190. Pattern - January 22-28, 2017
Jerry-
My first attempt was a somewhat close up of an old pine cone but I thought the image was dull. So I brought my camera to work this week and took this photo looking down from the 11th floor of the Phillips Wangensteen Building onto the Mayo Plaza. There had been a light snow and the students had made quite a pattern as they made their way to class. I had to take the photo through the glass which wasn't too dirty - I thought the image would be much less sharp. The windows don't open on the 11th floor, imagine they want to reduce the "jumpers".
Camera was the A6300 with 55-210 zoomed to 210. Settings were 1/160 at f16 with ISO 1600. Lots of the number 16 there!
My first attempt was a somewhat close up of an old pine cone but I thought the image was dull. So I brought my camera to work this week and took this photo looking down from the 11th floor of the Phillips Wangensteen Building onto the Mayo Plaza. There had been a light snow and the students had made quite a pattern as they made their way to class. I had to take the photo through the glass which wasn't too dirty - I thought the image would be much less sharp. The windows don't open on the 11th floor, imagine they want to reduce the "jumpers".
Camera was the A6300 with 55-210 zoomed to 210. Settings were 1/160 at f16 with ISO 1600. Lots of the number 16 there!
Byron-
There is one pattern that sticks out in my mind. It is the ugliest building in Palm Springs. It starts out as a nondescript apartment building. The architect then saw fit to attach giant egg crates to the sides. It ends up being a terrible mess. The photo I took is actually complimentary to the building. When you see it in real life it makes you gag and wretch.
ISO400, 200mm, f7, 1/800 sec
There is one pattern that sticks out in my mind. It is the ugliest building in Palm Springs. It starts out as a nondescript apartment building. The architect then saw fit to attach giant egg crates to the sides. It ends up being a terrible mess. The photo I took is actually complimentary to the building. When you see it in real life it makes you gag and wretch.
ISO400, 200mm, f7, 1/800 sec
Kevin-
When Byron announced Pattern as the WPOTM theme I immediately knew what I didn’t want to do, which was photograph something with a repetitive or geometric pattern like tiles or fabric. Even random seeming things can have patterns which is what inspired me.
My first thought was to make the drive up Highway 74 from Palm Desert, which is an incredibly twisty, turning road that climbs from about 400 feet in elevation to 2800 feet where the Coachella Valley Scenic Overlook is located. Arriving there I loved the view, but not the photograph. The road, which was my patterned subject, was simply too small and too skinny so it didn’t pop off the page. Plus it was obvious that unless I came back in the summer part of the scene would always be in the shadow of the mountain behind, and that contrast ratio was simply too extreme.
But no problem I thought. I simply need to return after the sun has set, and capture the scene in twilight, so that the headlights and taillights of the cars on the highway during a long exposure would define the pattern!
Well that really didn’t work either. To achieve the long exposure required heavy neutral density filtration on the camera. And that prevented the lights on the cars from really showing up. As you might guess Highway 74 is not heavily traveled, especially at night. To work this would have required freeway level traffic I suspect. Now with a camera mounted on a drone quadcopter I could have gotten a straight down angle on the highway, which might have worked great. But I don’t have a quadcopter and certainly don’t know how to fly one.
So I went in a completely different direction. I discovered a piece of glass block, with a “wave” pattern on the glass. Of course the fascinating thing about glass block is how it distorts objects viewed through it. I simply set the block up outside. Behind the glass block was a green cactus, a red plastic chair, a grey plastic table and a yellow work lamp. I was going to shoot it very close up, so only the distorted colors would be seen, but decided I really liked seeing the edges of the glass block which to me defined the image.
Nikon D4s, mounted on a Manfrotto Carbon One 440 tripod, 105mm f/2.8 Micro Nikkor lens, ISO 100, f/3 @ 1/1000 of a second.
When Byron announced Pattern as the WPOTM theme I immediately knew what I didn’t want to do, which was photograph something with a repetitive or geometric pattern like tiles or fabric. Even random seeming things can have patterns which is what inspired me.
My first thought was to make the drive up Highway 74 from Palm Desert, which is an incredibly twisty, turning road that climbs from about 400 feet in elevation to 2800 feet where the Coachella Valley Scenic Overlook is located. Arriving there I loved the view, but not the photograph. The road, which was my patterned subject, was simply too small and too skinny so it didn’t pop off the page. Plus it was obvious that unless I came back in the summer part of the scene would always be in the shadow of the mountain behind, and that contrast ratio was simply too extreme.
But no problem I thought. I simply need to return after the sun has set, and capture the scene in twilight, so that the headlights and taillights of the cars on the highway during a long exposure would define the pattern!
Well that really didn’t work either. To achieve the long exposure required heavy neutral density filtration on the camera. And that prevented the lights on the cars from really showing up. As you might guess Highway 74 is not heavily traveled, especially at night. To work this would have required freeway level traffic I suspect. Now with a camera mounted on a drone quadcopter I could have gotten a straight down angle on the highway, which might have worked great. But I don’t have a quadcopter and certainly don’t know how to fly one.
So I went in a completely different direction. I discovered a piece of glass block, with a “wave” pattern on the glass. Of course the fascinating thing about glass block is how it distorts objects viewed through it. I simply set the block up outside. Behind the glass block was a green cactus, a red plastic chair, a grey plastic table and a yellow work lamp. I was going to shoot it very close up, so only the distorted colors would be seen, but decided I really liked seeing the edges of the glass block which to me defined the image.
Nikon D4s, mounted on a Manfrotto Carbon One 440 tripod, 105mm f/2.8 Micro Nikkor lens, ISO 100, f/3 @ 1/1000 of a second.
Paul-
This is a portion of a lead-crystal candy dish my family inherited. I find it a little garish, but at the same time have to admire the craftsmanship that went into its creation. The “Pattern” component of this picture is the distinctive “Zipper” pattern you see impressed into some parts of glass…particularly the top-most element.
A cursory search for more information about the history of this characteristic pattern revealed very little--though I did see examples of the zipper pattern (or zipper panel pattern as it was sometimes called) crystal in pieces made during Victorian-era England, the American Depression, and more contemporary periods.
I placed the dish on a thickish piece of translucent Plexiglas and lit it from about 5” below with a ring-light. Those very bright LEDs really did the job in providing ample illumination, and a good choice of DOF allowed the black background I was looking for. In the end, portion of the glass still came hot too hot in the foreground: I tried to compensate for this in a couple of places using the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom. In PhotoScape, I selected an option that made the image look as if it had been taken with Fuji Chrome Provia.
Zipping things up: Nikon D5200; 18-55mm lens set at 26mm; ISO 10-0; 1/125 sec. at f/10; -1 EV; aperture priority; matrix metering; WB set to shadow (honest). B&W shot in in camera. I manually adjusted where I wanted the greatest degree of focus (which should have been higher, I think) across a 21-point field. The camera was tripod mounted.
This is a portion of a lead-crystal candy dish my family inherited. I find it a little garish, but at the same time have to admire the craftsmanship that went into its creation. The “Pattern” component of this picture is the distinctive “Zipper” pattern you see impressed into some parts of glass…particularly the top-most element.
A cursory search for more information about the history of this characteristic pattern revealed very little--though I did see examples of the zipper pattern (or zipper panel pattern as it was sometimes called) crystal in pieces made during Victorian-era England, the American Depression, and more contemporary periods.
I placed the dish on a thickish piece of translucent Plexiglas and lit it from about 5” below with a ring-light. Those very bright LEDs really did the job in providing ample illumination, and a good choice of DOF allowed the black background I was looking for. In the end, portion of the glass still came hot too hot in the foreground: I tried to compensate for this in a couple of places using the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom. In PhotoScape, I selected an option that made the image look as if it had been taken with Fuji Chrome Provia.
Zipping things up: Nikon D5200; 18-55mm lens set at 26mm; ISO 10-0; 1/125 sec. at f/10; -1 EV; aperture priority; matrix metering; WB set to shadow (honest). B&W shot in in camera. I manually adjusted where I wanted the greatest degree of focus (which should have been higher, I think) across a 21-point field. The camera was tripod mounted.