Christmas Presents

So I got a couple Christmas gifts this year that were worth way more than I really have any right to ask people to spend on me.  I’ve decided that I’m okay with it though, because I’ll be able to use them as a way to give back to people in the things I love to do.  First up is a nice addition that will really expand my abilities with photography.

This is the Nikon 55mm-200mm w/Vibration Reduction lens.  This lens will really help me get some of the shots I see in my head, but physically couldn’t quite achieve with my other lens.  It will also be great for capturing more portrait-type shots instead of, in general, larger pieces of work.  It will make it a lot easier for me to bring into focus individual pieces of a scene instead of capturing the whole thing and hoping the viewer sees what it is that I was seeing and feeling.  A little picture I took with it the other morning that I’ll share a small version of here before I throw it up on DeviantArt is one I took yesterday morning as the sun was rising.  It was a beautiful orange sunrise and the colors were just pouring in through the balcony door and resulted in a beautiful and simple color photo:

I’m looking forward to having some time in January to get out with it and see what I can do.  Also, this lens will really help me in practicing the tilt shift effect.

Next up is a guitar accessory that is pretty much a must:

The Ibanez TS-9 Tube Screamer.  Arguably the best overdrive pedal ever made.  This thing adds a beautiful warm overdrive fuzz to your guitar will still keeping the unique tone.  What it lacks for in looks (even the box it comes in now is exactly the same as it was in the 80’s) it makes up for with how fantastic the sound it puts out is.  It’s a fantastic pedal that will go extremely nicely with my collection and as some form of overdrive/distortion is necessary at some point for a electric guitar, in many ways an essential tool.  I’m very glad to have one as well because I prefer the warmer sounds of overdrive to a distortion effect.

Lastly was an unexpected amount of money for my Grandma.  With it, I’m going to use as much of it as I need to in order to get a decent delay pedal.  It’s the last pedal I feel that I need to be equipped to do whatever it is that I’m heading towards with playing guitar.  Whatever money is left over I’m going to donate to a local charity.  I don’t really need all of it, and there are others who do, so it’s the very least I can do.

This Christmas, for all it’s messed up-ness with family and flights and all that, has ended up being a Christmas that I feel has equipped me with the tools I need to do the things I’m feeling called towards in the New Year.  It also helps that I really enjoy those things, so there’s also a bit of just plain fun in there too :)

30 December Permalink Comments

Making Miniatures

So I today I decided to try out this new technique that seems to be all the rage right now: artificially blowing the depth of field of an image way out of proportion to make the focus of the picture seem like they’re miniatures.  It was fun, and I need to go out and get better images to play with, but here’s my first result from just playing around.

This is the source image I used:

Not the greatest image, but I figured it would do.  I cropped it a bit, and decided that I’d like the bus and the Shoppers Drug Mart to be the focus of the image.  So, I did the following:

• Cropped the Image
• Created a new channel in photoshop
• Used a black-white gradient that exponentially decreased in the y-axis
• Used the lens blur tool using the gradient channel as a mixer and tweaked the settings a bit

This is the result:

All in all I think it worked not too badly.  The enhanced depth of field definitely gives it a slightly more “toyish” appearance, but I’ll definitely have to get out there and find myself some, simply put, better pictures to do it on.

But hey, I’ve proved to myself that I’m capable of doing it!  Which is a good first step.

8 October Permalink Comments