Well it’s been over a week since Cinco de Mayo and I thought perhaps I’d get off my rear and post something. Not that Cinco de Mayo had anything to do with anything, but it was an excuse to put a silly straw sombrero on my bestest buddy and ulimately me as well. After taking a few snap shots and reviewing them I wanted to give it sort of a Old West feel. To do so I need to branch out a little bit and see the assistance of
Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro. I think this software application is “da bomb” I played around a bit with different setting and settled on somthing called “tin something” I forget the name already. Once I settled on the Old West look I took two different images of my bestest buddy and me and preceded to extract them from the original photo. I located an image of some “ghost town” look, enlarged till it suite my needs. Slapped in the two extracted images, threw on some western style text, curtousy of
Dafont.com.
The overall image needs some clean up, but I think I got the basic message across. If you don’t own Silver Efex Pro by Niksoftware or haven’t seen it you need to give them a look…Way COOL!
Kidz Bot, Kidz Rock or Kidz Bop.
Sorry no picture yet
Earlier this week, I think Wednesday though I’m not sure I remember entirely,(You will see why) my bestest buddy and I were on our way home. We/he decided that he wanted a cheese burger from McDonalds and of course I obliged. I know going into this that he’s going to want the Mighty Kid meal, only because it comes with a toy or something. The toy’s in themselves really aren’t worth much and are more designed to lure kids into convincing their parents to buy them stuff or as I’d like to say, junk. Well on this occasion when he get to McDonald’s my best buddy tells me he doesn’t want the “toy” that comes with the meal. Why I ask and he tells me that it’s because its one of those “dumb” Kidz Bop CD’s. Kidz Bop you say, I know you know what they are. If you’ve ever seen a show on the Disney Channel or Nicholodean you know precisely what I’m talking about. So you can imagine who thrilled I was that he didn’t want it. I think those CD’s are about as close to “ehanced interrogation techniques” that I want to get to. So anyways, we take care of getting our food and sit down and gorge ourselves as us “men” tend to do. Although my bestest buddy seems to have a growing interest in this Kidz Bop CD. Hmmmmm??? I’m not liking where this scene is going, not one bit. As a thoughtful person that I am, I offer to chuck it into the trash for him but was quickly dismissed. He was reading the package. (Since when did he learn to read?)
I made the offer several times throughout our burger and frys and received the same response. (Look this is a SLLOOOWWWW reading person apparently) Either that or their is now real genuine interest in this CD. Needless to say I’m starting to worry. This kidz bop CD thing isn’t sitting well with me at all. But I do have one last opportunity to ditch or pitch the CD. As we finish up or meal, I gather the “trash” (CD included) and head for the trash bin. I’m moments from dumping the whole thing in the trash when I’m stopped in mid dump. (Hmmmm that’s sounds a bit awkward doesn’t it?) My bestest buddy decided he wanted to take it home. I guess he wasn’t done “reading” it. Well much to my dismay we ended up leaving McDonald’s Kidz Bop CD and all. Although little did I know that the next 10 to 15 minutes of my life were about to be a living hell. No sooner did we get belted in that a hand reaching from the backseat was thrust in front of my face. I was frightened, but not by the hand or the speed in which it appeared. No not at all, that which frightened was what was in the hand. OMG I said under my breath….its the Kidz Bop CD!!!! I was feeling a little bit like the guy from the Edgar Allen Poe story, the tell tale heart. You know where the dude in the end wigged out because he swore he heard the heart thumping under the floor boards. Well my heart was racing so fast and so “loud” that I thought I was having one of those moments. If it things couldn’t get any worse they did. I hear “Hey put this in”! No - I retorted, not just no….but a big NO WAY! “Oh come on he fired back, Please my Jedi Master Warrior King”! Ah Crap…that gets me every time. So reluctantly I put the CD into the dash. I cannot articulate the feelings I was having the moments after the CD started. A wave of nausea, and frustration…yeah that’s it. Oh I was suffering as this song that I can’t recall was “bee bopping” on the CD Player. I frantically kept saying…”Okay is that enough?” NO! No it wasn’t. OMG someone stop this hideous noise! For the next few minutes I begged and pleaded to make it stop. Then a sense of hope came to me, I can see the driveway…the nausea will be over. I’ve survived! Then it happened from the back seat….”Hey I see you over there…You’re dancing in your chair driving, you like it”!!! In fact was “moving to the beat”….I think I almost hurled just at the thought of it.
I’m still nauseated, but I’m feeling better.
I’m temporarily working at my companies corporate office and I have to say over all I’m digging it. The commute is not to bad, can only be “better” if I didn’t have to get up so early. I have my own office again, not that I really minded a cubicle so much. And I also am enjoying the free coffee. Okay the coffee sucks, but nothing sucks SO BAD when its free. Now, I’m sure you’re wondering where the catch is. Well here ya go, the “thing” about this place that gets on my nerves is the bathroom. Just a note the bathroom isn’t so bad really. Its clean, it has mouth wash, and hand lotion as well. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE no jokes about hand lotion in the men’s bathroom. I don’t need any mental of images of what ISN’T happening in the stalls. Okay so, my issue (I do have a few but we’ll not discuss them all here) is, well you know those automatic air fresheners? The kind that just sort of kicks out well something so the room doesn’t stink so badly. Well each and every time I go in there the damn thing kicks out a puff of stuff. Oh that just reminded me of HR Puff –n- Stuff. If you don’t know who that is you’re too young and should be in school right now and not reading this. Anyways, not that I “should” mind, but I do, I get the feeling the “puffer” kicks on only when I go into the bathroom. It’s starting to give me a freaking complex. I mean I take a shower every morning; I use deodorant, so I don’t think I stink. Anyways, just a bit more than you wanted to know in a day in the life of me.
For those of you that are in the Northern VA area, you may regonize this red barn. Its right off of 66 near the Business 234 Exit into Manassas. I’ve been driving by it for years and thought I’d finally get around to photographing it. Of course it seems that the day I choose to do it the sky is bleak. I didn’t realize what a chore this was going to be to get a picture. I knew the spot that I needed to be to take the photograph. In the parking lot over by the movie theater. The thing I didn’t take into account was the traffic on 66 getting in the way of the shot that I wanted. Fortunately for me there was a sturdy barbed wire fence for me to climb on. Yeah I know what you’re thinking “ouch”. One of the things I noticed about the image was the the contrast between the red and the white portions of the photograph. Something that I also noted that I needed to fix was the aweful bland looking sky as well as powerline running through the sky as well. I’ll spare you the details of how I “fixed’er” up. As I am sure it will put you to sleep. Take care - Tim
Red Barn
Its a logo contest, or maybe I’m just plain lazy. A couple of weeks ago I finished putting together a photo book of my son and his nearly four your trek to getting his Tae Kwon Do Black Belt. In the last phase of the book it was suggested that perhaps I put my own personal logo or mark on the back jacket of the photo book. It occured to me that I had no such thing. I don’t even no where to start. So I thought perhaps I would ask my loyal readers…all two or three of you to help me out. Knowing most of you I thought that maybe I should out some sort of criteria for you all to work with.
The name of my website it Photographit.net, don’t ask me what its supposed to mean beyond what it says. I’d like to try and figure out a way to spiffy it up as far as designing a logo using that. So there ya go…good luck.
Before we (I) begin I want it known that I got my inspiration for this image from an old school friend. Thank goodness for old school friends. You know who you are…Thank you!
I’ve been pondering for sometime now an image with the moon and trees in the evening sky. My only problem is that I wanted to make sure that the two parts were clearly visible. I have made several attempts before and have failed someone miserably. Either the moon was to dark, to bright or the trees just looked just as aweful. So what I decided to do was probably something I should have done from the very beginning. And that would be take two separate images and use my handy dandy laptop and Photoshop and attempt to put together this vision I had in my head. Well, perhaps not “the vision” I had in my head. I don’t think the world at large could handle such radical thinking. Yes I do give myself to much credit. However, as with most things I do when it comes to photography, I’m never quite satisfied. When I thought I was about complete I started to think that the sky needed “something”. That something ended up being clouds. I just so happened to have taken several pictures one afternoon out at my parents house of a puffy cloud filled sky which I quickly added to the image. All in all there are three different photographs that make up this image. This picture posed a few challenges as everything was in color…well save the moon which is - well is moon color. To make this picture appear to me at night I ended up partially making this a black & white image. I’ll spare you the technical mum bo jumbo. This is sort of a part color part B&W photo. Kind of like split tone…duo tone…maybe even quadtone. Anyways…so the moon for those of you that have been following me along these last several months is the same moon from one of my other posts. Okay kids its getting late and I need to hit the hay.
Ummm....Bark & the Moon??
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the movie 300. It currently ranks up there with one of my all time favorates. Most people will may believe its just a guy oriented action flick. Well they would be mostly right. But since this isn’t a movie review I’ll spare you my “thoughts” on the movie, at least for now that is. For sometime now, I’ve been trying to recreate the “look” from the movie and I think I’ve done it. The images below are perhaps NOT the best use of the effect but I believe it illustrates the point of the effect. The 300 effect is essentially LOTS of yellow in a sepia sort of way. There are two images below, a before and after. The picture is of my Dad (Grandpa) and my son, it was taken sometime in September of 2008 for the Haymarket Day Parade. As you can see from the original picture the lighting wasn’t that great. There is a pretty harsh shadow being cast that almost makes this a bad image. BUT throw in a 300 effect and well you take a look and tell me what you think.
No 300 effect
The persians don't stand a chance
Oh Crap you ask? What can be so bad that I’m starting off Wednesday with an OH Crap? Well as luck would have it I find myself in a quantry. (Did I spell that right?) Oh well…its not important, one of these days I’ll convince some poor sap to actually edit this garbage of mine. So I just finished reading this book the other day (Gears of War), and was anxious to start another. Well it just so happens this past Christmas I picked up a book called, The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies. I did so cause it was in one of those bargin books sections at Barnes & Noble. Anyways, I decided to start reading this book and YES I find it interesting. That’s where the “oh crap” comes in. I ACTUALLY FIND IT INTERESTING!! What the hell????!!!!??? Don’t I, or shouldn’t I have something else to occupy my time? Couldn’t I just work on my photos and dream up something creative. (Albeit I don’t have a creative bone in my body) But seriously there is an issue here, this book is a freaking encyclopedia and I’m reading it…AN ENCYCLOPEDIA!!!!!!?!?!?!?! AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi All! I’d first like to comment on my disasterous attempt to take a picture of a cardinal in my parents backyard. For two days this red bird has eluded me and well I was starting to get a little frustrated. Now I know what you’re thinking, where is the picture of the cardinal? Its locked away for now in the “Vault” and will probably not see the light of day. Or at least the light of the Internet. However, I will mention that trying to get the picture of this bird did lead me to something a equally as interesting. That would be the picture you see before you. I had left my camera out on the off chance that the “Woody Wood Pecker” wanna be Cardinal would rear his scarlett hide. Anyways, lets get back to the picture. (I get distracted easily)
The photo which I have named “Fire in the sky” presented its own set of “technical issues” It was sometime after 6:30 in the evening, the clouds looked great with the setting sun. However, the trees in the foreground presented some challenges. I wanted to make sure that they didn’t get “lost”, and well I was being a little lazy and didn’t want to get my tripod out. I love my tripod but it isn’t easy to throw together. I should probably just keep it assembled so I don’t have to worry about it so much. Back to the picture. So to make this picture, this is what I did. (After all that I’m just now getting to it…sheeze, I told you I got distracted easily) Oh and later remind me to tell you about my “adventures” in “Kicking an eight year olds butt in a snowball fight”. So, since I didn’t have my tripod ready I was going to be “forced” to hand hold it, and as such I was contrained with what my shutter speed would be. Nothing slower thann 1/60 sec. Some of you should note that 1/60 is probably the slowest you can go provided you have a rock steady hand. If you do, it tells me you don’t drink enough coffee. 
BUT since the bulk of the “grown ups” do drink coffee the various camera manufactures, such as Nikon and Canon have compensated for the caffine shakes by developing some form of vibration reduction that makes going to to 1/60 sec a real possibilty. But I’ll save that for another day. Ok so after all that I didn’t even use 1/60 sec, I went for 1/80 which I accomplished by setting my camera (Nikon D300) to shutter priority and set it for 1/80. I let the camera pick the aperture, which ended up as 4.2. I was also shooting at ISO 200, which I found out recently isn’t even the true ISO. A study was done of 53 DSLR’s and the net result was that all or most of these camera’s manufacturers ISO rating are actually shooting lower than advertised. Its not really an issue to me. Though I think Nikon has some explaining to do to me. So here ya go…..the Fire in the sky, shot at 1/80 and 4.2 Later…
One day when I was taking a walk through down town Asuncion, Paraguay taking pictures I came across this “Mechanic” or at least I thought he was at the time. He didn’t seem to take much interest in me, well up until the time I decided to take a quick photo. Now generally speaking this picture wouldn’t have been compelling in the slightest but since he actually looked up at me as though as if on cue, it sort caught my interest. This picture has been sitting in the “Tim Gonzalez vault” for sometime and I thought I’d sweep off the dust and see what I could do with this. I really wanted to do something interesting with this picture, and since Paraguay is one of those countries that seems completely stuck in the past - bording on ancient. So I thought I’d take this photo and try to give it sort of an “Old world’ish” feel to it. What you see below is the result. Let me know what ya think.
This is the original
This is the "Old World" looking one
