Raw Consciousness

FILM - Silent Hill.. another thought...

I have been thinking about the movie a bit.... there are some scenes that are memorable.. visually that is.  My brother still loved it... and I just read the review of Ars Technica. 

The review over there makes an interesting point- which you can take it as a good thing or bad thing I suppose: this movie as a horror film is much more intelligent at least than the average nowadays horror film. Or I would agree that at least they tried, a couple of things.  A lot of that though comes from the game - which you know, is fine. The worse they could have done is throw away what the good things the game provides that can make it to film.

FILM - Silent Hill....

GRRR.... sorry, they didn't escape THE CURSE(tm).  The curse of videogames->movies.  They did some things right though and probably one of the best attempts (which is sad or good depending on your point of view).  It saddens me that as a movie, I have to give this 5 out of 10, but I still enjoyed it some. But then I am a Silent Hill fan.

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY - I can shoot trees finally...

Last weekend it was interesting for varoius reasons, but one of them and perhaps most important is the one that will allow me a chance to go to heaven when apocalypse comes... which is that I was able to finally shoot a tree to my teacher's satisfaction! ARGh. a miracle.

Here are some shots including the tree, that I did on my first day of doing clouds I haven't posted before:

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY- planes...

Well this is my first trial at shooting planes in an airport. A friend of mine that I first met on the net, then real life, who is quite passionate about photographing airshows, and uses the same camera system I use, took me to this place and we both did some shots. I am not satisfied with the shots I got overall, but it's my first time so I am used to by now to know that it's going to be difficult at first "to see." I am going back there some other time for sure. This is in the Van Nuys airport in California.

I used full manual controls including manual focus in some of these shots. Manual focusing which I regularly don't use for animated subjects was.. um a challenge but I think if I practice more I may be able to do it right. It doesn't help I had my long zoom lens + teleconverter and at that distance any shake will get magnified, and I wasn't using any tripod or monopod for this shot. Lesson to learn- I should use a monopod. A tripod would be a bit hard to track a plane with but a monopod may work better.. umm now that I think about it maybe my tripod would work considering it has a "ball gear" where the equipment head goes... I should try that next time.

The gallery is here.

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY - color...

Color is something that now I have to pay much more attention to. This is something I still learn more... just did this:

Along with some other pictures that you can see here.  Zero post processing, out of camera jpegs in "vivid" mode.

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY - Clouds...

... is part of my next homework.. I still have much to do! ARG!

I like this shot because it reminds me of those nebulae astronomy shots....

The full gallery is here.

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY - flower...

Got this today when I was out.  This is an example of a shot that I think is almost right but not quite- the yellow flower is not quite the focus point.  This plant is actually pretty small.

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY - 30 day challenge, Days 26-31...

So here are the shots I owe for days #26 to #31... I am happy with some, not so happy with some.  The shot with a friend of mine shooting pool breaks my heart because it's close to something truly nice but I cut her elbow... live and learn.. it was hard, low light, I was not using flash (incidentally, my next homework will finally start using flash... apparently that's the trick for a condition like this but has to be used the right way), and people kept moving all over. 
The first shot in the alley is actually staged. And for the most part the shots were actually taken from more recent to less recent (with an exception of one or two). Jpegs out of the camera, zero post processing.