alpharon's posterous

After finishing up Project 365 for the month of January, I saw February as a fresh start to the project.  I realized that I was going to have to keep this project fresh in order to stay motivated and committed to completing it.  I think I'll be treating each month as a fresh start to keep it going forward.

Well, here are the pictures to start off February!

[032/365] :: Island Style. It's my birthday month and I was beginning to feel my age after coming back from vacationing in Hawaii.  I was missing it a lot...especially the food.  My coworkers had just happened to be having lunch at a small Hawaiian restaurant serving up some home cooked ono foods.  This is probably the closest I'd get to some delicious island food without having to get on a plane.  The spot is called Island Style Cafe and I would advise you to try it out if you're in the San Diego area.  I ALWAYS order their Korean Chicken plate (pictured), but I've tried everything on their menu and it's all delicious.  I want some now...

[033/365] :: Lens Tester.  Being a parent, my son is probably my most photographed subject.  I've got thousands of pictures of him and he hasn't even turned 2 yet!  Here he is helping me test out my new Sigma 85mm lens.  I've been waiting to acquire this lens to start some portrait photography projects that I've had planned for months.  For the time being, I've unleashed its potential on my son and he doesn't seem to mind at all.  We shot this while he was playing around in the kid's section of IKEA.  The environment is very well lit and I had no problem dialing in the proper exposure for the picture.  This was shot wide open at ƒ/1.4 to blur out the cluttered background behind him. 

[034/365] :: Texture.  With the purchase of the Sigma 85mm, I now have possesion of the Sigma Trinity at 30mm, 50mm, and 85mm.  All of them have a max aperture of ƒ/1.4 and perform just as good, if not better, than the Canon "L" counterparts I tested in the past.  For my daily walk around lens, I'll usually have the Sigma 30mm attached to my Canon 7D to give me a "normal" focal length to work with.  It provides me a focal length close to what I see with my own eyes.  I really like the texture of the pillow in this photo and wanted to see if the Sigma 30mm could capture it in the low light environment I was in.  This is the kind of picture quality that the fast aperture provides me.  I shot this wide open at 1/60s without having to bump up ISO.  I got the sharpness, quality, and performence I expect from these Sigma lenses demonstrated in this one shot.

[035/365] :: Cold Night. It really was a cold night.  We were sitting outside of Studio Diner waiting for a table when I snapped this shot.  We were being lit by multi-colored flourescent neon lights from the diner sign, streetlights on the sidewalk, headlights and breaklights from passing cars, and powerful signs from businesses accross the street.  It was a lighting nightmare and there was no way I could have fixed it.  The boys posed for me anyway and waited for me to take this shot.  I had to use a relatively high ISO 3200.  I did some noise correction in post processing and I selectively reduced the saturation on the warm colors to get this final image.  It might look a bit overprocessed, but I think I was able to get the COLD look I was looking for in this photograph.

[036/365] :: Tree Model.  Another picture of my son!  He is so used to having a camera pointed at him now.  We were taking a walk around our neighborhood when he suddenly decides to pose by every tree we pass by to take a picture.  It was pretty hillarious!  I'd snap a few shots at each tree and he would quickly run over to me to review the pictures.  If he didn't like them, he'd go back to the same tree and pose a little differently.  HAHA!  All this was done with no direction from me.  What a funny kid.  I should start "A Kid and His Trees" series.  There were some funny poses in this set, too.  But I decided to choose this shot because it really looked sincere.  His eyes are in perfect sharpness and they look directly at you.  They really drew me into the image.  I'll post the other shots when I have some time to process them and maybe revisit these trees again with him soon.

[TIP]

Viewing EXIF data :: I've been asked a few times about the camera settings used to take some of the shots I've posted in this blog.  I don't extract any of that EXIF data because I like to be able to share what I've learned.  I don't have a problem with it because anyone can take my settings, but you can't take my eyes.  :D I shoot what I see for the most part and set up my camera to get the shots I want.

You can find that information by clicking on the pictures so they take you to the picture page on my Flickr.  From there, you will see text just to the right of the image saying something like: "This photo was taken yesterday using a Canon EOS 7D."  There will be a link on the text for "Canon EOS 7D" if you hover over it with your tracker.  This link will show you the camera settings used for that particular photo as well as a handful of other information that could be helpful.

Today is my Friday. Then I have an 11 day weekend! STOKED!

I may not update my blog for a few weeks, so I wanted to get everyone caught up with my Project 365 before I get too far behind.  Most of the pictures I've taken for this set have been on the fly without much setting up.  It's convenient and doesn't take me away from the moment.  I'm happy to be able to capture images as the scene develops in front of my camera, but I would still like to concentrate on some setup shots for future pictures.  Unfortunately, setting up a shot takes more time and effort on my part.  Something I can easily manage as long as I commit to doing it right.  Anyway...on to the pictures!

[013/365] :: Continuing the food theme of the cupcake, I decided to shoot what I was having for dinner for Day 13.  Homemade tacos, spanish rice, and beans!  HAHA!  YUM!  The Sigma 30/1.4 has rarely left my camera body since purchasing it and I've been playing around with the shallow DOF (Depth of Field) that the wide f/1.4 aperture allows.  This was taken indoors, at night, in low light.  The wide aperture allowed me to shoot with at ISO100 at 1/10 sec.  I think I would have gotten a better shot if I had raised ISO to 400 and maybe 1/30sec, but I like how this one turned out.

[014/365] :: More low light action with the Sigma 30/1.4!  I took into account the settings from Day 13's shot and upped my ISO to 400 and shutter speed to 1/30sec.  I think I ended up with a much better capture on this day!  I focused on the little guy's sausage fingers and toes.  He's become all too familiar with the Mac interface on both my MacBook Pro and our iPad.  He's actually queueing up a Yo Gabba Gabba! video in this picture. Little Genius.

[015/365] :: More food pron!  Pigs-in-a-Blanket.  Delicious...but looking kinda phallic.  There isn't much else to say about this shot.  I think my favorite part of the shot are bokeh highlights on the upper right corner. 

[016/365] :: If you haven't figured it out yet from my previous posts, I love to surf.  This is my surfboard.  I have other surfboards, but this is The One.  It's my quiver killer.  A Firewire Dominator FST: 5'10" x 20.25" x 2.50".  It's the best board I've ever ridden and it'll be a hard one to ever replace.  I normally had riden this board as a quad fin and had never tried it as a tri-fin thruster until this day.  The waves were picking up and I decided to see if I could get more directional feel with the thruster setup.  Long story short, it worked!  I think I'll be keeping the thruster setup for a while and maybe change it back to a quad setup when summer comes around.

[017/365] :: Dressed the little kid up in his warrior tee and took him to the park.  Kid had a blast and even posed for some pictures for me.  This is his Warrior Cheese pose.  I shot it with the Canon 135L.  This is a marvelous piece of glass and I love every picture that I take with it!  The backgrounds just melt away and the subjects pop!  Focus was spot on using AI Servo on the camera because the kid was walking towards me in this shot.  There were some hotspots in this shot that I had to correct due to my not paying attention to shutter speeds (user error), but I believe the final image turned out great.

[018/365] :: I had a completely different shot lined up for Day 18, but after loading it into the camera, I saw that I had missed focus and the shot was unusable.  It was getting late and I didn't want to drive somewhere to find a shot with my son in tow.  Then I remembered that there was a full moon out tonight.  I hadn't shot with my 400L in a while,  so why not now?  I quickly bundled up the kid and we went outside to look for the moon.  I setup the tripod for this shot and used live view on my camera's LCD to get focus just right.  It only took me 3 exposures to get this shot.  It was my first time shooting the moon with the Canon 400/5.6L.  I'm glad that I've found another use for the lens besides shooting surf.

[019/365] :: It's 11:35pm on Day 19 as I'm typing this entry.  I finally was able to select a photo to use for today with some time to spare.  Restaurant Week kicked off in San Diego this week and we had to take advantage of it before it ends.  It's a great opportunity to try out different restaurants in town with 3-course meals at greatly reduced prices.  Good food and great company was the recipe for the night.  Good times all around. 

And that's it for this posting.  I'll continue snapping pictures everyday and have more pictures for Project 365 soon! I will also have more surf for everyone, too!  Stay tuned!