Tiltin' and Shiftin' Paris

Check out some Paris pictures!

I'll warn you, there are many Eiffel Tower pictures.  I try to put my own tiltish shiftish twist on them, but when something is photographed with such frequency, can it not be cliche?  Decide for yourself.

here's a little something something to whet your appetite...

THE CITY OF LOVE

Edinburgh, Scotland

A recent trip to Edinburgh, Scotland resulted in the tilt-shifting of another part of the world.  Check it out here for more photos.

Here's a wee bit of what you will find...

...but worry not, there is more than just architectural shots.  Go check it out.

Bardonecchia, Italy And The Surrounding Alps

Check out my Tilt-Shift The World post on Bardonecchia, Italy and the Alps.  Here are a few photos from the post...

Abstract Architecture

More and more I'm inclined to use my homemade tilt-shift lens for my architectural shots.  I am always fairly pleased with the results.  Today's shot wasn't as good as some of my others...like the first photo here.  But there can be just as much if not more satisfaction gained from creating something with which you can take a photograph than from the photograph itself.

I'm always a fan of bokeh.  Architectural photography is not a field you tend to see it used in...I think it works here, though.

I'll Tilt-Shift The World (or at least the majority of Belfast)

Got caught in a heavy downpour.  Had to hide my camera under my jacket.  Sadly, I was shooting with my homemade tilt-shift lens.  So that meant I also had to hide my massive and heavy 90mm Mamiya lens...and the bellows of a plunger.  But I got this...

 An old clock tower that seems like it may have also dealt with a severe storm or two in its life.

Pathways...Through The Woods, Through The Brain, Around Dams, And Under Arches

It's been a rainy past few days.  My picture for the 27th makes that apparent.  It's nothing more than what a rainy wet day looks like on one of Belfast's main roads...

Redburn Country Park is a great place to go for a good hike.  You can pretty much hike for the better part of a day without seeing the same thing twice.  That's what we did on the 28th...here are some naturish photos without being straight up trees or wildlife...

...a path that looks like it would take you all the way to Samson and Goliath (Belfast's big yellow ship-building cranes)

...a slightly different perspective than what you normally get from a  waterfall photo (I was hanging off the waterfall ledge)

...and an abstract shot.  The way the branches of a tree were reflecting in a stream reminded me of neurons firing in the brain.  I had to create a negative of the image to get my desired effect.

Yesterday my wife and I met up with one of her classmates and her family for a very nice afternoon.  They live much further south than we do, quite close to the border actually, and thus were able to show us a side of Northern Ireland that we don't get near where we live.  Their house is in the middle of nowhere...surrounded on all sides by mountains and the greenest of pastures.  We were taken to mountainous parks, harbor towns, the Irish Sea, and a massive dam... 

 ...that sink hole acts as a water level regulator.  That sky kept us from getting to hike that mountain in the background (it poured the whole day).

Today I grabbed my homemade Tilt-Shift lens, something I haven't used in a while, and headed out.  The Botanic Gardens, normally my first destination, provided the perfect structure for specifically choosing the plane on which my now extra-controllable focus fell...

...the tilt-shift lens seems to make the image's depth both expand and contract at the same time.

Books, Bokeh and Beaches

The 23rd of October was rainy.  I already posted for it, but had been lucky on that day and got outside before the rain hit.  Once it hit it kept going until early on the 25th.  This forced me to stay inside on the 24th and find something worth photographing within my apartment.  

I have been reading (and greatly enjoying) Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.  In an attempt to keep a visual list of the books I've been reading, I have been taking a photo of each book.  Compelled to stay inside by the rain, I give you...something inside my apartment that is at least slightly worth photographing...

A good book

I grabbed my camera and my homemade tilt shift lens as soon as the rain stopped on the 25th.  I didn't know how much time I would have before it started again, so I ran around outside looking for something to shoot.  A train went by, I squeezed my plunger-like DIY tilt shift lens and pressed the shutter button.  

Not as tilt-shifty as I would have liked

My tilt shift lens was still attached on the 26th, so I used it again.  There are some pretty awesome "post boxes" (mailboxes) around here.  Here is one that is right outside of my apartment.  

Mail me things!

In an attempt to add on to one of my new projects (architectural photography that might not initially seem like architecture) I got this shot of a wall on Thursday.  I don't know if I can actually add it to the project (it is strange, but I think it is pretty obvious that it is indeed something architectural)  but I really like the angle.

Biggest cage ever

I woke up to the sounds of this happening on the 28th... 

I think they were trying to melt the road.  Is that normal?

I then took some pictures of my wife and her morning tea.

With only window light.  

In the evening we went to what was supposed to be a haunted botanical garden.  It would have been nice if it would have been free.  We stood in the line until finding out it wasn't free.  Then we left.

I absolutely love Halloween...but not enough to pay to walk through a garden with people dressed up in an attempt to appease crying children.

On the way back I was trying some low light shots...

...and ended up with some beautiful bokeh.

We went to Larne yesterday.  In an attempt to get people to use a new train that has just been added, they had a "try the train" day.  We tried it.  A free train trip?  Most definitely!  We got off the train and walked around...rather disappointed.  Larne seemed to be a very boring town.  With horrible crosswalks.  We almost died a few times.  What was strange was that we had looked into the town and found what seemed to be some interesting things.  Apparently they were farther away from the station than we had thought.  We chose a direction and walked that way...hoping it would take us somewhere interesting.

After a few miles we came upon a cute little park.  With a stone on the other side of it.  We made our way to the wall and slipped through a little gate and...

  much better.  We thought there was supposed to be some water around Larne.

We found the coastline path that we had read about.  We headed north on it, hoping to find a tunnel that had seemed rather alluring.

that little hole in the mountain...that's my tunnel!

We found the tunnel just as the rain found us.  We went up to the tunnel, looked around and turned around.  The half hour walk back was not much fun, what with the ocean breeze slamming the rain into our faces and soaking us thoroughly.  We found a little shelter, asked an old couple that was taking refuge there if we could join them, and they told us of a very nice little cafe that would hang our clothes up by the radiator and give us hot soup.  We went there.  The soup was good.  My roasted red pepper and mushroom panini was better.  But they didn't hang up our jackets by a radiator.  

This isn't the cafe.  It's a close up of the tunnel.

September 14th through the 18th

The view out one of our windows in our Belfast apartment is a nice one.  It's an interesting mix of older roofs and modern hospital buildings.  Here is a tilt shift version of it.  I had my tilt shift lens out from yesterday...so I figured I should use it again before putting it away.

Tilt Shifted Belfast

I passed something wonderful on my way to the grocery store on the 15th...a flyer with the words "ska nation" on it.  You can't go wrong with ska.  Adding to the awesomeness was The Special's Rude Boy standing there on said flyer.  A day later I was on a bus that had a flyer that said The Specials are playing in the next week or so.  This is a beautiful world that I am currently residing in.  The only thing that would make it better would be if it was Operation Ivy's Skanking Man instead of the Rude Boy.

Hooligans and Rude Boys

My wife was told that Friday morning is the best day to go to Saint George's Market.  Apparently that's when they have the most produce.  So we went.  We survive off of produce.

 Irish Pineapples

 Happy Men and Their Produce

There was a nice little fair on the 17th and 18th.  There was music and food.  It took place in the Botanic Gardens right by our house.  A palm tree house that is only opened once a year was opened.  It was filled with crazy plants.   A jazz/swing band was playing.  This trumpet player was filled with soul.

 Irish Palm Tree

The Horn Section

We went hiking yesterday.  The trail had a few hidden animal mosaics.  Some of them were covered with shrubbery, some were missing parts.  Only one mosaic, the squirrel, was fully intact.

 Bats, Squirrels, and Badgers

Zeno's Paradox of the Arrow (and another day of photography)

Yesterday was extremely windy.  It was while I was out walking around in the wind, wind that I later learned was part of a new hurricane that recently showed up on the radar, that I started thinking about Zeno of Elea.

Zeno was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher.  He theorized about many things, motion being one of them.  His paradox of the arrow logically comes to the conclusion that motion does not exist.  Of course we seem to live in a world filled with motion (leaves blowing all over the place while the trees bend at the wind's mercy and rain drops slam into your face) and thus, his conclusions seem to be paradoxical.

The argument goes as such - imagine an archer is preparing to shoot an arrow at a target.  The arrow is a certain size, occupying a specific amount of space.  He shoots it.  Though the arrow appears to move from the bow to the target, at any specific point in time, though the arrow my be in the air, it is static, occupying no more space than it ever does, not moving to a position where it is yet to be.  Time and motion are composed of these instances, and since in these instances everything is at rest, motion is an illusion.

Of course, Aristotle himself had certain responses to the many paradoxes that Zeno came up with.  And since then, many other people brought up opposing conclusions from the argument and found elements of the premises that were fallible. 

Regardless of the authenticity of the paradox, I started thinking about it on a day that seemed to be filled with motion, and so decided to capture it in photo series form.

  Zeno's Paradox Series: Ribbon in the Wind

 I am yet to decide on the exact rules of this photo series.  I want to capture images of things that appear to be in motion without using the standard long exposure method.  The long exposure method would show what Zeno is arguing against - things in a transitional period - images with blur and such.  I want to capture precise instances that the subject (as it is) appears to be occupying solely the space that it occupies...just in different locations.  Multiple images, each showing a unique location of the subject, seems to be the best method.

- So really this just seems to be a study of motion series...the difference being it came about by thinking about some old Greek guy -

Today, September 13

This is a photo of a model of a street in Belfast city.  No, it isn't.  I lie.  It is a tilt-shift photograph of a street in Belfast city.  With a police officer taking a picture of the ticket he just placed on a vehicle.  Using a tilt-shift lens (homemade, of course) gives certain images a quality similar to that of a photograph of a die-cast model.

Odd Position

I think a second after I took this picture, he fell over.