Before and After
Hover over the photo to see what it looked like straight from the camera.
An enormous leek from the farmers market
Mar 092012
Well my, do I feel fancy!
My friend @vivekster was nice enough to tweet @uclanewsroom the fact that I finished four years, and our staff/faculty news site (@uclatoday) did a story on @jawsnap, who is me! Twitter FTW!
Here the link – After Hours: a photo a day for 1,462 days
Oh, and although it’s true that I’m not in it for the money, I sure don’t mind making money from it. Please note that nearly all of my photos have a “Buy” button near the top. You can get all sorts of sizes, including ginormous, or contact me for special gifts like cards or calendars 
Mar 082012
Well I’ll be damned. I made it four years! FOUR YEARS of taking and posting a photo every single day. I declare Phase I complete.
Here's to Four Years - a panoramic crop of my final daily photo for Phase I
I started my One/Day Project on leap day (February 29th) in 2008, so I’m calling the period between leap days Phase I. Hopefully I’ll make it to Phase II. Check back in about four years for that. Better yet, follow along! Year 5 is already a week in.
Daily Diary
Although I’m pretty cautious on personal details, this project is basically a diary by nature. Looking back over a single year is fun, but going back all four years is really crazy. Four years is a long time. We got married, bought a condo and changed jobs. We visited 15 states and 4 countries. We explored 10 National Parks. I say “we” because my wife was with me through all of this. I’m grateful to have her support; I know I can be annoying by taking photos all the time.
Feb 292012
Before and After
Hover over the photo to see what it looked like straight from the camera.
My final daily photo for Year 4 at a Santa Monica beach
Technical Stuff
Camera: Nikon D80
Lens: 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR at 18mm
Exposure settings: ISO 200, f/9, 1/40s
Cropped dimensions: 3387 x 2267 pixels
Other stuff: ND grad filter, -2/3 EV Continue reading »
Before and After
Hover over the photo to see what it looked like straight from the camera.
Daily photo for 1/22/12 - Venice Pier at Dusk
Tech Info
Tripod, Nikon D80, 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 at 18mm, ND grad filter, f/22, ISO 100, 6 second exposure
Things That Made it Happen
Timing - Although I arrived before sunset, I waited for a while afterwards to get these colors. The sun set at 5:15; this shot was taken about 5:30. Continue reading »
Dec 062011
During a recent trip to Death Valley National Park, I often took a step back from my ‘big’ camera and pulled out my phone to make some panoramas. If you want to see the big camera photos, click this – Death Valley 2011. The iPhone panoramas are all linked below – the first set was exported from the amazing Photosynth iPhone app and the second set was stitched using AutoStitch. I wrote about both apps in this post a few months ago.
At first glance, the Photosynth panoramas look weird and terrible. Keep in mind, though, that they are full 360° in all directions and when you constrain it to be a 2D rectangle, things get a little squished. Click the ‘interactive’ link below each image to see it how it was intended. The Dante’s View Photosynth turned out particularly well, in my humble opinion.
The AutoStitch panoramas are much prettier, but of course lack the interactivity and imersiveness (?) of the Photosynths. AutoStitch can handle multiple rows of photos, but in all the cases below I just did a single row. It’s interesting to see what textures and scenes each app could handle gracefully.
Photosynth
Zabriskie Point [interactive]
Dante’s View [interactive] Continue reading »
Before and After
Hover over the photo to see what it looked like straight from the camera.
Daily photo for 11/4/11 - Pleasure Pier
Inspiration
It rained today, and post-storm photos tend to be quite lovely. For me, the logical thing to do was head down to the beach near the Santa Monica Pier around sunset. I’ve done that many times before, but I can’t say that it ever gets old. Continue reading »
Circular polarizing filters are great for saturating colors and preventing unwanted reflections. At least that’s what the internet says but it’s no substitute for discovering on my own, so I spent $150 on a 77mm Promaster filter down at Tuttle Cameras when they were having a big sale. Check out the dramatic difference in these unedited photos:
 Minimum polarization... |
 Maximum polarization! |
I mean, wow. Right?
I wanted to share a couple of first impressions. First, there’s a light loss of about 2 stops. That’s like shooting at 1/60 instead of 1/250 or f/5.6 instead of f/2.8. Or just setting your camera to -2 EV. In a more practical sense, it means you might need to use a tripod when you wouldn’t normally have to, like after sunrise or before sunset. Continue reading »
Last year, I wrote The Amazing iPhone Camera Comparison using an iPhone 4, 3GS and 3G. This year, I am doing the same thing with the iPhone 4S and 4. Being able to compare the quality from the two cameras has given me a huge respect for the iPhone 4S – the quality difference is amazing and makes the iPhone 4 feel like a toy.
Yes, I made this image in MS Paint.
My Methods
For the tech specs below, I included my numbers from last year’s post and added the ones for the 4S. Most of the numbers came from directly observing the EXIF data off of the photos, which included shots of the sun (for max shutter speed, etc) and a dark closet (for highest ISO, etc). Continue reading »
Oh yeah, it's got the GBs
Although I never considered myself one of ‘those people’, I got my hands on the new iPhone 4S the day it came out – Friday, October 14th. There was no line late in the day at the AT&T store, but still a bit of a party atmosphere. We were served popcorn and cotton candy while a DJ spun off to the side. What a strange phenomenon.
Initial Thoughts
Having owned the iPhone 4, the successor is a bit underwhelming. It’s awesome, for sure, but the differences are subtle compared to the huge leap between the 3GS and the 4. But hey, that’s why it’s called the iPhone 4S – the fact that it’s just an upgraded version is right there in the product name. Continue reading »
