Modeling this bottle was a great learning experience. I used several cool tools and features to create it. The etched glass on the front of the bottle is a displacement map made by simply assigning a simple image with an alpha channel to the material and sticking it to the front of the bottle. I…
Category: Photography
Cinema4D vs. Studio Photography
Inspired by a recent post on Grant’s site, in which he alludes to the many challenges of product photography, I decided to create a challenge for myself. I wanted to see what level of photorealism I could achieve with the Cinema4D Physical Renderer and a few simple 3D objects by recreating Grant’s product shots. To…
I Walked Five Miles to Get This Shot
The eastern half of an icon of the Bay Area is coming down after carrying up to 300,000 cars per day for 77 years. Progress is slow, but this week a gap appeared in the longest cantilevered section, and I decided that this needed to be captured. Luckily, the replacement span has a very wide,…
Farewell Old Friend
It’s hard to believe that I purchased my D3 six years ago. It is without doubt the best camera I’ve ever owned. Unfortunately, it’s massive size and weight became an inconvenience with the introduction of high-quality mirrorless digital cameras. These days I’m much more likely to be seen shooting with my Fuji X100s. Mirrorless cameras…
Loving B&W Photography
I’m having so much fun shooting Black and white. It’s a real timesaver, and as a bonus, images look great. Nowadays, instead of trying to correct weird color shifts in images shot under terrible lighting conditions, I just whack the color altogether – and I’m loving it. (Rollover the image to see the original color…
Fresno Bee
What I like most about this shot is the minimal effort it took to get it. I just looked down with my x100S set on macro and shot this in the front of the in-law’s house in Fresno this afternoon. I couldn’t get closer without scaring off the bee, so I cropped the shot about…
Bay Bridge Eastern Span at Night
Kelly shot this beautiful video through the open top of our Smart Car after a delicious birthday dinner at Epic.
It Took Just 22 Years…
I finally posted my Oakland Hills Fire Video. It took a bit of motivation from Chris Burt, who mentions it in his recent blog about wild fires to actually make it happen. It’s RAW footage, and the Hi-8-poorly-converted-to-DVD quality is pretty horrendous, but some (like Chris) still find it interesting. For me, the video is…
Arm Chair Nature Photography
I put my recently purchased 15 foot USB cable to work this morning. I set up this simple rig and connected the cable to my iMac, launched a tethered session in Lightroom and went back to my work. Then whenever I heard the high-pitched squeak of a hungry hummer, without even looking out the window,…
My First Tethered Capture
I finally had the perfect excuse to try out Lightroom’s Tethered Capture. I’ve been anxious to try this since neighbor Steve Fossum used this method to photograph yours truly. This extremely simple rig made shooting the chip much easier than ever before. The ability to view the images at high resolution on-screen as I shot…
Fatty Boy
aka Kozmo. Grant took this amazingly detailed shot with his new Canon Rebel SL1 and 40mm pancake lens. Sharpalicious!!
Grillin’ with the Gang
Chris and Ben prepared pork AND lamb for last weekend’s feast. I’m trying out settings on the Fuji X100s. Hope you like the “HD” aspect ratio. These were shot with the Film Simulation mode set to “Pro Negative, High Contrast”. Now, I usually (always) shoot RAW, but it turns out that there are some advantages…
Kelly Likes This One Best
She thinks this is my most natural smile, and I agree, but I thought the glass of Ketel One might be a bit too much for my about.me page, so I chose a shot with a camera – naturally! Many, many thanks to the awesome Steve Fossum for the fantastic shots. I did not think…
Fuji X100s
After reading several glowing reviews, including a couple by professional photographers who gushed about their love for the latest digital rangefinder from Fuji, (at least a couple picked it as their all-time favorite digital camera), I decided to find out what all the fuss was about. So… I am thrilled with the lens quality, sharpness,…
Celebrating Aunt Mary’s Life
I shot an event to honor the life of Kelly’s beloved Aunt Mary in Redding a couple weekends ago. Here are a few of my favorites from that day. I hadn’t used my Nikon D3 for a while, but decided that it along with the light, fast, super-sharp Nikkor 85mm f1.8 lens would be perfect…
Paradise Valley
Julie shot this panorama with her iPhone. She was, “Driving north from Yellowstone WY toward Livingston MT – looking east.” Beautiful!!
Putting it All Together
It’s not only the knowledge of the HUNDREDS of eyeballs that will see this image on the cover of the extra-geeky Electrophoresis Journal cover that makes it satisfying. It’s also the fact that I get to use all of my graphics skills in one place to produce something this wild and whacky while at work….
SONY DSC-RX100 Closeup
This little camera is proving to be quite handy. It turns out that it’s a lot easier to shoot extreme close-ups with it than with my much larger DSLR’s. I just set the camera to shoot a few frames per second and move in close. The smaller camera is less terrifying to the little critters,…
First D800 Panorama
This 14 image panorama of the cavernous Craneway Pavilion was reduced to approximately 1/10 of its original resolution, and it’s still 8,000 pixels wide.
First SONY DSC-RX100 Shot
After reading a couple of glowing reviews like this one, I decided to pick up a SONY DSC-RX100, the images I’m seeing from it are very impressive! It’s amazing that a camera this small deliver images this big! The list of technological achievements in this tiny gem is long. An f1.8, 3.7X zoom lens, 20…
D800 for Product Photography
I shot this on the floor in the hallway on a roll of white paper with my beloved FourSquare handheld overhead and a Nikkor 50mm 1.8 lens which I purchased for $95. (Ken Rockwell describes this incredible bargain as, “…among Nikon’s sharpest lenses ever“.) The LCD display and updated logo were added later with PhotoShop.
Holy Crap – My Mind is Blown
I’m speechless. After looking at a few of these, I guess I’ll just throw my cameras away. Way back in 2008, I shot some photos from a balloon over Bagan, Burma, and was pretty satisfied with the results. Well, I’m humbled to say that I’ve been utterly outdone. This Russian Panorama site is absolutely amazing…
First D800 Shots
After a 6 month wait, I finally received my new DSLR. I actually gave up on ever receiving the Nikon D800E, so I settled for the D800. I must say, I’m impressed. The images are absolutely enormous – 7360 x 4912 pixels. I had to reduce the resolution from more than 36 megapixels to 6…
Kelly at Zabriskie Point
Another look at this spectacular site.
Oh, Yes I Did
I’ve really enjoyed my four-year-long love affair with the Nikon D3, and I have absolutely no regrets. She has served me well. I will always appreciate her superb build, her heft, her ability to see so much in so little light. I still love her and plan to keep her around – forever. But honestly,…
James Was Here
OK – I’ve been feeling kinda bad. My pal Jim visited for a week, and, despite great conversation, great weather and meals at places like Haven, Sea Salt and of course Chop Bar, I took a grand total of one photograph. With a cheap-ass point-and-click. I guess it could have been worse – I could…
This Little Chip Will Change the World
View the announcement here. Pretty exciting stuff!
You Can Do It Too!
I made this totally original motivational poster for my company last weekend. Model Marina was awesome. She really nailed the part. Shot with a $95 lens and hand-held FourSquare against a yellow wall in the office. PhotoShop makes it perfect.
Last Night at San Gregorio Beach
I’m pretty happy with this shot of my wife with her parents and best friends Jeff and Wendy. To make it, I used my new FourSquare lighting system, held high above my head while I clutched the D3 with the other hand and snapped this about 30 minutes after sunset. The colors in this one…