Hopefully more frightening than this picture here.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Youtube Slideshow
After I saw my work on a slideshow on youtube, I had the glorious idea to make one myself :-)
I thought that the colorful cityscape stuff works best when put together to something that has energy. As music I chose a song by Chemical Brothers called "All Rights Reversed". I simply went through some CDs while driving home from work and tried to picture how the images would go with the music. When All Rights Reversed was playing, I already had all kinds of ideas for panning and zooming. Next was the quest for a good software. I tried two or three until I tried a program called Magix Xtreme PhotoStory. The free trial can basically do everything the full version can do.
Towards the end of my editing I did quite some fine tuning, but after uploading the video to Youtube, I noticed that in the first couple of scenes the music is not 100% synchronized. That's bothering me a little, but I'll leave it like that for now.
I believe that if you like my pictures, you will like this video. I recommend you to turn the volume up and set to full screen. By default, Youtube shows a highly down-sampled version, but I noticed that when you go on the Youtube page, there is also a link to a version of higher quality.
I thought that the colorful cityscape stuff works best when put together to something that has energy. As music I chose a song by Chemical Brothers called "All Rights Reversed". I simply went through some CDs while driving home from work and tried to picture how the images would go with the music. When All Rights Reversed was playing, I already had all kinds of ideas for panning and zooming. Next was the quest for a good software. I tried two or three until I tried a program called Magix Xtreme PhotoStory. The free trial can basically do everything the full version can do.
Towards the end of my editing I did quite some fine tuning, but after uploading the video to Youtube, I noticed that in the first couple of scenes the music is not 100% synchronized. That's bothering me a little, but I'll leave it like that for now.
I believe that if you like my pictures, you will like this video. I recommend you to turn the volume up and set to full screen. By default, Youtube shows a highly down-sampled version, but I noticed that when you go on the Youtube page, there is also a link to a version of higher quality.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
La Aldea Irreductible
I've found some of my pictures in a Youtube video that was created by someone who writes what I believe is an art blog. I cannot tell too much about it, since it is written in Spanish. My Spanish roommate did me a favor and translated the original post for me: Turns out that the author of this blog introduces a Swedish singer (Anna Ternheim) to his readers. So this video basically plays one of her songs while the visual part is a slideshow with my images.
The music is beautiful, by the way. About the use of my images: I think it's always nice to see that someone likes what you are doing, and it's a curious thing to see how something else is created with it. Whether the music fits well with the images is another question. I thought the poppy colors would work better with something else, but maybe that's just me.
Here is the link to the original post.
The music is beautiful, by the way. About the use of my images: I think it's always nice to see that someone likes what you are doing, and it's a curious thing to see how something else is created with it. Whether the music fits well with the images is another question. I thought the poppy colors would work better with something else, but maybe that's just me.
Here is the link to the original post.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The Quest for the Perfect Walk-Around Lens
For a long time I thought a good walk-around lens is a lens with a large focal range in order to be prepared for all kinds of situations. Because I didn't want to sacrifice image quality I started to carry around the super heavy and bulky Canon 24-70 mm 2.8 from Canon. Now I decided I don't want to carry much gear anymore and keep my photography simple. Here are the obvious things I observed:
- As more gear you carry as a bigger deal it becomes taking it with you.
- As bigger the deal becomes as rarer are you bringing it with you.
- As less you have it with you as more opportunities for good photos you miss.
Instead of bringing a backpack full of glass everywhere, I decided to get myself a Sigma 30mm 1.4 lens and leave all the other glass at home, ha! Fact is, if you want to shoot situations, you cannot waste time with zooming anyway. You probably want to frame them in the way you are seeing them right at that moment. 30 mm on a APS-C sized sensor makes 48 cm, so here we go. Thanks to Mr. Beckerman for bringing my attention to this lens.
I also found a nice inconspicuous photo bag which can be worn over the shoulder or as belt-bag. I did a long Google image-search for such a - not necessarily photo - bag and ended up on the B&H website...how funny. It seems that the two main groups concerned about bags are females and photographers. Here is a link to the bag. In there should be enough space for the camera, the 30mm lens, and an ultra-wide-angle, which I mostly use for architecture and HDR stuff. I'm thinking about doing some long-term traveling next year, so this is some kind of preliminary adjustments towards going light and easy.
Back to the lens. I took it for a walk on South Street (in Philly) last Sunday. About the colors: I'm a compulsive image tweaker, thanks for indulging me :-)
- As more gear you carry as a bigger deal it becomes taking it with you.
- As bigger the deal becomes as rarer are you bringing it with you.
- As less you have it with you as more opportunities for good photos you miss.
Instead of bringing a backpack full of glass everywhere, I decided to get myself a Sigma 30mm 1.4 lens and leave all the other glass at home, ha! Fact is, if you want to shoot situations, you cannot waste time with zooming anyway. You probably want to frame them in the way you are seeing them right at that moment. 30 mm on a APS-C sized sensor makes 48 cm, so here we go. Thanks to Mr. Beckerman for bringing my attention to this lens.
I also found a nice inconspicuous photo bag which can be worn over the shoulder or as belt-bag. I did a long Google image-search for such a - not necessarily photo - bag and ended up on the B&H website...how funny. It seems that the two main groups concerned about bags are females and photographers. Here is a link to the bag. In there should be enough space for the camera, the 30mm lens, and an ultra-wide-angle, which I mostly use for architecture and HDR stuff. I'm thinking about doing some long-term traveling next year, so this is some kind of preliminary adjustments towards going light and easy.
Back to the lens. I took it for a walk on South Street (in Philly) last Sunday. About the colors: I'm a compulsive image tweaker, thanks for indulging me :-)
Monday, October 13, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Copyright Disclaimers
Today I made an archaeological finding on my hard disk that I thought would be worth a post. When I started this website I had the idea of having copyright disclaimers in all kinds of languages. Because people at my workplace are so international, I thought I would ask them to write a disclaimer for me in their language and photograph them holding it. I think I followed the idea only two days and then got distracted by other things. Later on when I realized how many of my not-yet-photographed candidates already left Princeton, I got a little discouraged and dropped the idea.
I think this is Catalan:
Italian:
Taiwanese:
Ukrainian:
And here we have an italien helping me out with Swedish - which is a bit weird.
I think this is Catalan:
Italian:
Taiwanese:
Ukrainian:
And here we have an italien helping me out with Swedish - which is a bit weird.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
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