Cupcakes!!!

My sister has been making cupcakes for quite some time now, and she's joined the blogging world. If you ever want to order some custom cupcakes, give her a holler, as her cupcakes are amazing. You can find her blog at "Much Ado About Cupcakes." Good luck Irene, I hope you get a ton of customers!

Faking the tilt-shift

I've been using Aperture 2 to edit the majority of my photographs, but I really felt that it was pretty limited in the varieties of edits that you can do. I don't have Photoshop, so I decided to try out GIMP. GIMP is an editing program very similar to Photoshop, but best of all...its FREE. I've really been into the Schempflug effect that tilt-shift lenses create, so I started researching online, and I found a really helpful tutorial on how to achieve this same effect through GIMP. Bart Busschots wrote an amazing tutorial, so check it out if you're interested in learning how to fake the tilt-shift. Anyways, here are my first attempts:

I'm seeing stars

I went out on another trek to do some night photography. I drove by a warehouse in Sunnyvale last night and I saw a pretty cool photo op. Unfortunately, the area is pretty ghetto. I felt like I was in Compton, seeing rusted oldsmobiles with chrome wheels parked on the sidewalk. Not that I've ever been to Compton before, but one can imagine from the movies. I was feeling brave, probably because I had my tripod that doubles as a beat down cane, so I parked my car where I could see it, and ventured to the warehouse.

I love my Tokina 11-16 lens. It has 9 blades, so the star effect it creates is pretty sweet. Check out this picture:

Keith Loutit is amazing

Keith Loutit is a photographer based in Sydney, and he makes some amazing videos using a tilt-shift lens. I love the tilt-shift because it makes everything look like a miniature toy. I'd love to experiment with one some day. Anways, I came across some of his videos, and I think everyone should take a look and appreciate his work. It's simply amazing.




Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Flickr

I'm pretty bad at updating this, but I've been busy with work and messing around with my new imac. I just finished a project for my parents that involved sifting through, literally, about a thousand vacation photos, making six slideshows, and creating a DVD movie using imovie. The end result was pretty decent, and my parents loved it.

If anyone is wondering what I've been up to, check out my new flickr page. I've mostly been spending my time taking photos and editing them. I've also recently been asked to take on a new photography project at work. My boss has asked me to take professional portraits of the entire team, so Wysz let me borrow his crazy flood lamp. Anyways, here's the link to my flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shalbs/

Enjoy!

Christmas in March

So I've been wanting to get a new personal computer for like 6 months now, and this past week I finally bit the bullet. Apple released their new line of Imac's, and with the $1500 price tag on the lowest 24" model, how could I resist?

Another thing that pushed me to pulling the trigger was that my friends all chipped in and bought aperture 2 for me as a birthday present (thanks guys). Aperture is a photo editing software, also made by Apple, but can get much more granular than Picasa, the free Google software that I used to use.

Some other things that happened to fall in my lap due to gifts from others (or from myself) were a brand, spankin' new 16gb ipod nano (thanks Caroline), tokina 11-16mm UWA lens (thanks me), flickr pro account (thanks Irene), and a canon bg-e3 battery grip (thanks mom and dad for the money that went towards purchasing this). Anyways, less talk and more show, here are a few pictures:

Light Test

So I finally dug up the old tripod from our 8mm video camera to use with my xti. I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing, so I'm just experimenting. I had an LED flashlight that had three settings (on, blinking, off). The annoying part about this is that I wanted a simple light that turned on and off, so I could spell things in the picture. Next time I get my hands on one of these, I'll make another post with better photos. In the meantime, enjoy this little experiment.

My attempt to spell "Hi"