William

When Cynthia and I took our European vacation in 2005 we decided to take William the Sheep and take pictures of him in front of various sites we visited.

In fact, he has his own subject tag here at baldheretic.com as well as his own photo gallery.

We have every intention of taking him on our next vacation for more photo opportunities.

As I was vanity searching on the web I found an interesting site. It’s an online Russian real estate magazine. One particular issue happens to jump out at me…

William

That’s William in the hotel bed in Paris.

I know I am usually pissed off when I see someone hot-linking or stealing one of my images…
But this is kind of cool.

You can see the original at www.sob.ru/issue242.html

Freeze frame

I was contacted by Allen “King of the Oldies” Hill to inquire if I might be available to come to the Continental Club and shoot some promo shots for the new incarnation of the El Orbits.

Since David Beebe is about to undergo surgery on his voice box he will be taking a hiatus from the band for about a year.

Thomas Escalante, lead singer for Clouseaux, has already moved in to the lead singer position with David doing backing vocals and playing bass. With David gone the vocals are covered but there is a need for bass guitar. That’s where Allen comes in.

With all these changes there’s a need for new promotional material, hence the request for my photographic services.

Truth be told, I was pretty nervous. I don’t mind going out and shooting casually because there’s nothing riding on the results. When shooting on spec there is an expectation and failure means disappointment for more than just the photographer.

Still, it was an opportunity I wanted to take advantage of and I agreed to do it.

The results were not everything I had hoped for. I don’t own professional lighting gear and they wanted the picture on the stage at the Continental Club and the lighting there is pretty bad.

My current photographic preference is to shoot without a flash. This results in shots that are a tad grainy and “soft”, but look cool when reduced in size. In hindsight I should have shot a few with the flash just so they would have had that as an option.

I sent over the files from the images I thought were most usable and Allen determined that this one would do the trick:

The El Orbits - Ver II
Click image to see full size

In other photographic news I sold another picture at Sig’s Lagoon. I’ve doubled my sales revenue!

Galveston Bay

FYI: These photography posts are best viewed directly from baldheretic.com as opposed to your RSS readers or Lj feeds, especially when viewing full sized images. Check it out!

These two images were taken using the Sony 18-70mm f3.5-5.6 kit lens.

This one was taken from the fishing boat while still tied to the dock

Fishing boat
Click to see full sized image

This one was taken while underway. The water was very calm but with the boat moving there was some up and down motion. The built in image stabilization shines here.

Oil rig
Click to see full sized image

The last two photos are with the same lens at full zoom and center on these jetties:

I was using the 3fps auto-advance and auto-focus to track pelicans as they dove for fish.
Each of these shots is a 100% crop, meaning that if you click to see the larger image you will see an un-resized section of the actual photograph cropped from the original image.

With full zoom and being out at the mouth of the bay near the jetties the image stabilization came in quite handy and is very apparent in these shots.

Pelican
Click for full size

Pelican
Click for full size

2006 International Quilt Festival

Cynthia admires an amazing quilt
Well worth clicking to see a larger version

The largest quilting event in the world happens in Houston every year at the George R. Brown convention center each November. The International Quilt Festival is something that Cynthia never misses.

From their web site:

The largest annual quilt show, sale, and quiltmaking academy in the world attracts more than 53,000 attendees with 2,000+ quilts, cloth dolls and garments on display; more than 1050 booths selling quilts, supplies, books, notions, antiques, and crafts; and more than 400 classes, lectures, and events for all skill levels.

It’s pretty impressive. In the past I have had to miss it due to obligations during the fall, but not this year. You might think it’s too girly or froo-froo or whatever but you would be wrong. Some of these quilts are works of art that are amazing to behold.

Here’s a picture of the entire quilt from the above photo:

Very cool quilt
Click it, you won’t be disappointed

Cynthia and I agreed that this was the coolest quilt at the show.
Just take a look at some of the detail:

Detail shot
Clicky and drool!

There was one other quilt that I saw that I particularly liked

Another very cool quilt
More detail when you click

Cynthia was able to get some good fabric swatches for a quilt she is planning to make and we found some awesome fabric for a new custom shirt for me. All in all, a great outing and one I recommend to anyone.

Welcome to Camelot! (It’s just a model) SHHHHHHHHH!

Continuing to experiment with simulated tilt-shift.
I suppose I will eventually need to just break down and buy a lens.
This is infinitely cheaper, though.

Urquhart Castle from a picture I took on our trip to the UK a few years back.

Urquhart Castle

This is the St. Angel Bridge in Rome from last years European vacation

St. Angel Bridge

It is helpful to use photographs taken from above. This tricks the mind much better because when we think of looking at a model we usually see it on a table top.

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