Gary's Photo Blog

I recently decided to really work at becoming more creative. However, the gap between thought, action and results can often be rather wide. Tonight as I was coming home from work I encountered a broken sprinkler head spewing prodigious amounts of water. I have always considered water and flash an interesting combination. So I grabbed a small umbrella and threw this self portrait together. Notice the police car behind me in the shot. Only moments later I was confronted with a slightly aggressive but curious Pinellas County sheriff wanting to know what I was up to. I explained the situation and everything was hunky dory, but with no small amount of consternation on my part. All of this took place in a bank parking lot. Shot with a single Nikon SB-600 flash mounted on a stand camera left. Bare bulb. Flash triggered using Commander mode on a Nikon D90 camera with -2/3 flash exposure compensation. Shutter priority mode, ISO 800, f/1.8, 1/80 sec shutter speed. I got pretty wet despite the umbrella but I guess it was worth it.

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I took this photograph a few days ago using a strobist’s’ sensibility:

Above photograph as captioned on flickr: “This time the loop lit little dude gets the soft treatment with an off camera Nikon SB-600 flash, camera left, shot thru an umbrella using C, or Commander mode Nikon CLS. Fuggetaboutit and shoot Nikon, not Canon, and you will forever be a happy camper. Flash once again gelled with a .25 Rosco CTO. Shutter speeed 1/30 sec, iris diaphragm f/2.4, ISO 800. Nikon D90 camera set to Manual mode. Sweet bokeh and shallow DOF thanks to a common but always superior Nikkor lens.”

Forgive the pithy nature of the post. I was in a mood you see. I really do still love Canon.

Full res version available on flickr here:

Little Dude made big.

Finally I’ve unveiled a new photographic project that I’ve been working on for few months now.  It’s called “Tampa Nocturne”.  You can view it in it’s entirety at the garyreimerphotography website here:

www.garyreimerphotography.com

There are ten images in the new portfolio.  More will be added soon.

By the way, here is a great video (it’s short) on you tube on why you need to be paid for what you do:

http://www.youtube.com/Pay the Writer

Thanks for stopping by.

Gary

Did anyone else notice those clouds yesterday?  It was Saturday October 3rd 2009.  The location was Clearwater, Florida.  They were fiercely beautiful:

I don’t know what type they are, but I’ve seen them before, just every so often.  They are amazing to behold, and I like to think, a very good omen.

Laissez les bon temps roulez!

Gary

I think that I may be in need of a new logo.  The following designs are a few preliminary logos that I have been kicking around.  They are all basically identical except for the tiny graphical element contained within.  Yet, that small graphic makes a huge difference.  One’s online presentation and style are in a very real sense one’s identity to the world at large.  A logo in it’s very small way says a lot.  I’m not certain which of them I like the best yet.  Even when I do make that decision, it could be subject to change.  I imagine that this is a fairly typical of the artistic process:  hundreds of tiny decisions and changes in direction that we continually are driven to make.   I wish to bring you into the process:

There are a few more, but you get the idea.  I do find the triangular structure of most of them appealing.  The base is wide and they kind of come to a point a the top.  Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god is a pretty cool one, but I don’t know.  If any of them strike you as better than the rest then please drop me a line.  I’d love to hear from you.

So how important is a logo to you?  If you haven’t given it consideration, it’s something you may wish to think about.

Gary

On February 9th of 2009 I took the following photograph in downtown Tampa:

The HDR, or High Dynamic Range, ‘look’ of the photograph came courtesy of a program called Lucis Art which I have talked about in previous blog posts.  What I really would like to point out is the crazy keystoning of the image.  Notice how the buildings all sort of lean in towards each other, just like an inverted keystone.  This is due to the characteristics of the super wide angle Canon lens that I was using at the time.  It’s an interesting physical phenomenon of these particular lenses.  It’s also an aesthetic that I happen to like.

There are special lenses designed to counteract keystoning that are known as ‘Tilt-Shift’ lenses.  And even though I don’t mind keystoning, I would love to have one of them.  They are however very very expensive and highly specialized in their usage.  Still, it makes me wonder what it’s like to use one.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of twilight and night  HDR photography using a very wide angle lens and once again have been getting some serious keystoning.  Here are a few examples:

BTW, that’s me in the lower left hand corner of the photograph.

I’ve really been going at it lately with HDR photography, keystoning or no keystoning!  The photographs posted above are just ‘throwaways’ in a sense.  It’s not that I don’t value them.  It’s just that there are others that I took that, I believe, exceed their quality, and better engender the aesthetic that I was aiming for with this particular body of work.  This work has now transformed into a specific photographic project, and I will be releasing it some time around December 2009.  The project is tentatively titled T.A.D., or, “Tampa After Dark”.  So please stay tuned.

It is my intention to show the new body of HDR work in a very large format, maybe something like 1000, or 1200 pixels wide.  Previously, I’ve mostly posted work only in a very small format.  The work will be copyrighted, so it will not be totally open for exploitation.  But it will be ‘out there in the cloud’ and in a context that I cannot totally control.  It will be interesting to see where all of this goes and I will keep you posted.

To quote the Beatles: “And, in the end, the love you take/ Is equal to the love you make.”

Or to us photographers: “And, in the end, the photographs you take/ Are equal to the photographs you make.”

Gary Reimer

September 28th 2009

This afternoon, as I was crossing the Howard Frankland Bridge located here in Tampa, Florida, I saw these three fellows fishing near the road.  I stopped to photograph them.

It was such a quintessentially Florida scene.

What a beautiful world we inhabit.  I always try to carry a camera with me.  Photographic opportunities abound!  Tampa happens to be where I spend the majority of my time, so it is here I that find this beauty.

I would love to see the part of the world that you live in.

This is an interesting twist to my typical blog post.  I am offering for sale my Nikon AF-S DX VR 18-200mm Zoom lens.  Once it has been sold I will be removing this listing from the blog.  It occurred to me that this would be a unique way to sell this great lens.  I now have about 6 lenses for my Nikons and this one really got very little use over the time that I have owned it.  There also is some redundancy with this focal length and the other lenses that I own.  This lens also has always had a Pro UV filter kept on it, so the front glass element is in mint condition.  I am the original owner.

Included with the lens are the front and rear lens caps, original box and paperwork, as well as the original receipt if you wish to have it.  All of this for $600.

I can be reached at (727) 499-8402

Or email me at:  garykarma@yahoo.com

You can read a great review of this amazing lens on Ken Rockwell’s website here: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/18200.htm

And I quote:

“Life - Changing

My 18-200mm VR is more than just a new lens. It’s changed the way I live and make photos. Some reasons my 18-200mm VR has changed my life are:

1.) No more camera bag! For casual trips I wrap this and my D200 in a sweatshirt and throw it in my carry-on bag. This saves a bag and keeps it hidden.

2.) No more tripod! VR obsoletes tripods. Now I only bother with a tripod for night photography. See Why VR is Important.

3.) My bag weighs less when I do carry it. This and my 12-24 mm do everything. I used to tote an F2AS and 16 fisheye, 17 Tokina, 24 f/2.8, 35 f/2.0, 50 f/1.4, 55 Micro, 105 f/1.8 and 180 f/2.8 ED manual-focus AI-s Nikkors everyplace I went. My 18-200mm VR is sharper, especially hand-held in low light.

4.) I can leave my macro at home. My 18-200mm focuses as close as I need without clumsy macro settings. My first 200mm lens, a manual-focus T-mount Vivitar, only focused as close as 12 feet! My 80 - 200 AFS only makes it to 5 feet. Today my 18-200mm VR focuses as close as 8 inches from the front of the lens at 200mm! Nikon’s spec of 20″ is the distance from the subject to the image plane, which is the back of the camera, not the front of the lens. At 200mm the lens extends almost to the subject!

5.) No wasted time or sensor dust collected changing lenses. I missed a lot of shots in the days before zooms. In 1999 I thought it was great replacing eight fixed lenses with two zooms. I just replaced those two zooms with this one!

6.) The 18-200mm VR just became the world’s best portrait lens, especially for pets. My $1,500 80-200mm AFS didn’t focus close enough (5 feet) to let me get close shots of pets. Even better, the ability to zoom from tight head shot to group lets me get more shots that would otherwise be lost changing lenses or grabbing another camera. With the 18-200mm you can zip in and out from tight head shots to full body and environmental without making your subject wait for lens changes.”

-Ken Rockwell

Thanks for having a look and please pass the word.

Gary

For some time now I’ve been thinking about HDR or “High Dynamic Range” photography.  HDR has been both praised and excoriated among the greater photographic community as of late.  I happen to like very much the effect it produces.  It appears to me that it more closely replicates what the range of tones that the human eye is capable of experiencing.  Straight digital photography has it’s limitations.  Now, with HDR the sky is the limit.

Tonight I decided to do a little HDR photography.  Here are a few of the images that I captured and interpreted with a program called “Photomatix”:

These, of course, are only very rudimentary steps for me to see if I could do photography of this type.  These images required a tripod, remote control, and three bracketed images taken at different exposures.  They are a little more work than is your average photograph.  Wow, do I have a lot to learn!

Thanks again to Loyce Hood for motivating me.  She also recently did some cool HDR work.  You can see it here:

Loyce’s HDR

Also, you can see a larger rendition of my HDR here on Flickr

Gary’s HDR

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I’m very happy that you stopped by to visit my blog.

Gary

So today I was out testing the limits of the new AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G Prime that I got just recently.  Here are a few shots I took with it today:

So far so good.  It’s a pretty sweet lens.  I think it’s a keeper.

Thanks for stopping by.  Please follow me on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/garyreimer