Tattoos

The photos in this post aren’t the best Ken and I ever shot. We were playing around with a new lighting kit and probably should have set up at least one more light before we started shooting. But I wanted to test the gear  to make sure it worked.

And for some time now I’ve been meaning to get shots of my tattoos. I’ve been careful to keep my ink confined to spots that stay covered during a normal workday, but sometimes people have noticed spots at the edge of a sleeve or poking out past a loose collar. I can’t exactly stop class and disrobe. But now anyone who’s curious can see what I’ve got.

With the exception of the Japanese characters on my right arm, all my tattoos are the most excellent work of Whispering Danny, a brilliant artist and all-around great person.

The Japanese characters toward the top are the first thing I ever got. And when I decided to “get real,” this dragon was my first big piece. The characters say “bushi no me,” which translates as “warrior’s eye.” It’s a reference to seeing things as they really are rather than how we want them to be or even how we think they are.

I have dragons on the right and tigers on the left.

Here’s a better view of the left side tigers. The one on my back is a reproduction of an ink painting in the Nelson Art Museum’s collection.

More tigers on my left shoulder and arm. The Cyrillic is a Russian prison tattoo, which translates as “My mother taught me to steal in industrial zones.” And no, I’ve never been in a Russian prison. A couple of friends and I thought it was funny, so we all got one.

We’ll finish up the top with the chest.

This is my right calf. The octopus is from an ancient Minoan jar, and it also happens to be the logo for 8sails Press.

Left calf. Between the two legs, the Latin phrase translates: “Be not deceived. God is not mocked.” Galatians 6:7.

And last but certainly not least, on my right thigh Godzilla is destroying Kansas City.

Tattoo machines

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000, focus stacked

The topic for this week is focus stacking. This is a handy digital post-production tool that allows you to create shots with a ton of depth of field even if your lens and lighting conditions made you shoot shallower when you were in the field.

Take a close look at the four photos below. The light in my friend Danny’s tattooing room generally isn’t the best for photography (though when he’s working he uses a better light). As you can see from the tech specs, I’m pushing my equipment nearly as far as I can. The shutter is at 1/40; any slower and I’ll start getting camera shake. The aperture is at 4.5, the wider end of the lens’s range. The ISO is at 1000; any higher, and the photos may start showing grain and inaccurate color.

But with these settings, I can’t keep the whole subject in focus. As you can see, each shot blurs at least part of the rack of Danny’s machines.

That’s where focus stacking comes in. Photoshop (and other software packages) will automatically combine several photos into a single image, using only the crisply in-focus parts of each shot. It also rotates and shifts photos automatically so they all line up. So all I have to do is make sure I shoot a series with enough partially-focused shots that Photoshop can then merge into a wholly focused image.

The outcome is the picture at the top of this post. The results aren’t always completely perfect. You can see some awkward blurring along the left edge, which I would have cropped out if I wasn’t using this as an example. But it’s way better than the unwelcome bokeh I was getting thanks to the limits I was working with.

Not that bokeh doesn’t have its place, even in this shoot.

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000

Penguins and lights

Nikon D7000, 10.5mm, 8 sec., f/8, ISO 100, adjusted

Last Sunday the family did the annual lights tour, driving around the city after dark and looking at some of the more elaborate displays. One of our traditional stops is Pauly’s Penguin Playground, a wonderful riot of inflatable, mostly penguin-related decorations. For some time now I’ve wanted good pictures of this spot, but in the past I haven’t brought the right equipment.

I’ve been reluctant to drag a tripod into the middle of everyone’s holiday fun, but without some kind of brace it wasn’t really possible to leave the shutter open long enough to get a proper exposure. The compromise: the monopod with its three-pronged base extended. It was still a bit more jiggly than I wanted, but it helped a little to use a remote rather than the on-camera switch.

They didn’t all come out perfect, but I was pleased with some of the results.

After that we mostly stayed in the car and drove around, which of course made it hard to shoot the long exposures required by low light conditions. However, I thought I’d have a little fun at one spot. The result can’t accurately be called a realistic depiction of the scene, but it’s kinda pretty.

D7000, 10.5mm, 8 sec., f/8, ISO 100, adjusted

O Christmas Tree

Nikon D7000, 18mm (18-55), 20 sec., f/6.3, ISO 100, adjusted

Faithful fans of the blog may recall that a couple of years ago I posted a fancy time exposure of our Christmas tree. This year we changed the decorating scheme a bit. But as before, a low ISO kept the colors true and long shutter speeds brought the lights out (harder this time because the new bulbs are smaller).

I shot the lead-off picture shortly after I put the tree up and got the lights on it. And then overnight it snowed, giving me another good photo op in the wee hours of the morning.

Nikon D7000, 24mm (18-55), 25 sec., f/11, ISO 100

Light and fog

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 3 sec., f/8, ISO 400

Photographers are supposed to have a “thing,” a particular kind of subject or style to specialize in. I’m having too much fun with the art to settle down in any one area, but if I did have a “thing” it would probably be mist. I love how it feels to be out in it, and I love how it plays with light when it’s photographed.

Here’s a playful little piece I took last week. The neighbors’ Christmas lights looked so nice in the fog, I had to get a picture. Naturally this called for a slow exposure to get the light right.

Unfortunately, my good tripod was at work. So I used my travel tripod to brace the camera. Portable though it may be, it doesn’t hold the camera firm enough to avoid the small camera shake caused by pressing the shutter button. You can see the small dip the camera took, which shows up as little hooks at the bottom of the bright lights. Once the button pressure was off, the rest of the time the camera stayed still. Thus the dimmer parts of the picture (which took longer to expose) show no blur at all.

Happy holidays

Nikon D7000, Lensbaby Scout with single glass optic, 3 sec., sunburst aperture, cropped

Here’s something fun to help kick off the holiday season. This photo was done entirely with the camera. Other than a small crop, I didn’t do a thing to it in Photoshop.

What you’re looking at here is a six-inch-tall creche (propped up on a support) with our Christmas tree in the background.

I achieved the effect by using a Lensbaby Scout with a single glass lens and a sunburst aperture. Rather than a standard, circular aperture, the disk for this shot was a shape. You can see the edges reproduced in some of the less fuzzy sunbursts in the background. The in-focus foreground is unaffected; the creative aperture works like a plain old circular hole. But bright light sources in the out-of-focus background take on the shape of the aperture. It’s tricky to get it to work just right, but when it does, it creates some interesting images.

The single glass and narrow depth of field gave the foreground a bit of blur that added to the appeal.

The Patriot

Nikon D7000, 72mm (28-200), 1/640, f/6.3, ISO 200, cropped

First rule of late season visits to Worlds of Fun: leave well before Haunt gets underway. None of the photos I tried to take after dark worked out. However, I did have some fun earlier in the day.

The first ride my group went on was The Patriot, one of the park’s many roller coasters. I managed to find a spot that gave me a couple of good angles. The shot above proved to be a good example of how to imply movement in a “frozen motion” shot via body angles. You can tell that the coaster is moving with some speed because otherwise the seats couldn’t be at that angle.

The other way to convey motion is through blur. I propped the camera on a fence so I could slow the shutter down enough to blur the moving coaster here:

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/10, f/22, ISO 100, adjusted

Then I decided to have a little fun with it. I shot a series of pictures with the coaster at several spots along the track. Then I used layers in Photoshop to combine them all into one picture that shows the whole sequence.

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/125, f/10, ISO 100, edited