July and time to start posting the extras again! Lens this month is a preset Takumar 135/3.5.



I actually like this shot more than my chosen shot, or at least liked my processing more, but decided to go with something in keeping with the day's theme.

I like it too - something very.. Late 80's or early 90's about it

I'd probably go with early-90s. It reminds me of a number of video games that captured stop-motion claymation for the sprites.

An alternate version of the picture for today, snapped a second or two earlier.

Just another street shot. There'll probably be a lot of them this month, at least until I get a better hang of the lens, so I figured I'd go with the butterfly instead. Had a shorter focal length, I'd have taken the shot from straight on, possibly looking upwards, but that's not really doable with 135mm on a crop sensor unless you want a just closeup of a nose.

Another from the Lions Club parade. This was the one I was hoping to use originally, as the woman's costume is eye-catching, but I couldn't quite get the colours right.

Cropped on the left, as someone walked on frame just as I took it. I'm finding that to be a danger when using this lens for street shots given how far back you have to be to get people in frame.

More art deco visages. This one is from a former department store, since turned into a shopping plaza after the failure of the original tenant. Sadly the trees prevented me from getting a shot head on.

Much like the shot I chose for the day, the building these are located on was intended to be a large skyscraper, built in stages, but never progressed past the initial stage. (Partially due to the Depression, and partially as it was over-ambitious to begin with.)

A pair taken at the same time as the shot for the day:

1/60 was going to naturally be blurry, grip or no grip, and was way too slow to capture the action as well. Despite all that—too slow shutter speed, blurry, poorly composed—I still like this shot a bit. (I think it's mainly the light and the colours.) The body in question was someone who was busy doing gymnast-style flips off of some construction scaffolding.

I'm taking a lot of shots upwards this month. Admittedly, this is partially to do with the fact that often when I finally spot something in front of me, I'm too close to catch it with the focal length.

Anyway, this is a statue that sits in front of the local baseball stadium. (I shall now pause to allow anyone who has a cell phone contract with his company to vent.)

Yet another street scene. Shot on my way to the dentist this AM, and then I tossed an old preset I had saved for use on completely different sorts of scenes onto it, and found it worked dammit.

First up, a squirrel. I forgot I had the camera still set to centre-weighted instead of spot, so the metering was way off. (It's cropped slightly on the right; dead-centre of the frame is roughly where the squirrel's eye would be.) Tried fiddling with it in post, but it was too noisy after lightening. However, converting to B&W and upping the contrast gave a nice sharp silhouette.



Secondly, another set of flowers. Probably between f4 and f5.6, as the bokeh appears to my eyes to be a little more defined than f3.5. An experiment in PP; it's not quite what I had in my head, but it's close enough to leave me not dissatisfied with it.

A few extra martial arts shots:

Just another B&W shot. The opposite of my July 20th shot, in that where the other was hard edges and straight lines, this is curves and bokeh:

Though this one turned out well, I've taken shots like this before: