Fractured Tree or Fractured Existence?

Sorry for the delay this week. I was on a travelling delay. I have a boatload of shots I took on my travels that I'll be showing pretty soon. Hope you all are having a good week thus far.

Tom

Walt Disney Concert Hall, Garden on the back of the concert hall - Shot with Canon 10D, Canon 50mm f1.8, ISO 400,1/1250 @ f9

I shot this on my last visit to the concert hall after I ditched a convention because it was a real snoozer. There was a couple getting their wedding pictures done here. Was very interesting to watch for the few minutes that I did.

I always go back to the same places to see if I can find anything new or creative to shoot. If you think you have nothing to shoot or you live in a boring area, I'll tell you that you're wrong. I keep going back to places like this because it forces me to think out of the box and to push myself to see something I might have missed before. Pushing the limits in these ways flourish creativity.

Building of the Phil

Walt Disney Concert Hall - Downtown LA, Fall 2011 - Shot with Canon Rebel XT, Canon 50mm f1.8,  Ilford hp5+ 400 ISO, Also might have been pushed one stop to 800 ISO

This was an old scan from a school computer before I knew about blowing off dust and using an anti static cloth. The Disney Hall has to be one of my most favorite places to take pictures of. I think I've gone there at least 6 or 7 times to shoot pictures. A marvelously designed building and a joy to look at from up close and from a distance.

Live blog from the road

I'm sitting here over at the Norwalk green line station and was thinking what better way to spend my day than to have a live picture blog. Here is the entrance to the station here

Updated 10:30 am
Picture 2 the road to long beach. Too bad I'm going the other way

Updated 10:45
Watts towers station off the blue line is picture #3

Updated 11:29
I decided last second to jump off the train to go shoot in one of my favorite spots. This time in color. Picture #4 LA City Hall

Updated 12:08 pm
My last shot from downtown before I hit an internet free zone in the subway. Picture #5

Updated 1:19 pm
Jumped on the gold line. It seems to be where all the nice stops are. Picture #6 del mar gold line crossing in Pasadena

Updated 1:40
I seemed to hit jackpot when I got off at del mar. Currently at memorial park in Pasadena, Picture #7

Final Update 6:45 PM

All in all, I accomplished what I set out to do for the day. I had a couple of minor detours that I had to take, but my first part of research went as planned. Next time, I don't think there will be as many distractions since I will be going in a different direction from today. Hey this was kind of fun. Maybe I will do it again, since my phone was able to handle it. I have a picture set ready to go either tomorrow or Monday. Thanks for stopping by.

Final Final Update, The Next day.

I just realized I posted the best picture of the day on to my facebook and not here. So here it is.

Results from Lubitel Shoot

Last time, I was describing my new old camera, the Lubitel 2. I got a little too technical even for me. I went shot at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which seems to be my most favorite place to shoot, and I have some results along with some pros and cons of using a completely manual camera. I have yet to edit some of these pictures because at least one of them will be used for my project and I am printing it out in the darkroom and not on the computer.

In this first image, it gives me a great idea of what to expect from this camera.  There are a couple of issues, but the most major one is a quirk of having a camera with a hole in the back for viewing the image number, and that is the vignetting. You can really see the big spot on the bottom left corner and slight darkening on the other three corners. Another hard issue is the viewing screen. When I was trying to frame  the image, I had to guess with over half the image because all I could see was the outline of the lens. It didn't fit the screen. I just happen to be good at aiming. An acquired skill from playing a lot of Duck Hunt on my NES 20years ago. Other than that, the image looks sharp enough to me.

This self portrait of myself was an interesting shot to see after developing my film. It shows the very point of why film is such a great medium. I can't see this being done on a digital camera unless you combine two different images. In order to take an image on the Lubitel, you have to manually cock the shutter and then hit the shutter release and then wind the film to the next position. What I did was take the first shot by accident which was my image in the upper left corner, and then I forgot to wind the image to the next shot and I hit the shutter open again. 

My last two images are just so so for me.

I scanned this one because the cars looked a little like toys, and it is a great shot of the front of the concert hall.

This one was another double exposure taken from the garden/courtyard on the backside of the concert hall. I guess i wanted to take another self portrait since I had screwed the last one up and I forgot to wind it to the next shot again. In this image, I was trying to capture a bee, but I don't think I got it.

All in all, I think i got my moneys worth for this camera, and I will most definately have to trade off week to week between this camera and my new old Yashica Mat EM, that should be arriving tomorrow.