Back Yards

I'm completely out of it. I'm back in pittsburgh and really busy already. Getting the new house in order: setting up electronics, fixing new curtains, vacuuming (at least twice a day), sawing stuff, carrying stuff. This stuff needs to be done before monday, when work starts.

These pics are from lancaster, trying to get some lens flare action.

Construction sites

The engineering building, Benedum, is under construction. It's brilliantly bland building that's very 80's in a bad way. But most of it is being renovated now, and at night the sub basement turns into a goldmine for photographers. It's haunting and the light is not agreeable but if you want to do some longer exposures, im sure there possibilities are endless. Shots from the DSLR are above with shots from the film camera(s) below.

After shooting these I found this article about the world's first nuclear power plant. There are some fantastic pictures in it. Some pictures I shot on film came out really blurry, or I would've loved to do some still life type stuff just on all the machines like the article.

Jon and Laura have more stuff on this I think.

Canon AE-1




Yashica ME-1

Red Supercars on Film

It's weird that when I recently got a roll of film back, all the car pics I has taken in the PGH vintage gran prix were of red sports cars.
In order; Mercedes CL(?),BMW M3,Lamborghini Countach,Ferrari Testarosa, Ferrari F430 Scuderia

The last two are one of my favorites; I might make b&w prints for my room.

New Header

I plan on changing the header of the blog every so often, and explaining the picture behind the last one.
Here is the last one;


This was the background image used


I call this image cloud city, after cloud city from Empire Strikes back. I appreciate modernist architecture and cloud city is one of my all time favs.

The header this week is using the same format of the last header, mainly because I dont have photoshop on my computer. So I made a few headers with the same typography but different background images, in the computer lab before went on a break. I'll get more creative when I get back to school, and get to use the computer labs.


using

I call it monolith, inspired by 2001:A Space Odyssey. I'm a big Kubric buff.

PGH Vintage Grand Prix: Race

Race shots from the Pittsburgh vintage grand prix. These have been a long time coming, I love race weekends and this didnt disappoint.

I love the smell of racing Ferraris in the morning.

Ticket to ride

When you have more than six hours in a train, there's only a certain amount of movies you can watch before your eyes give up (mine is about four episodes of Top Gear) and inevitably try taking a few pictures.
However, these pictures aren't from the train ride itself, its from the Pittsburgh Amtrak station, on a very early morning this spring.
Train rides are a fantastic way to travel, I just wished the train services in this part of the world were a little faster. It's very comfortable and you get a power plug thing at almost every seat so you can plug in your laptop or whatever. It's also fantastic to just look out the window and see different landscapes just pass by. I particularly like sitting in the cafe car: something about sitting at a table and watching the world pass by while you have a meal is awesome.

Soon I ill post some pictures taken while on the train itself.

P.S: CVS lady: thank you for the fantastic scans! I love having to not remove dust specks from every picture.

Portrait of the week

I rarely shoot portraits, or not as often as other stuff. It's not that I dont like to take pictures of people, its mainly because I'm not completely comfortable in asking people to pose for photographs. My favorite portraits are of people who are comfortable smiling into a camera, and candid shots. Candid photos are ideal but it's very hard to get a good candid shot, especially with a big SLR.
An important part of taking a good portrait is the photographer being forward/friendly enough to make the subject comfortable in front of the camera. So i plan to post a portrait once every week here.
I mean that's the point of this whole blog really, to find a reason/purpose to shoot more and motivate myself to go out.

This first portrait was too easy; both Jon and Laura are very cool kids and are wonderfully easy to shoot at/with. This was taken in the basement of a school building which is being renovated. More from that coming soon.

One epic roll of film

Jon and I went out exploring in the woods behind our homes, this spring. its a pretty cool place. Shot a whole roll and almost the whole roll was full of keepers. I think Some of these I have uploaded to flickr, but most should be brand new.

Fujifilm color 400asa

Buildings from the point

Every evening the buildings facing point park are bathed in sunlight, it's a pretty cool sight- esp if your out taking photographs.
I like taking pictures of buildings
Negative s-s-s-space!
Some of the buildings: Hilton, US Steel, PPG, Pittsburgh Post Gazette dont know the others sorry.

Dogs, boys and Ducks

Went to point park today with the father. Was a gloriously blistering evening. I liked these shots, and I got some pretty decent building shots too. Those come soon.
I've noticed that at this light, f/8.0 is surprisingly sharp.

That bull-dog(?) was such a little poser; she was looking at me like that till I put my camera down. She also had a pink studded collar. What a dog.

New York City: City

Some pictures from an impromptu trip to NYC. I didnt spend that much time shooting buildings like I usually do; it's time intensive process that is best done alone. I did get some wonderful pictures from the trip that i'll post more of soon. I'll do my best to try not to repost pictures I posted on facebook.
I like the city for what it is, but I dont feel completely comfortable in it. I dont think I could ever live here; large, buslting crowds tire me.