Island Wife

Island Wife, June 29, 2009
Koko Marina, Honolulu, Hawaii
Nikon D80, Tokina 12-24mm (AT-X 124 II) f/4.0 @ f/4.0, 1/250s, ISO 100
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.4, Camera D2X Mode 2 Profile

The wife very generously puts up with my hobbies. With a smile, even.

The islands are beautiful. We completed our three-day sojourn on O'ahu, and have now retired to the beaches of Po'ipu for the remainder of our holiday.

For our last night in Honolulu the wife let me indulge in another of my hobbies: we went to Kona Brewing's Koko Marina Pub. I would have much rather gone to Kona's brewery, but alas, we were on the wrong island. The food was good and the beer was excellent (though a little less hoppy than my northwest palate is accustomed to), but the service sucked. Also, the cab ride was ridiculously expensive. Taxis cost $3.20 a mile in Honolulu; I'll let you work out the cost between Koko Marina and our hotel at Waikiki.

Today is a different day, a different island. I've already got my eye on the two breweries here on Kaua'i, and this time I've got a rental car. I've also got some good shots from this evening's sunset that I wanted to share, but it's late enough already. Maybe tomorrow I'll work them up for you.

Until then, aloha.

Soccer shots

The wife and I are headed to Hawai'i for 10 days on Saturday. I'm looking forward to some time to relax, but I'm also excited about photo opportunities. Balance, Tim, balance.

I'll probably be posting from the islands, but until then here's a few shots from that soccer game. I whipped these out on the request of The Big A's HR department, which wants to use the soccer team in an internal promotion. It was at least a motivator to shiny up the photos. I just hope I'm not running afoul of the photographer's release I signed by posting them here; the sentence with the word "exclusive" was a little murky.

Sam Power 2, June 8, 2009
Georgetown Playfield, Seattle, Washington
Nikon D80, Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 @ f/8.0, 1/640s, ISO 1600
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3, Camera Vivid profile

Yes, you have seen this one before. I spent some more time tweaking the colors. I've tried to go for the desaturated/high-contrast/grany-athletic-shot look. In Lightroom I used the settings for this photo as the basis for the others (since they all had the same nasty noise problem), and that worked out pretty well. Then I touched up the skin on each of them with a little color and that really helped.


Into the Turn, June 8, 2009
Georgetown Playfield, Seattle, Washington
Nikon D80, Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 @ f/8.0, 1/500s, ISO 1600
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3, Camera Vivid profile


Dish It Down, June 8, 2009
Georgetown Playfield, Seattle, Washington
Nikon D80, Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 @ f/8.0, 1/500s, ISO 1600
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3, Camera Vivid profile


Patience On the Ball, June 8, 2009
Georgetown Playfield, Seattle, Washington
Nikon D80, Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 @ f/8.0, 1/500s, ISO 1600
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3, Camera Vivid profile


Jon On the Run, June 8, 2009
Georgetown Playfield, Seattle, Washington
Nikon D80, Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 @ f/8.0, 1/250s, ISO 3200
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 and Adobe Photoshop CS4, Camera Vivid profile

This photo required a bit more tweaking than the others. Our badass subject here, Jonathan, is an employee but the two guys in the background are not. HR requires model releases for the photos, which technically isn't a problem but is a pain to arrange. So Photoshop lent a hand with a bit of masking and blurring. Not my best work, but if you don't look to hard it works.

Breaking News

Remember this post? It has bloomed:

The Boston Globe: Visitors to website Sporcle learn geography and other subjects - and have fun

Dreams do come true, kiddies.

Double Dose

Sam Power, June 8, 2009
Georgetown Playfield, Seattle, Washington
Nikon D80, Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 @ f/8.0, 1/640s, ISO 1600
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3, Camera D2X Mode 2 profile

Another shot from last week's game. ISO is lower so the noise isn't as bad. Still bad, though. I went for the high contrast look here. Not bad, except his skin tones are starting to bleed red, and it's a bit tricky to clean it up with the noise. Good enough for now.



Two Bridge View, June 15, 2009
Aurora and Fremont Bridges, Seattle, Washington
Nikon D80, Tokina 12-24mm (AT-X 124 II) f/4.0@ f/11.0, 1/25s, ISO 100
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3, ACR 4.4 profile

There was a little extra cash burning a hole in my pocket, so I did what any good photographer does: I bought a new lens. Specifically, the Tokina AT-X 124 AF Pro DX II. This is the newer version of Tokina's 12-24 with the built-in focus motor and better coatings on the glass. I chose it over the competition because A) it was in my price range, and B) it goes up to 24mm, which the Sigma 10-20 does not. I find that I like that length quite a bit, and I even considered the Nikon 24mm prime as an alternative. But I also wanted to get the extreme wide end, so as a DX/APS-C format shooter, my choice was made.

This was taken on my first jaunt out with the lens, wandering along the canal side of my office. Not a spectacular photo, but decent. I'll need to work with the lens a bit more to figure out the sharpness and chromatic aberration behavior, but it's promising so far.

Baseline Shot

Brick House vs. Woo-Deux, June 8, 2009
Georgetown Playfield, Seattle, Washington
Nikon D80, Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 @ f/8.0, 1/250s, ISO 3200
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 and Adobe Photoshop CS4, ACR 4.4 profile

I haven't been playing soccer lately due to a badly sprained ankle. Last week I finally went to one of my team's soccer games, but I brought my camera instead of my cleats. My teammate Daniel is in the Harvard t-shirt, doin' his thing. Can't remember what exactly happened next, but no doubt Daniel hammered the ball to somewhere. (Ultimately we won, 2-1.) I've got a couple other exposures from this game that I like; might post those later in the week.

Exposure was a bit tricky; it was late and the sun had sunk behind the trees, so I had the ISO cranked all the way up. Ideally I'd be shooting wide open and with a faster shutter speed but I wanted to stay at the sharper apertures of this lens. Kinda pointless in the end since the noise blows out all the detail anyway. I tried the trick in Photoshop where you sharpen the Lightness channel in LAB mode, and that helped a little.

I tried this as black and white but I couldn't find a mix that made this look good. The contrast is just too low to make it interesting. Leaving the color in lets the image pop a little bit more.

Next week I hope to start playing again.

The Perfect Lens for Being Drunk

The Space Needle After Half a Bottle of Wine, June 5, 2009
The Space Needle, Seattle, Washington
Nikon D80, Lensbaby Composer @ f/2.8, 1/80s, ISO 800
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3, ACR 4.4 profile

For our fifth anniversary the wife and I dined at SkyCity, the revolving restaurant at the Space Needle. Absolutely the best views in Seattle, especially at sunset. The food was not as spectacular; it was good but be clear that the significant prices are justified (just barely) by the view, not the food quality. Savvy shoppers will sign up for the SkyCity e-mail list, which netted us a free entree and a bottle of wine. The wife doesn't drink wine (well; the wife doesn't drink wine well), so it was up to me to absorb the value of our freebie.

After tottering back down to ground level, while we waited for the valet to bring the car (yes folks, the wife drove) I broke out the camera with Lensbaby mounted. I teetered underneath the tower and pointed upwards. I'm pleased with the results.

The tweaking in Lightroom was pretty extensive. I debated whether or not to try to kill the color cast on the outer ring, but decided that the shot looked boring in black and white. Maybe I could play with the color balancing for the grayscale conversion and get interesting tones. I'd have to be careful, as the high ISO tends to cause noise to pop out easily. That is one benefit to using the Lensbaby: all the blurring tends to mitigate the noise.

Charred and Pointy

Hot Tools, May 9, 2009
Art by Fire, Seattle, Washington
Nikon D80, Nikkor 50mm f/2.8 @ f/8, 1/125s, ISO 400
Developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3, Adobe Standard profile

The wife has a new hobby, glass blowing. In fact, right now she's at her first formal class at Art by Fire. I took this shot a few weeks ago when she was doing a one-off class there during the monthly Ballard artwalk. I warmed up the image quite a bit by enhancing the white balance and adding a little bit of split toning. I thought about going black and white, which would let the split tone really come out, but I decided to leave the original colors in without desaturating.

I've slacked a little bit when it comes to the blog and processing my photos. Haven't been shooting much, either, which is usually what drives me to post new photos. Not that I don't have lots of old ones I can work on. I'll endeavor to be better about posting, and in any case I've got a big trip coming up at the end of the month that should generate a ton of images.