Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.8, 1/60 sec, ISO1250 “The Hermit of Homework” Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！ Hello! How’s it going?
There’s not a whole lot going on today, so I’ll just talk a little about the photo above. It’s of my son Koa working on his Japanese homework, while wearing a blanket over his head. He actually reminds me of a Jedi, or maybe Yoda. I took this photo using Fujifilm’s black and white + yellow filter film simulation, +2 shadows, -1/3 exposure, and dropped the exposure even more in Lightroom, added a strong vignette, adjusted curves a bit, added some grain, and cropped 4×5. I liked the look of this one, so I saved the settings to a pre-set, which I applied to the photo below. I think it came out nicely!
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.8, 1/550 sec, ISO800 “Kitty!” Cedar Park, 2016
I might have found a nice black and white look that I’ll see if I can replicate in the future.
I hope you had a nice day, and I’ll see you tomorrow!
One thing that every digital camera I have owned has had, but that I have never once wanted to use was the Sepia tone setting.
Which is odd, because I have an “old-timey Western” photo pinned on the wall of my kids dressed up as cowboys that was taken at a fair when they were little. I see this Sepia photo everyday. But I never ever have thought of using Sepia in my own photos.
If I could have traded the Sepia setting for a $10 discount off the price of my cameras, I would have done it every time.
We’ve been having some dreary weather here the past few days. As you can see from the photo above it was a wet drive into the office this morning, and unfortunately Koa’s baseball game was rained out this evening. So, I took him to the batting cages so he could keep sharp.
Today I did a few photography-related activities. First, at work I bought a new 50 mm F/1.8 lens for our company camera. 📷 My friend recommended this new nifty-fifty and I used it to take an employee head-shot this afternoon, which turned out pretty good. I’m very pleased with the lens!
Secondly, I tried something kind of fun, which was to smear Vaseline on a filter to simulate a blurry glamour-type photo. I was really trying to go for a dreamy, abstract type of image but I don’t think the Vaseline distorted the sharpness as much as I would have liked. Well, I did get a couple of fun kitty photos, as you can see below:
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.5, 1/100 sec, ISO2500 “Pop Kitties” Cedar Park, 2016
And the third thing I did was to make a few prints using our Canon inkjet printer. I’ve never been able to figure out how to print photos… my whole life, things like edges, margins, and general printer errors have left a sour taste in my mouth when it came to home printing. This evening started out with more of the same… but after a couple failed attempts, I think I am getting closer to figuring out how the Lightroom print module works. I’ve been trying to make a print with a nice 1 cm white border around it, and I was able to tweak the settings a bit to get fairly close. With minimal trimming with our paper-cutter, the results were quite nice!
I’ll post a photo of the prints later, but I think I am satisfied for now… pics of the pics will have to wait. 😛
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.6, 1/100 sec, ISO640 Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！ How’s it going?
Today was a busy, but productive day at work. When I got home, however, some new boxes of Instax film were waiting for me! I’m not sure how many photos I have printed out on my Instax printer since I got it at Christmas of last year, but it must be about 50 so far. Anyways, I was down to my last pack of 10 so I ordered three boxes. The price on Instax film has come down a lot in the past few years. I think it was close to a dollar a print not too long ago, but these days, you can find them for about 63 cents a print.
I just love the color that the film is capable of. Below is a photo of how I keep my family pics at work. We don’t have much shelf space in our new open-style office, so I just put some Instax prints in my Pantone book. Maybe I will get a nice flip frame for some more prints, but for now, I think this will do just fine. 😄
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/125 sec, ISO4000 Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！ Hello, how are you doing?
Today’s photo is of my favorite shoes (well, the type of shoe) – Converse Chuck Taylor Hi-tops. I’ve pretty much always had a pair or two since high school, my favorite colors being, black, red, and white. I’ve also owned several lo-top Chucks as well.
What I love about them is that they are super comfortable, although when you first get them, they are kind of weird feeling. Every time I get a new pair, I wonder how anyone could have played basketball in these things. I mean, the soles are so flat and the high tops are not strong enough for any kind of ankle support… I think they are just high so that the shoes wouldn’t come off if someone stepped on them during a game. But, after you wear them for a few weeks, they feel so good!
Anyways, the past few days I have been experimenting with taking more photos, but not spending as much time composing the image, or wondering if the image is interesting enough to post. These photos are simply for fun, and mainly to keep for myself, although I might share them too! For these snapshots, I switch my camera to shoot the smallest dimension, in square format. I also have a custom setting in my camera that uses Velvia film simulation with +2 to both highlights and shadows. I wish the custom setting would automatically change the size and aspect ratio, but that’s not too big a deal since I can do it easily with the Q menu. The photos are only about 2 megabytes in size. It’s wonderfully liberating to just snap a few photos of everyday things and not worry about making a nice image, nor taking up huge amounts of space on my hard drive. It’s just fun!
Here are a couple of these types of photos. Nothing amazing, but nice memories and slices of life. In the first one, I just liked the way the evening sun was coming in through the kitchen window. The second one is… well, it’s fun to take pictures of pets, isn’t it?
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.6, 1/100 sec, ISO1250 Cedar Park, 2016Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/100 sec, ISO6400 Cedar Park, 2016
Well, I hope you have a great evening, and a nice Thursday!
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/5.6, 1/60 sec, ISO3200 Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！ Hello, how’s it going? Enjoying the warmer weather? It’s been in the 80s here in Austin this week. Lots of sun! ☀️
I read a lot of photography blogs and listen to several photography podcasts, and one theme that comes up often is that you should find your photographic style, and not have such a wide range. I don’t know how important that is to an amateur photographer like myself, but I can see the logic in that philosophy if you are running a photography business.
However, I think I have found an aesthetic that I really like, and I have been using it a lot lately. It is kind of simulating the look of film, with a nice grain to it, and also not super-sharp. I have been experimenting with creating presets in Lightroom so I can get a consistent “look” to my photos. It is still early on, but I am enjoying using it! Basically, one preset adds a certain amount of grain. The next preset adds a slight “S” tone curve. And finally, my blur preset adds two gradient adjustments to de-sharpen the entire image. (If there is a better way to do this in LR5, let me know!)
In the photo above, I have applied all of these presets, plus added a black border which I love (Nik Analog efex 2). I am also using the Fujifilm Velvia film simulation here. I think it is a good start in defining a consistent style. I still enjoy both black & white and color images, so I can’t really make a choice. I mean, I need to take my sushi photos, and they just won’t look so great in black & white, right? 🍣
Well, as you can see from the photo, we had sushi at home for dinner. While it was super-delicious, eating so much sushi-rice makes me so thirsty… I’ve had three large glasses of water already tonight!
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/5, 1/15 sec, ISO3200 Cedar Park, 2016
こんばんは！ Good evening! How was your Sunday? It’s the end of Spring Break for the kids and that means that the week of sleeping late every morning is over. So, I am hoping that Koa goes to bed soon! (Bay is already in bed and his lights are off)
A couple days ago, the weather turned chilly again, which was a huge surprise to me. I thought we were already into Summer weather! Come to think of it, today is the first day of Spring. That’s great, because I don’t like Winter or the cold. Bring on the heat already!
Today I did a lot of research on new Chromebooks because the laptop I use to write this blog every evening has a hardware problem and is super-slow, and sometimes will just crash in the middle of whatever I am doing. Luckily WordPress does a pretty good job of auto-saving so I haven’t lost too much work. But the computer boots up so slowly that I think it is time for me to find a new laptop.
So… I decided on an Acer Chromebook 11 laptop. I want something that is simple, has good battery life, and a good keyboard. I don’t need a lot of horsepower since I will not be using it for any photo editing or gaming. Just WordPress, Netflix, YouTube and general browsing and the Chromebook should be perfect for those. Also, the price that I found was nice… just $165! That’s a $15 price drop from yesterday…
As you may know, I have been trying to simplify my life and declutter. This new laptop is so minimal, that I am really looking forward to using it! Just like my X100T makes me work within its limitations, I am wondering if the Chromebook will have a similar effect. We’ll see!
Today’s photo is of a new lens that Mariko bought for her camera. It’s the highly-regarded Fujinon 35mm F/2.0 WR lens. It’s really nice because the focus is fast and silent, the aperture ring feels great, and it’s a lot smaller than the 18-55mm zoom. Plus the image quality is excellent and it has a certain look to the images that Mariko really likes. It’s definitely a keeper lens!
Well, I better get to bed. It’s past my usual time!
おやすみなさい！ -B
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My camera & photos
I use a Fujifilm X-series camera for most of the photos on this site and my Instagram. Why not pick one up for yourself?
