard (and I'm not just sucking up because they're on my followers list!)

Enjoy some songs, courtesy of their youtube channel.

Playing tourist in South Korea

I was fortunate enough in the last year (-ish) to make two trips to South Korea for work.  I brought my camera both times, but didn't find much time to get out and take pictures.  Notably disappointing, especially given that I was in and around Seoul, was that I didn't get even one of my beloved city-at-night pictures.

On my first trip, which would have been around this time last year, we did manage to get out and "see the sights" on our last day there.  The trip and the little bit of sightseeing were great ... the resulting images on my SD card couldn't do it justice.  I pretty much got a lot of touristy pictures against bright, overcast skies, nothing as aesthetically pleasing as my pictures from Ottawa. Nonetheless, here they are.

Most of these pictures were taken in Seoul on my last day there.  I did a small amount of post-processing on these, notably white balance and contrast adjustments.

Is this a cure or is this a disease?

Listening to Audioslave today, I'm just going to post a link to one song from each of their albums.

"Show Me How to Live"


"#1 Zero"


"Wide Awake"

You can't always pick the dog you find

I went to see Econoline Crush at the Pawn Shop last night, it was an incredible show.  Give me a great band and I'll always choose to see them in a small bar (like last night) vs. an arena or stadium (like when I saw them play at a festival in 1998).  Here's a couple of songs to enjoy, all of which they played last night.

"Home"


"Surefire"


"Wicked"

My favourites gallery

Continuing the flow of posts I would classify as "mundane" at best, I'd like to draw attention to my Favourites gallery on Gallerama.  The idea is basically to filter through my various sets of pictures and focus on the ones I'd like to draw more attention to.  I'll hopefully continue adding photos to this gallery over time.

I think there's only one photo in the set that I haven't already shared on this blog, I guess now would be the opportune time.

Along the Ottawa River - May 2010

The thought has occurred to me that having a "favourites" gallery of my own pictures is, or at least borders on, narcissistic. I've decided I will quite willingly accept in that if it is the case.