free variable

I’ve uploaded some photos from the 4th of July weekend weekend in Spirit Lake and Okoboji, including a few photos of WT fishing, one of my brother-in-law¹ catching a lot of air on Big Spirit Lake, and one of my sister-in-law waterskiing bluetooth style.

¹ I suppose Ben and I are technically “co-brothers-in-law,” but this nomenclature has always struck me as unnecessarily pedantic.

We went to the annual “Cars on State” event downtown today. There were a lot of great cars there, including quite a bit of classic American muscle, a DeLorean, a wood-paneled Town and Country, and a surprising number of 40-50 year old British sports cars. It was gray and a little wet, but we had a good time and I took a few photos, some of which are below. (Click on any picture for a precise location and to see larger sizes.)

I bought myself a fast medium-telephoto prime this year, and got it roughly in the “early Christmas present” timeframe. As it turns out, I was able to use this lens to capture an image of Thomas examining a far more exciting gift that our family received on Christmas Day:

Margrethe Ruth (aka “Maggie”) was born at 12:50 PM on Christmas Day. We are delighted to have another birth to commemorate on this day and thankful for a healthy mother, a healthy child, and a complication-free birth — indeed, one whose apparent effortlessness amazed several trained, impartial observers. (There are some more photos of Maggie on flickr — and yes, I did use a Bogen tabletop tripod as an impromptu hospital-room strobe stand.)

We didn’t expect Maggie to arrive on Christmas, so there were a couple of things we hadn’t planned for surrounding the day. We were glad to hear part of Schütz’s excellent Christmas Vespers on the Sirius classical station on the way to the hospital; a chance to hear early Baroque concert music is always a welcome surprise, and I especially love Schütz. On the other hand, I was rather less enthusiastic about the utter impossibility of finding some place to order a burger after Maggie was born.

Happy Christmas, all.

I think I may have uncovered the point at which “shallow depth-of-field” becomes “too shallow depth-of-field.” Yow.

I haven’t read this Vanity Fair article about Mad Men, since I’m still on the second season and am loathe to have plot points spoiled for me. But it was hard not to notice Annie Leibovitz’s photograph of Jon Hamm and January Jones that heads the article. I was instantly amazed by this image and its aggressive, artless postprocessing. Note in particular the obvious compositing and over-the-top shadow and highlight push and pull — as if the faux-HDR aesthetic were really worth emulating in portraiture.

Leibovitz has apparently either missed or ignored the negative critical reaction to her woefully gauche “Romulus and Remus” photo for Lavazza. In any case, I am truly impressed by a photograph of two people as striking and attractive as Hamm and Jones that renders its subjects so flat, synthetic, and lifeless. Perhaps this was the aesthetic goal — to render the actors as if they were only apparently in the same place and soul-dead automata. But it is possible to make an evocative photograph that depicts a Mad Men actor in a way that both alludes to the events of the show and isn’t ugly.

UPDATE (9/6/2009): David Hobby calls this photograph “subtle and beautiful.” I genuinely regard this as an indictment of my photographic taste. Also, apparently Leibovitz didn’t even take that Lavazza photo herself. Yikes.

Arnolds Park, originally uploaded by willbenton.

S’mores, originally uploaded by willbenton.

This is my entry for assignment 2 in Strobist Boot Camp 2. Click on the photo for the flickr page, with links to different sizes and lighting details.

Macaw, originally uploaded by willbenton.

This post is a test of flickr’s upload-to-blog feature. The image itself is of a macaw from the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison; it is notable for (probably) being the photo that convinced me not to sell my venerable 135/2.8.

Here’s a thought I had earlier tonight: consider photo-manipulation novelty software — the kind of programs that make contemporary digital pictures look like they were taken with a Polaroid instant camera or a lomography camera or a 35mm film camera loaded with Velvia, or whatever. (Good examples of this kind of software include Poladroid and CameraBag.)

Now, consider that conventional incandescent light bulbs will be illegal in 2012, and consider also that most people will probably still not have learned to adjust the white balance on their digital cameras by then. Imagine the years of surreal, unnatural snapshots that will accumulate under these conditions. Doesn’t it seem probable that future photo-manipulation novelty software will have a “2012″ setting that turns all skin tones pallid before overlaying an unnatural green cast?

Consider this camera-phone snapshot of a young golfer taking a break from throwing his ball in the river. After applying the “2012″ filter, we could get this extremely desirable and artistic effect (see before and after side-by-side to fully appreciate the subtle coloration differences). In fact, we are able to apply the 2012 indoor-lighting effect even to photos, like our golfer example, that were taken in inferior natural light, leading to endless creative applications. Do you need to give your office picnic photos that “in the office” feel? Simply use the 2012 filter!

In order to bring you the example above, I have painstakingly reproduced the effect of untamed fluorescent lighting with advanced signal processing techniques and many difficult longhand calculations. Obviously, only the most dedicated hobbyists and professional photographers would be able to devote such effort to enhancing their photos. However, it is hard for me to see how this effect, once automated in software or hardware, could not revolutionize the digital photography of the future.

This post combines two vices for your convenience: posting photos, and posting about food. Here are two things I made (and, much to Andrea’s chagrin, shot) today. Click on the pictures for larger versions (and ultra-nerdy lighting details).

The pork has a dry rub and is smoked for two hours with cherry before finishing in the oven for about another two hours. I got the recipe from Best Grilling Recipes: More Than 100 Regional Favorites Tested and Perfected for the Outdoor Cook, a fascinating and rigorous cookbook that covers a spectrum of choices for most of the interesting variables in classic regional recipes, explaining what works and what doesn’t.

I hope all my compatriots have had a a very happy Independence Day.

One of the finest achievements of western art is Bach’s d minor Partita for solo violin (BWV 1004); in particular, the Chaconne is technically dazzling, emotionally loaded, and sublime. (For a fun middlebrow musicological excursus on the piece and its relation to German chorales, check out the Hilliard Ensemble’s amazing Morimur album — but be sure to get it on a physical disc; the liner notes explain the project and are spectacular.)

Below are a few beats of Antonio Sinopoli’s guitar transcription of the Chaconne. Unlike Segovia’s famous and idiosyncratic arrangement, Sinopoli eschews scordatura and transposes to e minor; he is otherwise far more faithful to the original. The score I have was published by Ricordi Buenos Aires; it identifies the piece as “Chacona” and the author as “Juan S. Bach” (!)

RIYL: Music for the rest of your life.

Today I had the chance to take another picture of a very small thing. I’m mostly happy with this even in spite of somewhat hazardous conditions. Most notably, WT was always trying to move the bug; you can see evidence of his interloping — little flecks of FieldTurf left over from this morning’s trip to Keva — if you view full-size. (You can also see that I’m front-focused by almost the width of the bug.)

The latter is cropped; I suppose that’s technically cheating. These were taken with the Canon 50/1.8 and the Canon 250D close-up lens. I diffused my flash through an Omni-Bounce and reflected it off of a paper plate.

I just bought a Lensbaby Muse (amazon link); it arrived this evening and I have had a few minutes to play with it. My initial impression is that it’s a lot of fun and not nearly as touchy to use as the product description would lead one to believe. I haven’t done anything particularly interesting with it yet, but it seems quite straightforward to get acceptable results (that is, with the sweet spot fairly sharp).

This morning, a number of gadget sites drew attention to leaked specs for Canon’s rumored 50D DSLR. While I love my 40D, I can now disclose that I have been testing a prerelease copy of the 50D, and it is a remarkable camera. The most interesting new feature is support for extreme low-light photography, including an ISO 12,800 mode. Combined with the new 15.1 MP sensor, this can produce some truly astonishing images. While I’m unwilling to post these to flickr (I don’t want to be caught by an EXIF search), I’m happy to share some example pictures using this feature on this site:

First up, a picture of the night sky from outside of my house. Here’s a macro photograph of an ancient Roman coin (I post-processed this one a little). Finally, here’s an adorable one of Thomas.

I think that this new high-sensitivity mode will really mark the beginning of a creative revolution. Great work, Canon!

This ersatz lomography technique seems like a good way to liven up a sort-of-boring photo of an interesting subject. Here’s this photo “before” and “after.”

The Canon Canonet GIII QL17 is a classic rangefinder from 1972. It was designed to use mercury batteries that are now unavailable in the U.S.¹; substituting contemporary batteries results in metering errors that change over the life of the battery, according to Wikipedia:

The lightmeter uses a PX625 mercury battery, which is now discontinued. The alkaline version can be used, but the different electric tension, different discharge curve, and absence of electronic compensation circuit, induce a defective exposure metering, between a 1.5-f-stop at the beginning of the life of the alkaline battery, and a 1.5-f-stop underexposure [at] the end.

At first glance, it seems absurd, or at least quaint, that someone would put up with inconsistent exposures and the absence of modern amenities in order to use this camera in 2008. (And people do make a lot of nice pictures with the Canonet even today.) However, when one considers all of the crap that people have to put up with to use a 2007-vintage, $10k Leica M8 digital rangefinder, worrying about a stop or two here and there suddenly doesn’t seem like that big a deal.

¹ This decades-old restriction on mercury batteries looks awfully prescient now, since we’ll need to ensure a ready supply of mercury for light bulbs in the next decade. Good show, lawmakers!