Some photos from Colours of Ostrava

As promised, here are some of the photos I took at Colours of Ostrava festival in July. I didn't take pictures of all the bands we saw. Rufus Wainwright and The Flaming Lips got the most attention from me (mainly because I had the best vantage points for shooting during those shows). Not too bad for the little Canon G9, eh? Enjoy!

Rufus Wainwright

Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips

A confetti extravaganza!

In my garden

I was fortunate enough to spend some time with a friend this afternoon and take a bunch of portraits of her. She was very tolerant of my "four camera" method of photography, which involves (of course) four cameras (Lubitel with a flash, Fujica 6x4.5, Nikon 35mm film, and Canon G9) slung all over my person and switching on and off a photo flood. I have to take the color film to the lab and get into the darkroom to develop the black & white (I'm hoping I got decent exposures). I may post one of the digital images here in the meantime if she's okay with it.

Because it's so nice, I decided to wander around the garden a bit with the macro function of my G9. I was lucky enough to find this red ant covered in pollen in a dandelion. Unfortunately, this is the only somewhat sharp image I got. At one point I got so close to the ant that he landed on my lens - too close to shoot but it was cool looking - like a dark, ant-shaped cloud.

Hungry ant

I also shot this blue flower - pollen is so cool looking in macro!

Rusty Tacoma

One of the great features of old, industrial cities is the decay and rust that can be found despite all efforts of city councils to modernize and "prettify." Tacoma has a great industrial area that has many abandoned spaces side-by-side with functioning buildings and industries.

Today we took an early morning photo wander around Tacoma's Tide Flats area with a friend. I schlepped my Fujica 6x4.5 and Zero Image pinhole cameras along with the Canon G9 (I can never be accused of favoring one camera over another). Took lots of rust photos with the idea of using them for textures in digital collage. However, I may just keep some of them as stand-alone photos since they're so cool looking.

I took a G9 macro shot of these rusty nails that were scattered on a cruddy old forklift.

Rusty nails

It never ceases to amaze me how many photo-worthy scenes I can find just by stepping in close.

Some macros for a rainy day

Spent perhaps too much time indoors today. In addition to some darkroom time, I took some macro shots with the Canon G9 of stuff I had lying around. It might tell you something about my housecleaning habits when you see that I photographed a dead moth, a dead spider and a dying sunflower. They may be dead (or close to it) but they're still photo-worthy.

Stitch function on the Canon G9

I took a bike ride through the Tacoma tide flats with my G9 the other day and decided to test out the stitch function on the camera. I didn't spend any time in post working on the images beyond stitching them into a panorama in Photoshop. If you look at the telephone wires, you'll see some flaws. I was more interested in seeing what I could do quickly and I'm pretty pleased with the results. The final file size, after flattening and compressing as a TIF, was about 190 MB so this is a bit of a space hog. However, it was made out of 5 images so it's not really surprising the file would be so large in size.

Building in the Tacoma Tide Flats - late day

The light was great and the subject matter is just so appealing.

A response to the Ode to Canon G9

Although the Canon G9 is a wonderful camera for all the reasons I stated in my previous post, I do have other photographic loves that cannot be denied. My Lubitel is one such love. Made in Russia of sturdy plastic, lacking a built-in light meter (I use a piece of paper taped to the side of the camera on which I've mapped out apertures and shutter speeds), and arriving with a poorly translated manual, it has become one of my absolute favorite film cameras. I find the lens to be fairly sharp though it creates a funky, swirly wash when shooting shallow. I have pre-visions of portraits made with this camera - beautiful color portraits with funky, old-fashioned backgrounds.

Best features: it is light and easy to travel with, it shoots in square format, it forces one to slow down while taking photos and it shoots film so you have to imagine what the images look like before you get to see them. All that for about $150. What a deal!

Ode to my Canon G9

Oh, G9. Why do I love thee so? Could it be that you are a light and compact camera? Easy to travel with, yet a capable image capture device. Shooting RAW in low light and bright sun. Perhaps it is your macro function - a function I am just starting to use - that makes you so loveable. You may not be as mighty as a D5 Mark II, but you do the job and at a fraction of the cost.

Perhaps because you made it so easy for me to shoot 2GB of pics in less than an hour at the aquarium today. I don't know why I love you so. I just know I do. And I'm not ashamed to admit it.

 Kelp and bubbles shot at the Seattle Aquarium. Aquariums are my new photo obsession.

An example of the macro function of the G9. I love the fact that the moth "fur" really comes out in these pictures.

Because it is "Cosmonaut Wednesday" (an event that occurs every Wednesday that I wear my Cosmonaut necklace), I thought I would add the little fella to the blog as well. Thanks Museum of Jurassic Technology for having such a cool gift shop!