In the Lab.

Unfortunately in the last week or so I have been packing up my belongings up so that I can move this weekend to a new townhouse about 2.5 miles further north. I would tell you all about it but that would take too long and I dont want to bring up the headache it was looking for a new place.

Bunsen Burner

Vacuum Pump

With most of my spare time devoted to sorting out the treasures from the trash I have not really had much time to take photos. I thought about trying to take photos of my packing. All I can say is that you must be a very good artist to make the boxes I have at home look interesting.

Reaction in progress

HPLC

At least 3 days a week I take my camera with me to work. Now work is not that interesting, but I have endevoured to make it interesting. I work in a chemistry lab and although most people think about a Dr Frankenstein lab with beakers overflowing with bubbling broths, it is in fact a different matter and for me a much harder place to photograph. However over the last few days I have been trying to get some interesting photos around the lab. I hope you like what I took.

Reaction under vacuum

Nature in Macro

I really do like taking pictures of the natural world. Here are a few pictures of the natural world around me using my Fujifilm S5200. I believe all these pictures are taken using my macro lense addition. I hope you like them as much as I do!

Grass

Early developed Pine Cone

My Garden

Daffodils at OSU

Leaf

Digital Manipulation

So if you read my profile on my photo website you should come across this:

About Me:
I prefer not to adjust the photos I take. What comes out of the viewfinder is what ends up on the page. So what you see is what my eye sees. I will only crop and rotate when necessary. Sometimes sections are decoloured to emhasise others. That is all the digital manipulation I like to do.

About a month or so ago I downloaded and installed Picassa. Now Picassa is a cool program. Google developed it. It is a bit invasive in the fact that it will search your entire hard disk looking for photos, however once installed its really nice. You can drag and drop files between folders. The really nice thing about Picassa is that i got to play with a few "photoshop" applications. Mainly some contrast and colour adjustments. I have been using The Gimp for a few years now (a freware vertion of photoshop). I just found it a bit labourious to adjust each photo and save a new copy. Picassa allows you to make as many changes as you want, but the cool thing is that it is within the program so that no permanent changes are made. You can of course save either high res or lower res for blogging of what changes you have made. This has made adjusting photos a lot more accessable and a lot more fun. I will leave it up to you to see what you think of how I have adjusted the photos.

Reeds outside Krone Conservatory, Cincinnati Ohio

Ice on the outside of my car window, Columbus Ohio

Lake District, Cumbria

Aligator in Kiawah, South Carolina

Youth and Maturity

I'm now solidly in my mid 20's, 26 come january in fact and I've started to notice a few things.

More and more of my friends are getting married and having babies

My metabolism has slowed and my beer gut has increased.

I've found more and more of my friends are acting more like adults than "young adults".

What do I mean my adults vs. young adults? Especially when I was young I felt that when you hit 18 you can imediately call yourself an adult! However I look back at myself then and my friends now who are a few years younger than me and I see that limitless energy that I once had. Where has it gone? Can I ask it to come back to me? Or will it leave me forever like a jilted lover?

Now for those people out there who feel that I have unfairly labeled them adults when they will prefer to the young adults still - I'm sorry.

Anyway back to the story.

This weekend I went to a "training day" for my martial art. We call it a gup clinic but you get the picture. we were up at 6.30 or there abouts and we were done training at 5pm. So all in all it was a long day playing with swords and throwing kicks into mid air! There was about 150 people there training and I would say that close to 50 or more made it out to a picnic afterwards. And this is where I started to see the youth divide. Some of the young adults were still pumped from the day. Although still tired, they had energy to burn. Then there were some of slighly older friends who while still being active - were deceidedly less buzzing with energy. The more I think about it, the more I feel like an adult, 8 years on from when I first started thinking this. Was I wrong back then? Am I wrong now? The more mistakes I make and the more I learn, I could see how I could feel myself becoming more of an adult. Maybe being an adult is a completely subjective thing like appreciation of a photograph. One of the many things I know about my friends is that being an adult is more a choice than anything. Some retain that youthful energy long past me and there are others who have chosen a calmer route.

Youthful Energy







Tranquil Adulthood

Martial Arts and Goodbyes

It was a sad day yesterday.

I have been doing martial arts on and off for six years now. I started in the second year of my undergrad. There was a "fair" going on in one of the gyms of my university. I wondered round looking at people sporting a variety of equipment and neoprene. I always grew up wanting to practice some type of martial art and this was the day I wanted to start. I first saw a Karate demo in which people were punching other peoples faces until they bled. This was not for me. I then saw Tae Kwon Do doing theit stuff. I was imediately mesmorized by one of the students who had a mowhawk that was shaped just so that it could poke through his headguard. This was not for me.
At last I came to the Judo table and there was Dan, a slight fellow who was very nice. We talked about judo, he told me about the rules - no hitting (good!) and how useful it is. Did you know that 90% of fights end on the ground and judo is 50% ground fighting!

Dan and Nick (OMG) - 2002 APS 24mm

The Club was then run by 2 students Dan and Nick. Dan, a budding photojournalist and Nick, a budding bouncer / national short stick champion. This was a great start for me. A year later Nick had left and Dan and I were runnning the club.

York Uni Judo Club - 2003 APS 24mm*

I faded out of the martial arts world when I left my undergrad city of York. Reaching the level just before the transition to black belt. I started Judo again when I got to Ohio State, but it was not the same and I soon left.

Dan and me - 2004 APS 24mm*

A year or so later my friend Nico introduced me to Tang Soo Do, a tradional Korean martial art a lot like Karate or Tae Kwon Do. This was where I began to notice that the clubs that had turned me off before were not the arts themselves but the way the particular club was run. Martial arts areeally good for me as a photographer is that I can get some cool photos of some cool stuff.

8 second exposure - he broke 30 1 inch concrete blocks in 10 seconds. Awesome!

The 2007 Masters Extravaganza was in Valparasio IN.

What is sad is that the more martial arts I do, the more the people I train with begin to feel like a family. Yesterday my friend Lindsay took her last regular class at Buckeye Tang Soo Do, she is moving to North Carolina and it makes me sad. So I thought I would dedicate this post to her!

One of the nicer pictures I got of Lindsay

Tang Soo Do Yondanja

Lindsay had to spar everyone in the club including our instructor!

A Bunch of idiots!*

*I unfortunately did not takes these photos as I am in them - Can you spot me in every one?

Candid Photography

Ok. Its been a while since I last posted. About 3 weeks. I could ask if you missed me, but I'm pritty sure you did not. I cant be blogging long enough to be missed.

Either way, last week I got accused of blog fading. Well it was kind of true wasnt it? I started off so well, and then slowly the days creep on and on and before you know it.

Shazam!

It's 3 weeks later. Either way in the last few weeks I have been productive with my new camera.

I have come to the conclusion that I started off this blog as a way to teach and impart knowledge to other people on the art and science of photography.

Seriously who am I kidding? Being a teacher is a lot of work. I dont want to start a curriculam, grade tests. Have people expect things from me. This all seems like a lot of work.

So instead I think I will change tact a bit. Im going to to blog every time I go and take a bunch of good photos and want to tell you, the viewing public, all about them.

So here we are back at my title - Candid photography.

I like it. I prefer images that show a part of the personality or a moment in time that is not being controlled by the subject. I want them to forget that the camera is there. Sometimes hard as its kinda big.

I attended a wedding a few weeks ago and what is awesome about a wedding where you are a guest of someone invited is that alomst no one cares about you - especially the people getting married. This allows you to be ignored, which most of the time annoys me, however for these purposes is nice. What was also funny is that my camera starts to rival in size and complexity some of the wedding photographers out there. It feels like turning up to watch a formula 1 race in a formula 3000 car! If this doesnt work for you - you can make your own one up!


Also I did notice a few days ago that animals are awesome. I have yet to find an animal that poses for pictures. I think if I was to hang around with monkeys or dolphins I might expierence it but I dont think that is likely.
Last friday I went out with a couple of friends who also a fan of the DSLR. I would have to say there an above average number of nice cameras around. What was nice was that after a few minutes everyone relaxed and I manged to get a photo that is rapidly becoming one of my favourate to date. I really like it as I feel like I captured a moment in time. What is also great is that I had it on manual focus which makes me all the more proud.


The first 2 photos I took with my 2oomm zoom lens with the inbuilt flash. The following 3 were using my fixed 50mm lens with a low f stop = 1.8. The low f-stop give a nice low depth of field for the cat portrait and for the last 2 it was great that I did not need a flash in a low light condition.