I Need Your Vote!

Old Filling Station, Driftwood, Texas, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

One of my pictures has made it to the final panel of this year's PCPhoto Magazine competition. If you have time, and like the image, I would be very grateful if you could vote for it by clicking here and pressing the relevant button.

Voting extends until December 1st. Thanks in advance for your support!

D90 High ISO Performance

On Tuesday, I had some time free between shooting at the Caswell House and a meeting I was going to so decided to put the D90's high ISO performance and my VR lenses to the test while wandering around the parking lot at Central Market. It was about 6:30pm and totally dark aside from the street lighting around the lot and store. Here are a couple of shots, both taken hand-held with the 80-300mm VR lens. The first was taken at ISO3200 and the second at ISO6400 (HI+1). I'm extremely impressed by how usable both images are and, given that the shutter speed for the 6400 one was 1/30th, I'm also impressed at the operation of the VR - that's about 3 stops better than I would have expected given that the lens was set to 300mm at the time.

Click on each image for a larger version. In each case, all I've done is crop and resave the image - no noise reduction, sharpening or any other adjustments. I did compress the images so I've introduced some JPEG artifacts but hopefully not too many to get the point across. Originals were in NEF format, exported to JPEG in Lightroom and cropped in Photoshop (yes, I could have done this in Lightroom too).

3200ISO, VR lens at 220mm, handheld



Detail:



6400ISO, VR lens at 300mm, handheld



Detail:

Decorated Doorway, Caswell House

Decorated Doorway, Caswell House, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

Nikki and I spent last Satuday evening at an annual fundraiser dinner for Austin Junior Forum at their historic, downtown headquarters, the Caswell House. Each year, they decorate the house and hold a (rather early) sale of Christmas ornaments and gifts.

I didn't have a camera with me on Saturday but headed back down, D90, super-wide lens and tripod in hand, on Tuesday evening and took a few shots of the decorations. I had sized up two particular shots I wanted to take on Saturday but discovered that they had rearranged the house somewhat by Tuesday and the staircase was now a fully equipped photo studio for "Portraits with Santa" and the fireplace was now occupied by a guitar player, his music stand and guitar case. Maybe next year I'll be able to find an uncluttered time and take these shots. For the meantime, though, here's one of the resulting images. If you click through it you can find some more on my Flickr photostream.

Top NASA Photos of All Time

Air & Space Magazine has an excellent gallery of the Top NASA Photos of All Time today. If you are a space nut like me, this is well worth a look.

Austin City Hall Steps

Austin City Hall Steps, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

Nikki and I spent a night in the Hyatt Regency in Austin last Saturday thanks to a silent auction "purchase". On Sunday morning, we took a wander around the Hike and Bike Trail and 1st and 2nd streets. I had the G9 and a Gorillapod* with me and took a few photos along the way. I'm fairly pleased with this one though, had I had more time (breakfast was beckoning) I would have looked for some better angles on the solar panels and the shadows they were casting on the steps.

Incidentally, this photo is "Photo of the Day" over at Austinist today.

* It's pretty obvious that the founder of the company which sells the Gorillapod isn't Scottish. Their company name is distinctly less than complimentary back home :-)

Google Quirks

Falkirk Wheel in motion 2 (mono), originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

It's a funny old (search engine) world. Scanning through my Flickr referrer stats today, I happened to take a look at the search engine terms that resulted in hits to this image. If you are suffering glandular fever (or mononucleosis as it's known in the US, affectionately abbreviated to "mono"), you may be surprised to see this image pop up in the top 10 if you search Google images for "treatments for mono". It's the only image completely unrelated to the disease on the first page.

Crime & Punishment | Magnum In Motion

Magnum Photo has a very powerful photo essay on the death penalty in Texas on it's site today.

A New Start

I've been in the US now for a little over 14 years and, for the last 7 or 8, have been thinking seriously about applying for citizenship. So far, it's got as far as thinking but no further. Actually, I did start filling in the famous N400 form a couple of years ago but gave up at the question asking me to list every occasion I had left the country (with dates and destinations) since obtaining a Green Card but, regardless of the reason, I've still not got as far as mailing the form and associated US membership fee.

Part of my reticence is probably just laziness but a fair bit came down to my pondering the question of whether or not I would be happy to admit to my friends back in the UK that I was now a member of the US club. Could I be truly proud of the country that I was now an official citizen of? For the last 8 years, the answer to this question would have to be a resounding "No!".

Don't get me wrong - I love living here and the vast majority of the people here are wonderful, thoughtful, friendly, caring folks. The problem, however, is that the impression of a country is so often dominated by the actions of that country's leadership. In this case, the last 8 years has been marked by war, isolationism, arrogance and all the kinds of foreign policy decisions that are ideal to earn a country a truly bad reputation in the eyes of the international community. Why would I want to be associated with that type of organisation?

This week, however, the N400 is once again on my desktop and I have promised Nikki that it will be filled in and mailed within a month. For the first time in a decade, I am once again optimistic about the country and its future. The election of Barack Obama has renewed my faith in the US people and left me sure that things are going to get a whole lot better than they have been. Yes, there are lots of challenges ahead but I truly feel that Obama is exactly the kind of person we need - intelligent, thoughtful, calm - to address those challenges including the one that worries me almost as much as the current financial meltdown, namely the increasing polarisation of the American people. I'm looking forward to January 20th, 2009 and a new start.

Advertising Shoot

Glassy Calm, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

I've just delivered final images to a Colorado advertising agency which recently contacted me to shoot for a real estate development campaign they are working on. This is the image that will be appearing on billboards, magazines, brochures and newspapers around central Texas some time in early 2009. I strongly suspect you will hardly recognise it in the final copy since their creative people have some exciting Photoshop plans (hence the large expanse of water in the foreground).

We had scouted the location a week before the main shoot on a grey, drizzly Saturday morning. After 6 months of drought, it was rather annoying that the weather broke on the one week I needed sunshine and it remained grey for a week. A week the following Monday, however, the weather was beautiful, the air cold and crisp and the lake deserted as we took the 30 minute run from Lakeway Marina up to the location in a rented ski boat.

The client asked for shots as low to the water as possible. The boat was a couple of feet above the water and even lying along the side and holding the camera as low as possible, I couldn't get the best angle. Given that I had no intention of dropping my Nikon DSLRs overboard, another plan was needed and I came up with a scheme involving my Powershot G9 and a monopod to get a lens about 2 inches above the water. I attached the G9 to the monopod and tilted the head back as far as it would go. With me holding the camera strap and the client holding the monopod, we lowered it over the side of the boat and, using the 2 second self timer had just enough time to get the camera into position before the shutter fired.

While it seems ironic that the chosen image should be the one taken with the older, smaller, compact camera rather than one of the DSLRs I was also shooting with, I do really love the water in this shot. We sat around for a few minutes after getting the boat into position to let the ripples die down and it really made a difference.

I'm looking forward to January and seeing what the creatives in Denver manage to do with this one!

For comparison, here's one of the other shots that I rather liked and which I processed "for myself." I shot everything handheld, lying along the side of the boat and using 3 shot, 2 stop brackets to allow me to generate HDRs later.

Lake Travis Promontory, originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

Gulf Fritillary Feeding

Gulf Fritillary Feeding (cropped), originally uploaded by David A G Wilson.

I took this photo a couple of years ago and am posting it just now since VFXY Photo's weekly theme is "Macro". This was one of about 3 good shots I got in an afternoon at my mother-in-law's house outside San Marcos. It was taken with a 70-300mm lens with 56mm of extension, using the zoom to adjust focus (I find this works a whole lot better than using the focus ring for some reason. The camera was set to manual focus since autofocus doesn't work too well at these close ranges and with this lens/tube combination).