63. Wood - August 24-30, 2014
Kevin-
Ultimately I decided to photograph a set of wood chess pieces. This is a mix of flash (Nikon SB-910 attached to a small softbox positioned behind the pieces) and incandescent (the light positioned above our dining room table). Nikon D4s, tripod mounted, ISO 100, 85mm f1.3 Nikkor lens with an extension tube to allow closer focusing. The shutter speed was 1/5 of a second to get the flash/incandescent balance right. I played around a lot with limiting the depth of field, ultimately deciding after many tests to land at f/2.8, so only the center section of the white queen is tack sharp. And she needs to move now or that black knight will take her.
Ultimately I decided to photograph a set of wood chess pieces. This is a mix of flash (Nikon SB-910 attached to a small softbox positioned behind the pieces) and incandescent (the light positioned above our dining room table). Nikon D4s, tripod mounted, ISO 100, 85mm f1.3 Nikkor lens with an extension tube to allow closer focusing. The shutter speed was 1/5 of a second to get the flash/incandescent balance right. I played around a lot with limiting the depth of field, ultimately deciding after many tests to land at f/2.8, so only the center section of the white queen is tack sharp. And she needs to move now or that black knight will take her.
Byron-
I chose the sporting goods route for this topic. I think it's interesting that this type of club is called a wood even though in today's world there are not made of wood. This is a picture of a vintage wood. It still has 1960's dirt in the grooves carved into its face!
I chose the sporting goods route for this topic. I think it's interesting that this type of club is called a wood even though in today's world there are not made of wood. This is a picture of a vintage wood. It still has 1960's dirt in the grooves carved into its face!
Deron-
This is a hand-carved Jamaican Voodoo Mask. All those who come in contact with it are guaranteed 10 years of bad luck... It was a gift.
This is a hand-carved Jamaican Voodoo Mask. All those who come in contact with it are guaranteed 10 years of bad luck... It was a gift.
Paul-
I liked this week’s theme a lot. Such a broad scope of what we could elect to shoot…including a slang interpretation I sincerely hope no one opted to pursue. I really love wood—mostly when it appears in the form of a tree—so I didn’t try to get to clever and look for some unusual interpretation. It came down to three pictures, all of which I liked. I figured if I looked at them long enough one would eventually rise to the top…which didn’t happen. So here’s what I choose as the deadline loomed.
Incidentally, I have no idea what this structure is. My wife thought it was a chicken coop, but it seems a little too open for that. My daughter thought it was no place she would never go to for shopping. If I had to guess, I’d say it might be some kind of feeding station for larger animals. The place where I took this photograph does have buffalo in the area, but those are grazing animals. I suppose it could have been for cattle at one time, but again those guys like to munch-on-the-move, too. I’m going with my gut on this one. It is either: a) A very small Bed & Breakfast for the tough cowboys who once road this territory; or b) A fixer-upper apartment that would go for $300K in San Francisco.
Either way, I love its location, weathered appearance, and simple functionality…whatever that function is. (Afterthought: No photographer was harmed by buffalo in the making of this picture.)
Our story so far… The meteorite that augured into a field about 17 miles east of Thief River Falls, MN on that frigid December night went unnoticed in that isolated community. Despite the fact that it was an unremarkable chunk of nickel-iron—a common enough celestial projectile in the solar system—it contained deep inside it’s cooling exterior a core of hot colloidal soup teeming with long lived, and highly thermophiles bacteria…the likes of which were alien in the extreme. And there it would have remained had not the rock been split by a tractor-pulled plow the following spring. No longer confined to its rocky prison, the alien organisms cautiously sampled the oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere and, finding it sufficient to sustain them, beginning reproducing at a furious rate. The result was a faint yellowish mat that spread out from the field and into the nearby Their River. Further sustained by water, sunlight and a cloying collection of agricultural run-off, reproduction accelerated in an exponential progression. And, on May 19th, the bacterial colony morphed into a self-aware (and malevolent) collective—a prokaryotic predator intent on absorbing into its expanding mass any animate material it found. The first human victim would have local teenager Ollie Skjeggestrad, Would have been, had not Skjeggestrad been leading a large group of friends away from that day’s Annual Lutefisk Festival with the intent of tossing the lye-steeped cod into the river and searching out something more palatable elsewhere. The extraterrestrial collective, encountering the floating fish, soon found itself neutralized and then eaten away by the potent enzymes in the local delicacy. The lutefisk not only resisted digestion, but actually broke down the interstellar organism at its molecular level. As its dispassionate (yet surprised) life and intelligence quickly diminished, it could only wonder at the folly of living in a capricious universe. Which, of course, has nothing to do with an Olympus E-500 equipped with a 40-150mm zoom lens set at 150mm focal length; a 1/2500 sec. shutter speed, a 7.1 f-stop; and an ISO of 640.
I liked this week’s theme a lot. Such a broad scope of what we could elect to shoot…including a slang interpretation I sincerely hope no one opted to pursue. I really love wood—mostly when it appears in the form of a tree—so I didn’t try to get to clever and look for some unusual interpretation. It came down to three pictures, all of which I liked. I figured if I looked at them long enough one would eventually rise to the top…which didn’t happen. So here’s what I choose as the deadline loomed.
Incidentally, I have no idea what this structure is. My wife thought it was a chicken coop, but it seems a little too open for that. My daughter thought it was no place she would never go to for shopping. If I had to guess, I’d say it might be some kind of feeding station for larger animals. The place where I took this photograph does have buffalo in the area, but those are grazing animals. I suppose it could have been for cattle at one time, but again those guys like to munch-on-the-move, too. I’m going with my gut on this one. It is either: a) A very small Bed & Breakfast for the tough cowboys who once road this territory; or b) A fixer-upper apartment that would go for $300K in San Francisco.
Either way, I love its location, weathered appearance, and simple functionality…whatever that function is. (Afterthought: No photographer was harmed by buffalo in the making of this picture.)
Our story so far… The meteorite that augured into a field about 17 miles east of Thief River Falls, MN on that frigid December night went unnoticed in that isolated community. Despite the fact that it was an unremarkable chunk of nickel-iron—a common enough celestial projectile in the solar system—it contained deep inside it’s cooling exterior a core of hot colloidal soup teeming with long lived, and highly thermophiles bacteria…the likes of which were alien in the extreme. And there it would have remained had not the rock been split by a tractor-pulled plow the following spring. No longer confined to its rocky prison, the alien organisms cautiously sampled the oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere and, finding it sufficient to sustain them, beginning reproducing at a furious rate. The result was a faint yellowish mat that spread out from the field and into the nearby Their River. Further sustained by water, sunlight and a cloying collection of agricultural run-off, reproduction accelerated in an exponential progression. And, on May 19th, the bacterial colony morphed into a self-aware (and malevolent) collective—a prokaryotic predator intent on absorbing into its expanding mass any animate material it found. The first human victim would have local teenager Ollie Skjeggestrad, Would have been, had not Skjeggestrad been leading a large group of friends away from that day’s Annual Lutefisk Festival with the intent of tossing the lye-steeped cod into the river and searching out something more palatable elsewhere. The extraterrestrial collective, encountering the floating fish, soon found itself neutralized and then eaten away by the potent enzymes in the local delicacy. The lutefisk not only resisted digestion, but actually broke down the interstellar organism at its molecular level. As its dispassionate (yet surprised) life and intelligence quickly diminished, it could only wonder at the folly of living in a capricious universe. Which, of course, has nothing to do with an Olympus E-500 equipped with a 40-150mm zoom lens set at 150mm focal length; a 1/2500 sec. shutter speed, a 7.1 f-stop; and an ISO of 640.
Jerry-
I found this piece of driftwood in Gooseberry Falls State Park about 20 years ago and thought of it right away when Kevin chose the wood theme. By itself, it kind of bored me, so I added my favorite pocket knife with a pretty rosewood handle. Almost a product shot. The garage studio was used, a soft Southern light in the mid-afternoon peering in. I found a roll of black plastic that you put around plants to keep back the weeds and used it as a background. A tall dark garage can was used to keep the light off the background. The automatic white balance left kind of a coolish/bluish photo so I changed the white balance to "shady" for a warmer look. Nikon D5200 with 16-85mm at 85mm, 1/5 second at f16, iso 400.
I found this piece of driftwood in Gooseberry Falls State Park about 20 years ago and thought of it right away when Kevin chose the wood theme. By itself, it kind of bored me, so I added my favorite pocket knife with a pretty rosewood handle. Almost a product shot. The garage studio was used, a soft Southern light in the mid-afternoon peering in. I found a roll of black plastic that you put around plants to keep back the weeds and used it as a background. A tall dark garage can was used to keep the light off the background. The automatic white balance left kind of a coolish/bluish photo so I changed the white balance to "shady" for a warmer look. Nikon D5200 with 16-85mm at 85mm, 1/5 second at f16, iso 400.