Penning Photography Daily

Self Portrait.

I got my Pentax back tonight. My main dude of a camera.

My son took it with him to use for an engagement (couple) shoot in Missouri this weekend.

I missed it.

But it’s not the camera, it’s the person using the camera which gives the most in my photographs. Or so I tell myself.

I was busy tonight putting some web site work in, and realized that I had no idea what my picture of the day would be.

Since I scared folks with a ghostly looking painted with light photo a couple of days ago, I figured a good capture of my mug would help soothe those painful retinas.

So I set my exposure, turned off all the lights in the room except for my computer monitor. Moved the monitor (on a swing arm next to my recliner – yes, I put my legs up and surf) to my left. Held out my camera and started clicking and chimping to see what I had taken.

This is the best of the lot.

The bad news is the lens I use, the Pentax SMC FA 50mm f1:1.4 is a sharp and marvelous lens. It picked up every skin abberation that I have. I have a few. Especially on my nose. Go figure.

I used Lightroom’s spot healing capabilities with liberal abandon on my most noticeable imperfections. Yes, I left a lot.

I like the DOF here, the lighting. and my smile.

For your dining and dancing pleasure, my patient viewers.

Right as I was getting up from falling asleep in my easy chair, I spied this marvelous spectrum of light, painted by the sun and my windows on my carpeting.

It was rapidy departing.

What you see here is about 25% of how large it was when I first spotted it.

I fumbled with my camera and managed to capture this sliver.

The sun was going down in the early evening, and something was splitting the light into a beautiful, deep spectrum of color.

Chance. Good Fortune. Wonderful.

I hope your day had some bit of goodness which you could appreciate.

Ok, this is better.

Really.

16 hours at work today, rather yesterday and today.

Well, if you really count this weekend it’s more like 32 hours since Friday morning.

I am tired.

Still sane, but tired.

I owed a POTD – Picture of the day.

Here it is. Painted with light. Long exposure and a small LED flashlight cupped in my hand, waving it around my face.

I moved. Dang it.

But it looks interesting to me. My eyes are in there a few times, and so is my nose and ears and mouth, etc.

It serves to represent my inner feeling of being a bit mixed up about what time or day it is.

Fun stuff at 1:45 in the morning.

I wonder how well I’ll sing and play guitar at church in the morning? =)

The greenish structure to the right with the slanted glass roof is the Willard Ice Building, which houses the Illinois Department of Revenue.

Since my son has borrowed my Pentax, I’m using my Panny – the Panasonic FZ-30. Nice camera, really nice. A bit noisy for long exposures, but I left the noise in.

The combination of the headlights, tail-light trails, copper and mercury street and parking lights give this a rich color presentation.

The more I played with it, the more I kept preferring it as it was shot and interpreted in the camera.

Sometimes I spend too much time trying to make something what it isn’t. I include myself in that conclusion.

This is a repeat, but different angle, interpretation of the view out of my building looking to the west.

It’s a nicer view, to me.

Perhaps to you also.

Late night posting. We’re doing workstation swap outs again.

Walking out of work at 12:30AM, I saw this blazing white light.

No, I wasn’t heading on to heaven.

Some utility company had a work crew doing some sort of drilling in the middle of the intersection. The lights were from a portable light setup. Lots of lumens were being broadcast over their work area.

When I took this photo, they were gathered around, discussing something of importance. What, I don’t know.

I couldn’t pass up the rare photo op for this scene.

Rare to me.

Ordinary to them perhaps.

Interesting, nonetheless.

I needed to blow off some emotional steam.

So, I turned to using my creative mind and came up with a photo.

In our guest bathroom – which my bride Karen uses as her morning refreshing area.

I set up my camera on a short tripod, and positioned the toothbrush holder just so.

I set the ISO to 100, the exposure time to 30 seconds at f27 with a 2 second delay.

Got my trusty LED flashlight ready – turned on the red LED to full power.

Started the exposure, and with my hand cupped over the flashlight, letting a very narrow beam out, started painting the scene with light.

It turned out much darker than I was expecting, but I use post processing to bring it out to what you see.

Kinda grunge-like as wizardjks says – one of my Flickr buddies.

My niece Monica figures I was on the commode when I came up with the idea. Not quite, but close Monica

Much more fun than bottling up the feelings, don’t you think?

A skinny squirrel, after the lean Winter months, eyes me, eying him.

Lovely early sundown light.

Walking towards my car after time in the park, spent enjoying flowers and taking some photos of same and other sights.

Mr. Squirrel tried to keep away from my lens.

He was kind enough to pause once or twice as I clicked away.

For your pleasure and as a portent of Spring. =)