The Author – Bart Busschots
Creative Commons
Unless otherwise stated, the content on this site is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works 3.0 License
Jun
25
Photo of the Week 70 – Speeding to Dublin
Filed Under Photography on June 25, 2009 | 1 Comment
It seems like just far too long ago that I did a single Photo of the week post. sure, it’s late, but not so late as to need combining with next week’s post!
This is a fairly recent shot, and one that demonstrates the results of some recent experiments to spice up my train photos by creating motion blur in-camera. The idea is quite simple, set your camera to exposure priority mode, dial in the lowest exposure you can hand-hold and keep sharp, then shoot a moving object while panning with it. To give you a better chance of success, I also set the camera to burst mode and pan with the train while constantly shooting. Not every shot will be sharp, but by shooting a burst of 10 or so you have way more chance of getting a good shot!
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/60 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/22
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.3EV
- Processing: Used Aperture’s Dodge & Burn plugin to darken the sky a little, lighten the foreground a little, and lighten the train a little more.
Jun
15
@spam – The Beginning of the End for Twitter?
Filed Under Computers & Tech on June 15, 2009 | 8 Comments
There can be no doubt that Twitter has taken off. It has become completely main-stream, and is rapidly rising in popularity and usage, last weekend’s twitpocalypse is proof of that! It would be nice to think that Twitter can remain the peaceful and relatively spam-free haven it is now, but I can see the start of the downward spiral already. Spam. Sure, you choose who you follow, and if you choose badly you can un-follow people, but does that prevent spam? Unfortunately it doesn’t. Anyone can message you using the @ sign, even if you don’t follow them. In many ways this is a great thing, for me, it lets listeners to my podcasts contact me without my having to give out my email address. However, this provides spammers with a mechanism to target people with their infuriating crap.
Jun
14
Photo of the Week 67, 68 & 69 – Butterflies
Filed Under Photography on June 14, 2009 | 3 Comments
Between one thing and another I’ve missed the last two weekends so for the first time ever I’m doing a triple post for Photo of the week. Butterflies are an on-going photographic project of mine, so I thought I’d share three of my recent favourites with you all.
My first choice is a shot of a rather small butterfly, the Small Copper (Lycaena phlaeas). I much prefer the Flemish name for this little guy which translates as a Fire Butterfly, much more dramatic, and IMO, more appropriate! We have this species in Ireland too, but this shot was taken in Belgium when I spent a week there over Easter. This guy was surprisingly co-opperative, hanging around for a long time and letting me get close and get shots from lots of different angles. I got three really nice shots of this guy, but I’ve chosen this as my favourite because of the diagonal composition.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/400 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
The second shot I’ve chosen is of a pair of Small Whites (Pieris rapae) mating on a grass stalk. Again, this is a species we have in Ireland, but the shot was again taken in Belgium. I like a lot of things about this shot, the grass bokeh, the grass seed stalk poking into focus at the right edge, and the overall composition, but what really makes it for me is how it illustrates the different colours these butterflies can be. They’re always white on top, but underneath they range from green to yellow, sometimes much deeper greens that in this shot.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/800 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -1.0EV
Finally, my last choice is a recent shot I took here in Ireland on the section of towpath along the Royal Canal between Pike’s Bridge and Deey bridge between Maynooth & Leixlip. Much of the towpath has a gravel pathway along it, but this bit doesn’t, it’s pure nature for about a mile, almost constantly surrounded by trees, and passing through a cutting. You really feel like you’re out in the middle of nowhere, even though you’re no more than 10 minutes cycle from Maynooth or Leixlip. There are also much fewer people walking and cycling along the stretch, so you get to see much more wildlife. Like the Small Copper earlier, this guy also sat still for ages and let me get close and get lots of different angles. I picked this one as my favourite because I find the composition pleasing, and like how you can see both the top and underside of his wings, showing the cool patterns underneath, and the vibrant orange tip that gives this species it’s name, Orange Tip (Anthocharis cardamines). I also like the strange grassy flower he’s feeding on, Ribwort Plantain (Plantago lanceolata).
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/1000 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -1.0EV
Jun
11
Reflections on the WWDC 2009 Keynote
Filed Under Computers & Tech on June 11, 2009 | 2 Comments
This is not going to be a full rundown of everything that was announced at Apple’s 2009 World Wide Developers Conference, not even nearly. It’s just my opinions on the things that caught my attention. If you don’t know what Apple announced you can watch the Keynote on Apple’s site.
Lets start by having a look at how I did on my predictions. I did pretty well over-all, as is to be expected when you don’t predict anything too exciting or special, but I did get one very major prediction wrong. I was adamant that there would be no new hardware at this evening, and what did Phil kick off with? New MacBook Pros! That was a total surprise, and not just to me.
Jun
8
My Predictions for the WWDC 2009 Keynote
Filed Under Computers & Tech on June 8, 2009 | 1 Comment
I’m cutting it mighty fine this year, Phil Schiller gets up on stage in a matter of a few hours to deliver the WWDC 2009 keynote, but I still want to get a few predictions in beforehand. First and foremost, I expect this to be a very two-sided affair, iPhone, and OS X 10.6 SnowLeopard. I don’t expect we’ll see anything else, except maybe, just maybe, a pre-announcement about some sort of tablet device.