My Year in Photos 2013

Been a while since i've done a blog post here, but figured i'd keep up doing a year in photos thing. It's really shown me that i need to get shooting again, i miss it, but have felt so bad with doctor's visits and such that i haven't been up to it much. Hopefully this whole thing will get worked out and i can get back to fun shooting. Here's hoping for a better 2014.

January
   Only one real shoot in January, and it was cold as sin out, was afraid my car wasn't going to start at all to make it, and when i did get there, i found my 5D Mark 2 had dead batteries, so it was all infrared. Not a terrible thing, but Not what i was planning on.

February
   Nothing in this month other than Butters going through his first huge molt. Yikes.

March

   Much more here, Drag show, bunnies, nature, and two model shoots. Think i'm going to have to go with the drag show though, even though though the Stephy C shoot has gotten the most hits on flickr. Surprise, shooting a playboy model gets views. ;)

April

   There was Unity in the Community, but i am going to have to go with the macarons i got myself for my birthday. The Earl Grey tea ones were heavenly, and i love the photo i took of them. 

May

   Not many photos, and i'll spare the injured toe photos, when things started going wrong, as it got infected and just didn't stop for months of antibiotics. Ugh. So instead, a photo of the freak blizzard we got, not long before we got unseasonably warm temps. Crazy spring. 

June

  Not much this month, but did get out, even though i felt like hell. Not a good sign for the months to come, that's for sure. Did get a beach shoot in during a heat wave, which made me not feel good even more. 

July

   Lots of minor random photos, but of course Freakfest is going to take the lead. Lots of people i care about that i haven't seen in ages, and miss.

August

   Seven photos all month? Yikes. Yep, sign of things to come. This is my favorite of that month though. Baby squirrels. 

September

   Not much this month either, but how can i not post this photo, of the two poopers being cute?

October

   Start of the many, many doctor visits, but did get out to the fall drag show, even if i'm not exactly happy with the photos. I was coming down with a flu or cold that lasted a week after going, so that was fun. The show was, but not the sick. There was also the Falcon's Got Talent thing a week before, but i still prefer the drag show. 

November

   Pretty much only Culture Fest. It was fun, but body wasn't happy with me. On the way out, i got recognized by one of the dancers from previous events, that was funny. She saw the photos on flickr, and she said "I think you've taken photos of me, i've seen them on flikr." Not in a bad way thankfully. I still got pretty nervous though, i always worry people will hate the photos i take of them. 

December

   Ten photos, and most are of crows. Shocker. 

My year in photos, 2012

I figured i'd do another one of these, describing my year with photos from each month in 2012. Obviously this will most likely get NSFW again.

January
   Slow month for photos, the best was the shoot with Jade, she's an awesome model and fun to work with. I took a lot of infrared shots, and they turned out great, the color ones turned out great too. Really need to work with her again i think. It's odd, it feels longer ago thinking about it, but i mentioned that last time i did this too.

February
   Quite a few things it seems, African Night, Dancing with the UW-RF Stars, the wearable fashion exhibit, and Hot Air Affair in Hudson. Going with an IR shot of African Night, the belly dancer, i had made a diy infrared flash and was trying things out. Nice as it let me get better lit shots without annoying anyone.

March

   Another interesting month, with the Warehouse benefit fashion show, Roots and Bluegrass in town, and St. Patrick's day bed races also in town, almost all done in IR, i seemed to be on a kick. ;) Going with a shot of the lead singer of I-Scintilla, back in the 90s i had spent a lot of time at the Warehouse where i made a lot of good friends and still have a lot of good memories of that time. 

April

   Lots of things, besides my birthday, Painted Ladies body-painting meetup, Unity in the Community, Drag Show on campus, and the International Bazaar on campus. Think i'll have to go with the body painting though, how often do you get to shoot such great painters and models? Not often enough sadly. 

May

   Things slowed down here, for various reasons. I only posted 45 images in the whole of May. I did go to Pittsville though and got to see my whole family at once, which is rarer than you'd think with families now. So this image is one of my mom's irises that i always love. 

June

   Good month for photography, but the writing was on the wall for my bunnies sadly. The good was the Olde Farm shoot, Chi in the park, Summer Music Series, and the Anything Ghost haunted house shoot. This is a rough one, the Farm shoot and Ghost ones are some of my favorite work, one of nudes and the other gothic lolita, which i don't shoot enough of. For the image here though, i think i'm going to have to go with the Ghost shoot, not to slight the others though.

July

   Bunny wise this month sucked big time. Emily died suddenly (may have been late june, it's all a blur), Kitty deteriorated to the point where she needed to be put to sleep after hurting her back, Jerry got sick and was taken to the vet, but passed away the next day. I tried to distract myself with some photography though, Taste of Nepal, a Ballet Dancers meetup, Club Splash meetup, and one of the days of River Falls Days. Going to have to go with the Club Splash meetup, i wasn't the most with it with the bunny troubles, and it was insanely hot in the pool room, and outside even, but i did some more fun IR shooting and met some great models and other photographers. 

August

   Seven photos total in that month, Amanda was depressed from Jerry passing, and when i took her in to the vet he found she was riddled with cancerous tumors, most in her guts and lungs. He felt she would have a painful time and it would be best to not let her wake up from the anesthesia from getting x-rays of her. It was hard, especially since she was the last bunny of the four passing in such a short time, but i had to agree. I was a wreck until later in the month, when one of the best things to happen to me was brought up here by an old friend of mine. Butters the awesome bunny. 

September

  Still not many photos, was still reeling from loosing so many of the bunnies, but Butters was helping. 

October

   Still not many photos, did get another camera converted to a different type of Infrared that can get more color than the previous one. 

November

   Finally got more shooting in, still miss the bunnies who passed, but felt good to shoot again. Had the Riverdazzle Parade, shot Kaia, Culture Fest at the university, and the Hot Sams fire spinners meetup. Again, this one is hard, Kaia is awesome, and so were the fire spinners, and i shot both in IR again. Think i will have to go with the fire spinners as it's something i've never shot, and was a new and fun experience. 

December

   Not much shooting this month at all really, and i don't see any happening until the new year, so this will be it. Going to have to go with the fact that i recently got a friend for Butters, named Plopp. (was named Somo at the humane society, but it didn't seem to fit, hopefully he doesn't mind)

So there you go, pretty crap year, seeing as i also didn't talk about heath issues and trips to various doctors, car troubles, etc. Hopefully this next year will be better, both personally and photographically. You know it's bad when your camera gets dust on it. :P

IR Roots and bluegrass photo talk

This past weekend I got out to the Roots and Blugrass Festival that was in town, and as usual took my IR camera out. I wanted to give it a shot with the new version of the flash, and see how it would work. Mostly quite pleased, although holy crap the batteries got hot, had to swap them out at the halfway mark, and they almost burned me it felt like.

I'm going to post the straight out of camera ones, since the ones made black and white are on my flickr in this set. As a side note, what i use to convert to black and white is Nik Siver Efex Pro 2, it does a great job and gives more control, especially for a newbie like me.

 Here is the perfomer Randy Burger singing on the sidewalk, notice the yellow, that's because i balanced the camera to white with the flash. I don't know a middle ground currently, i use a calibration reflector to get white balance better, but it's not perfect. Something funny to note is that the reflections of the people in the window are much more defined than it seems in true color.

Another interesting case of white balance, as what is illuminated by the flash is basically grey scale, and the light coming in from outside is the yellow. Also funny, the flash in the window, not visible by eye, but shows up on the image as the flash has a filter that only lets out ir light. I believe this is also one where i decided to try and bounce the flash at a forty five degree angle up, not sure though.

This one is interesting to me, that room was a basement with almost zero light, so what you see is mostly illuminated by the IR flash. Pretty neat, especially since it would have blinded most people if not filtered for IR. Damn that was packed though, barely room to move, so i didn't get many shots there.

Another flash shot showing how it helped, with a bit of yellow light from other light sources in the background.

Last one, again a very dark room, band farther away, lit by the flash. That window behind them was tinted to visible light too, and also shows more of the daylight balance in the background.

So there you go. Not too thrilling i bet, but its' a learning experience for me, and quite fun trying to predict what things are going to be like. It's also very nice to get the details of dark areas of performances, even though it's only really going to be black and white in the end.

DIY Infrared Flash talk

Okay, this is a nerd heavy post, just to let you know. Going to talk or ramble about my experiments in making an infrared flash for my infrared converted Canon XTi. (done by Lifepixel for those curious, and i highly recommend them) Basically, my desire for an infrared flash is so i can shoot in infrared in low light conditions with a flash, but since a regular flash is an annoyance in those situations (and banned in lots of places like that) i decided to search around for a do it yourself solution. I found lots of vague posts online via google that were of some help, but mostly instructed to stick some sort of ir filter or exposed and developed slide film over the flash, but not too close as the heat from the flash can melt the filter. So with a lot of trial and error, here is what i did.

Version 1. Basically a thin plastic ir filter in a LumiQuest FXtra Gel Holder, which was then held to the camera with velcro. Electrical tape (you'll hear these words a lot, heh) was then used to seal up any escaping light leaks. Not horrible, but a pain to take off and put back on. So i started to look at other routes.

Version 2. (the one that is up and to the right, not on the flash) I took the filter from Version 1 and put it over a STO-FEN Omni-Bounce (found a couple cheap on amazon, like a fourth of the cost listed there) and wrapped the rest in electrical tape. Thought about painting the exposed plastic on the Omni-Bounce, as light did come out where tape didn't cover. Then i decided to try version 3.

Version 3. Pictured on the flash above. One my now unused Hoya glass ir Filters, attached to an Omni-Bounce that was cut in half to get the filter closer to the flash head for a less narrow beam. Then electrical taped around to prevent light leaks. If i spent more time on this one, i would epoxy or glue the filter better on the Omni-Bounce and pain the Omni-Bounce, as the electrical tape is kind of hinky looking, and with the tape i wrap it around the end to keep light from getting out. So far, this is the best i've done though, and it works great.

What i did find after all this though, is Quantum makes accessories for their flashes that does all this much better, but at a much higher cost. Here is a great write up on that.  Maybe in the future i'll work on getting that, as the flash head alone is pretty awesome, and being a better IR flash just adds to it. It's a head that needs a pack though, so instead of just a head, there is quite an investment going in. I guess i'll update if and when i do that.

So anyway, more about what i've done so far. Some of the results i've found while using the flash is interesting. Challenging, but interesting, to say the least. Playing around in my kitchen last night (which is messy, so i'm not posting those pictures), i found that with the flash being normal with no filter, the light was good, but no reach it seemed. With filter on, it lit up the whole room. Seems counterintuitive, especially with the filters looking black to the naked eye. White balance is hell too, if you balance for the flash, any other light that has ir wavelengths has a different color. For example:

I took this one at a local university event, and had the white balance set to the flash, so what the flash lit looks close to black and white, while the stage lights have a very yellow tint to them. It's a neat effect, but unpredictable. This is also the kind of situation that calls for not having a bright flash going off while taking photos. Whats not colored yellow was hit by the flash, but not visible or annoying to anyone there. All that you can see if you look directly into the flash is a dim red light, barely visible.

Another from the same night with the version 1 filter. kind of looks sepia toned, and was also well lit by the flash. Did a great job of freezing action, even though the camera wasn't set too high of a shutter speed.

A shot from version 2 of the filters, where you might be able to see how the flash lit and helped with action. Panning with the runners, flash froze them and let the more distant blur. The colors are also from balancing the white to sunlight, with the flash adding a little blue. I know, it's screwy, but if balance isn't set right, everything is red. While interesting, and able to changed in post, it's nicer knowing what to expect before hand. What you can't see here is that the street signs reflected a lot of light, lit up from even far away. This event also showed me why i'm tempted about the Quantum flash, it fires machine gun style, while my flash has a poor recycle speed. If i want to do IR shots of action, i will miss a lot of them. Not even mentioning the fact that the XTi has a small buffer and less frames per second able to be shot. I think if i do end up getting the Quantum, and eventually the Canon 5D mark 3, i might get either my 7D or 5D converted, as they have more capabilities than the XTi.

So to wrap up, enjoying IR photography a lot lately, how it's surprising and letting me see in new ways. This weekend there is a Bluegrass festival in town, with several bands playing, and if i'm able, i hope to try out the version 3 flash with performers. Should be interesting.

My year in photos, 2011

Not sure why exactly i'm doing this, but here are the twelve photos, one a month, that sums up 2011 for me. I guess.

January.
Going through my photos, nothing major stands out, other than my first shoot with Emily, which was pretty awesome. Seems there was a lot more snow then, we have none now, but there was about three feet if i got it right.

February.
Wow, 537 photos that month. I guess with African Night, Dancing with the UWRF Stars, and the Hudson Hot Air affair meant i got out a good deal, which is good, but what amuses me the most is one of the most viewed images i have on flickr...

March.
Cultural events, St. Patrick's Day, and not much else. Although i totally forget when i got this, it seems to be the first time i took a picture of it for flickr, so maybe i got it then. My parents hate it, but i love it, it reminds me of a lot of what i care about.

April.
Unity in the Community, mock crash, my birthday. I also got one of my cameras converted to Infrared, which has inspired me a lot since then, so that's pretty important.

May.
Kind of slow month for photos, with family stuff, and such, but Spring Con being the one thing that really stands out for me.

June.
Well, this one is a no brainer. After close to or over a decade, i got my butt to ren fests. Mostly the Chippewa Valley one, got there twice. One day was too hot and i headed home early, the second time i stayed longer.

July.
This month was way, way too hot, with me getting heat stroke twice that i know of. Ugh... It was also the first time i did a real nude shoot. Which was pretty interesting. Obviously, i'm going to post one of those, but i'm posting a shot that is safe for work from that shoot.

August.
Another Ren Fest, this time the one by the twin cities, and a trip to the zoo. This picture is the ren fest, heh. ;)

September.
Wow, slow month, fifteen photos only. So i guess the big thing this month was the new 52 of DC comics.

October.
Besides halloween, obviously, there was a dance presentation at the local library, art installations by the university, and an awesome nude shoot with three models. We're all adults here right? I do have that warning when you come here, so here you go. I got to use the IR camera with the nudes and absolutely love how it makes people look. Like statues or something, and got to work with her before she retired.

November.
Riverdazzle Parade, shot with Frank J who is more fit than a human has a right to be, Drag Show, Culture Fest, shot with Emily again (yay!), Crypticon, and shooting cosplay with Chi. This is a rough one. I guess i'm going to have to post this one, one of the IR shots of Chi as Chun Li. She's awesome, it turned out great, and i hope to shoot more cosplay with her in the future.

December.
The end of the year. Not many taken really, mostly of stuff gotten, Star Wars the Old Republic, and hopefully a new project that will turn out great, an aluminum foil dress project.

So there you go. That was my 2011. Not the most interesting, or changing year, but i do feel i did better at getting out and doing things this year, especially when i look back on it. Hopefully next year will be even better. It sure is hard to only select one image from each month to show things, but was interesting. Until now, i also didn't know flickr could show photos taken by calendar either, so that's something.

Chippewa Valley Ren Fest

Sunday i was feeling 'off', had messed up dreams, got up early, and was feeling the urge to get out of the house. I tossed around going to the Chippewa Valley Ren fest, did my usual 'nah, yeah, maybe' anxiety dance, but in the end decided to just go for it. They predicted nice weather, warm but no storms, which seems a rarity lately. Having also recently gotten my car worked on, i felt better about that, so that's something. Here are my highlights of the day.


I was surprised it was so formal, i half expected a smaller set up, but didn't know how long it's been going on before this year and it's history. I got into a little chat with one of the security guards about cameras, didn't know much about Minolta ones though, so i wasn't as helpful i guess.


It was the last weekend Puke & Snot were going to be there, so i got to get a good laugh in, they were funny and interacted with the audience. When i tipped them at the end, one told me he liked my tattoo, but i'm not sure which. If it was the spider web one, i sometimes get people confused why i have it, thinking it symbolizes something else that it doesn't. Long story, but it's my daughter that it symbolizes, sometimes i'm not in the mood to go into it though and just say "Spiderman". ;)


The Jousting was fun, here the "bad guy" is chasing his squire after she tossed a hoop where he couldn't get it. Drew a good crowd, and was fun.


Aisha & Ivy belly dancing (i believe this is Ivy), and i was shocked i seemed to be the only one watching. There was a drink/food area next to the stage, and it had shade, so there could have been people watching from there. They were both awesome, and i loved Ivy's tattoos, what i could make out.


There was a parade (at noon? i forget) and i *loved* these people. The queen (maybe? Not sure) was hilarious all day, and these horse riders were too funny. Very Alice in Wonderland.


Fire breather in a Utilikilt. (side note, sad to recently find out mine don't fit anymore, ugh, i need to get in shape). Love shots like this, the fire looks so cool, with so much texture. Got two good shots of him doing his thing.


Loved this couple, but my timing sucked, every time i could get a shot, she had her eyes closed or someone walked in front and they then moved away. Why do i like them so much? I can't say. Just do.


Loved this guy too, he was interacting with the patrons, being silly and very funny.


I adore ren fest fairies, sadly no Twig Oaklyn Flewinia Thistlebottom, but these ones were fun and lovely. They waved and smiled a lot to me, and i think i got some good shots of them, would have liked more of the one in green, loved her wings.


Again, how awesome? Heh, loved the shoes/socks. This was during a thing where different groups presented to the king and queen, but this character was hamming it up the whole time. ;)


Awesome costume and character. That is all.


Loved their music.


Goofy 'marriage' of Maid Marrian (played by a guy and hamming it up) and the Sheriff of Nottingham.


This guy also rocked, was totally in character and his costume rocked. It was also at this point that i started feeling 'wrong'. I don't know if it was the heat (near 90F), being out of shape and walking up and down a lot of hills, but i was standing there and started to feel like i was about to pass out. So i decided to call it a day and head back home. I was hot, sweaty, and probably very stinky at this point, and as i found later, sunburnt on my forearms.

Headed home, decided to take a more leisurely pace home, and stayed off the interstate taking Hwy 29 back instead. Nice drive, little traffic, and saw a hobbit house (not really, but it was a lot like one), sadly had someone on my tailgate so i didn't feel safe stopping. I'll have to head back that way and try and get a shot of it someday. Speaking of heading back, i am actually thinking of going back to the ren fest again, it is supposed to be a good 20 degrees cooler, but still nice, so i would be able to handle it better. Plus it's only about an hour away, so not too bad a drive. I'll have to think about that.