We are very fortunate that our baby girl absolutely loves bath time. In greater than 5 months she has not once cried or got upset during bath time. It’s also a great time to take a picture of her. Here is a recent picture after her bath.
Repost October 2011
I have been extremely busy the past few weeks. When that happens unfortunately the first thing that has to be put on the back burner is the website. Don’t worry though, I still find time to take pictures.
I had the opportunity to take a few pictures while in Dallas. I never know when I go to these meetings if I will have the time to shoot but I try as much as possible. This picture was taken with my new Leica 21mm Super Elmar. When focused, the images are razor sharp. It’s very compact and very easy to use. Anyway, I was shooting from the hip while walking trying to catch people in motion. I think I accomplished what I was looking for?
ISO 400 1/45 f/3.4 21mm super elmar
This past week has been crazy busy. I’m currently lecturing at an AO Basics Course (teaching residents how to use implants). On Sunday, I realized that I had to give a lecture that had not been given before, thus I worked night and day and got it done (gave the lecture about 2 hours ago).
Here is a recent picture of my baby girl. She has successfully mastered standing with support and you can see from the picture she can easily do it with one hand. In the past week we find her standing more and more without any support. I don’t think she has realized that she can successfully do this. When she does, I’m sure she will be walking all over the place.
ISO 800 1/60 f/.95 50mm noctilux
Repost July 2011
I find flowers nice to look at but don’t typically consider them good enough subjects to take pictures of. Probably, because so many people already take pictures of them.
Another reason why I don’t like taking pictures of flowers is because of the composition. Composition is a combination of what you have included in your picture and the way or perspective you took it. For example, when taking pictures of flowers almost always, you stand over them and point down towards the ground. This allows for the flower to be in the foreground and dirt in the background. Dirt obviously is not very eye pleasing and rarely allows for enough contrast between it and the main subject.
One way to change the composition is to be creative an attempt pictures from different vantage points, one in which you typically don’t see. The picture below is an example. Near our driveway we have an island of landscape that is elevated. Because of this I was able to lay down and allow for the sky to be used as my background. This allowed for the tulips to really stick out.
I was in Madison Wisconsin this weekend to see my sister and nephew. I had some opportunity to take some shots with my NEX 7. I’m still very happy with it’s results. I think its auto white balance is better than my Leica M9.
This shot is a close-up of an organ’s keys. I really liked the texture of the keys and thought a close-up would work well. I set my f-stop to 1.8 so that I could get some depth of field. I think it turned out well. The “bokeh” is good but in my opinion it’s not as smooth as my Leica lenses.
ISO 500 1/60s f1.8 zeiss 24mm
Repost from July 2011
My wife and I spent 4 years in Des Moines, IA while I was receiving my degree. The first couple years I was vey busy with my work and never showed much interest in photography. Midway through my second year, my father lost his year long battle with cancer. When he passed I inherited his film dSLR and lenses. Not until later in the year did I finally gain an interest in photography. Initially, I was just taking pictures in the operating room for the physicians I was rotating with. I remember getting many compliments doing this and thought it came somewhat natural. Canon came out with the EOS 20d (you can find the most recent version, Canon EOS 60D here). I remember how excited I was to get this and try out my dads lenses. Since then, I’ve traded, bought, and upgraded from the Canon 20d and his lenses.
Many years have passed since purchasing my first dSLR and I’ve now moved on to Leica M9 rangefinder camera but I still have many good pics that I took. One of those was from a trip back to Des Moines a few years ago. I was driving around Booneville, IA and came across this old railroad bridge. At that time I was starting to show some interest in HDR photography. Below is one of those pics (I also posted it in black and white).
I originally posted this picture back in August 2011 after attending the Leica Akademie Shooting Experience in Chicago. It was probably my favorite shot and was taken from the hip using Leica 24mm.
ISO 160 1/250 f/8 24mm
Keeping my theme from the past few days I figured I would post a few more street shots I took while in Chicago. Both of these shots were taken from “the hip”. Meaning, I just set the camera to the proper exposure and started firing shots when I saw something interesting. Both pics were taken while holding the camera near my waste (shooting from a low angle can give the viewer an interesting perspective).
In the first pic “Keeping it cool”, it’s a candid shot of a guy walking and waiving while holding his smoke. Even though the subject is out of focus, it gives the viewer a feeling of movement (or at least it does me) and has a three dimensional feel to it.
The second shot “lets go out” is two people having a casual conversation. In this shot, the sharpness is dead on. If there was any lost of sharpness here, the shot would be ruined.
Repost August 2011
I spent almost 4 years of my life in Des Moines, IA going to school. Twice a year I head back to my old school and each time I spend some time wandering around downtown. It’s not even comparable to Chicago or New York but they have a very nice and beautiful downtown.
A couple of years ago as I was walking around, I noticed that there were a bunch of bike racks with bikes to rent. Since I don’t live there I’m unsure how often they are used but I think it’s a good idea.
ISO 160 1/1500 f/1.4 50mm
When we lived in Avon Lake, OH we had a small park and walking path behind our house. Often times after it would snow I would go and try to capture an interesting picture. Unfortunately, I didn’t take many good ones. One morning to my surprise, it was foggy and I quickly snuck out to the path and got this.
ISO 125 1/1250 f/2.8 70mm (Canon 5D Mark II)
