Photography – Page 57 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Photography Field Trip

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On Sunday I met up with over 70 of my fellow Houston area photographers and Flickr users at The Houston Museum Of Natural Science for a rare photographic opportunity. My good friend Laurie (aka Laanba) had arranged with Erin Blatzer, Assistant Director of Public Relations at Houston Museum of Natural Science, to have us all gain FREE access to the museum after closing time to shoot pictures. We had access to photograph things that you normally don’t get to take pictures of. This, combined with the ability setup tripods and avoid the crowd made for some rather unique results which can be seen in the Assigment: Houston Flickr pool.

Assigment: Houston is a fantastic Houston photography group that brings Houston area photographers together with a theme each month and this month it was the museum. In previous months it’s been Galveston, Discovery Green, Downtown and so forth. It’s cool to see all the different takes the members come up with.

I really enjoyed this meetup and look forward to the next one.

This is (in my opinion) the best shot I got of the evening (click to see the larger version):

Here are a few of my other favorites

I didn’t end up shooting as many pictures as I could have, mostly due to jabber jawing with people I have never met in person or simply just don’t see often enough. The rest of my puny collection reside in my Flickr gallery

The Thrill That’ll Getcha When You Getch Yo Pictcha

I was contacted by Elmore Magazine about purchasing the rights to one of my photos for their web site and for the cover of their monthly magazine.

With a circulation only in the tens of thousands it’s no Rolling Stone Magazine, but still pretty cool if you ask me. There’s just something about print media that makes it seems more “real” even though more people are likely to see it on the web.

So shiny!

*Photo of Jay Lee courtesy of Cynthia

Rock Baby Rock It 8

Three days of rockabilly and hot rods at the Houston Continental Club. A great chance to hear some good music and see some awesome cars. Since I was unable to attend during daylight hours I was forced to shoot at night on the oddly lit side street.

These are all shot handheld and without a flash utilizing only available light. There is no color correction or manipulation. The only post processing is a slight bump in “lightness” and a small bit of sharpening.

Please click image to see a larger version

Additional images in the Rock Baby Rock It gallery.

Beercan

In 1988 Minolta produced a 70-210mm f/4 lens that was fairly popular amongst Minolta film camera users, but which slipped out of production in the late 90’s. This lens was often referred to as the “beercan” due to it’s shape and size.

The lens is experiencing a renaissance and has become very popular with users of the Sony line of digital SLR cameras as it’s completely compatible and is optically very powerful and optically superior to most kit lenses and other lenses in it’s class. The price is very appealing as well when you consider that a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens will set you back anywhere from $800 to $2000. The Minolta “beercan” shows up on EBay fairly frequently and if you play your cards right, can be obtained for around $200-$250 depending on conditon. I’ve seen them sell for as much as $350 to $450 on rare occasions. I suspect the price is going up as Sony users become more common and set out looking for glass that performs well.

Known for its sharpness, rich color rendition and smooth creamy bokeh, the Minolta 70-210mm f/4 has become more sought after and more highly prized by the growing legions of Sony dSLR enthusiasts giving the lens a cult like status amongst Sony users.

I just took delivery on my personal beercan and it’s AWESOME! I found it via a Minolta dealer online and bypassed the ridiculous EBay bidding wars altogether. I won’t say what I paid for it, but it’s in near mint condition and I got a good deal. I have another one coming tomorrow and I plan to resell it.

Seeing it on my Sony Alpha 700 just gives me the happy

I haven’t played with it much, but here are some test shots using two of my most reliable models:

70mm

210mm

You can see the original sizes of the above images here and here if you are interested.

Zion’s Flame

Randomly encountered some “fire manipulators” in the back patio area of the Continental Club while I was out and about last night. I saw this as an EXCELLENT opportunity to play with some extended exposure shots using my tripod and the remote control for the camera

Not bad, but whirly-twirly shots like this don’t stay interesting for long so I shot a few more handheld with less exposure time and got some interesting shots

There’s a few more in the Zion’s Flame gallery.

Show Me The Money

Microsoft will pay you to use their search engine. I’m not kidding.

I know it sounds like that “Bill Gates Is Sharing His Fortune!” e-mail hoax many years ago that said that AOL and Microsoft were going to pay you money to forward this message, but it’s not like that at all.

I was casually shopping around on EBay to see what lenses were out for my camera. I was particularly interested in something along the lines of the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 or the Sigma 18-50 f2/.8 for a little versatility on the wide side in low light situations. As I was reading up on one auction the seller mentioned that the current promotion from Microsoft Live would enable the winner of his auction to save 25% if they were to use the Buy It Now option and pay through Paypal as part of the Microsoft Live Search Cashback Program.

This sounded interesting. I was pretty sure that I would, at some point, purchase the lens once I could justify the cost and the idea of saving 25% pushed the acquisition further into the realm of feasibility for a more immediate purchase.

I did my research and the cash back program is real, as are the discounts.

Basically, once I determined which lens I wanted (I decided upon the Tamron SP AF17-50mm F/2.8 Di II LD) and looked around on EBay to see if I could find one at a competitive price being sold by an EBay member that could be trusted.

The lens retails anywhere from $428 to $475 on average. After hunting a bit I found one for $440 which was in the right price range BEFORE the discount and about what a reasonable person would expect to pay for this hardware.

Once I located the lens I wanted I put it on my watch list in EBay and then browsed over to live.com to execute my search. I used the word Tamron and looked for the cashback option in the results. This is what that looks like:

Note that this one says 10%. When I did it the search result came back with a 25% link to EBay and when this promotion started the discounts were as high as 35%.

I clicked the link and once I was on the EBay site via that link I was basically locked in to the cashback option so I went to my watch list and clicked on the lens I had found earlier and bought it with the Buy It Now option and checked out via Paypal earning myself a $110 discount. On top of that, the auction I won included FREE shipping and a FREE UV filter so that saved me some additional moolah.

The catch is that you pay the seller the full amount and then you get a message in your EBay mailbox telling you that you’ve earned cash back. You click the link and sign up with Microsoft to receive your cash rewards. There’s a delay of about a week before the funds come available to make sure you don’t get the money and then return the item.

The limit is three item purchases per account and a maximum discount of $250 per item. That means if you had $3000 to spend on stuff you already planned on buying, Microsoft would pay you $750 to do it via their search engine. Not a bad deal. They paid me $110 to purchase a lens I was already planning to buy.

Sadly, the largest discount I have seen since I made this purchase is a paltry 10%, but you never know what tomorrow (or later this evening) might bring.

Skyrocket

Trish and Darin Murphy’s current musical project “Skyrocket” performed at the Houston Continental Club on Friday night to a packed house. The group is made up of a fantastic batch of Texas musicians and the performance is nothing less than spectacular.

Of course you must like 70’s and 80’s cover tunes because that’s what they play, and they play it remarkably well. Trish Murphy sang Heart’s “Crazy On You” in the first set and it was spot on. Other songs for the evening included “Rock and Roll All Night” by Kiss and “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds just to give you an idea of the repertoire.

Their song list is available online here.

It’s an amazing show and I highly recommend checking them out if you have the chance.

Pics from the evening are here in the Skyrocket gallery.

New Quilt Underway

Cynthia is well underway on her latest quilt. I am not allowed to publish pics yet, but I captured this one from the hall which has been screened and approved for release.

This is one of her coolest quilts yet. I can’t wait till it’s done so I can photograph it properly.