The Author – Bart Busschots
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Nov
24
A Public Sector Worker’s Take on Today’s Strike
Filed Under Polemics & Politics on November 24, 2009 | 2 Comments
Before I explain my thinking on all this, I want to set the scene. I do work in the public sector, but I’m not a civil servant. I work in a university. I am on strike today, but I’m not out on the picket line. I voted against strike action, but I believe in democracy, so I’m respecting the strike, though not actively supporting it. It is true that people at the top of the public sector earn very high wages, but that is not true of people all the way down. To be honest, it’s just like the private sector. The plebs at the bottom struggling to pay their bills, and the fat-cats at the top compensating themselves generously. It’s also true that I get a good pension, but, it’s not a free pension. I pay for it each month, and on top of actually paying for my pension, I have to pay the pension levy too.
Nov
23
Photo of the Week 92 – A Cabbage Leaf
Filed Under Photography on November 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment
When you find yourself getting bored of shooting in the sample place, a great way to get out of a rut is to force yourself to use just one lens all day. This forced perspective gives you no choice but to think differently about the location. This is what I did one changeable afternoon this summer. I stuck on my 55-200mm telephoto, and forced myself to use nothing else for the day. Being out in the beautiful Cavan countryside I would normally be shooting wide angle landscape shots. But, being confined to the telephoto I had to think smaller. That was when I noticed the water drops from a recent shower pooling on a cabbage leaf, and grabbed this shot.
I use this shot as one of the 20 or so that I have automatically rotating every 30 minutes as my desktop wallpaper. Each time it comes round in the rotation it brings a smile to my face. Normally I don’t share images bigger than 1000 pixels, but in this case I’m also sharing two larger versions designed to be used as desktop wallpapers.
on Flickr – Full-Size – Wallpaper (4:3) – Wallpaper (16:10)
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/500 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.6
- ISO: 800
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing: Apart from the basics edits in Aperture (exposure, white balance, detail & vibrancy), the shot was also tweaked a little using Aperture’s Dodge & Burn plugin to give it more of a sense of depth to draw the eye in better.
Nov
22
My Google Earth Railway History Project
Filed Under History & Geography, Computers & Tech on November 22, 2009 | 13 Comments
This is not a finished project. Not even nearly. But I think it’s about time I shared what I have, and now is the perfect time since it’s the topic for this week’s Chit Chat Across The Pond segment on the Nosilla Cast.
Nov
15
Photo of the Week 91 – Comma Butterfly
Filed Under Photography on November 15, 2009 | 1 Comment
This is a shot I took back in April of this year while I was on holidays in Belgium. Common wisdom is that centred subjects are a bad thing in photography, and that they lead to boring photos. Because of that I spent a lot of time trying different crops on this image to come up with a shot where the composition is not centred, but in the end, I didn’t like any of the crops and decided to just ignore common wisdom for this shot. I like how the orange butterfly is surrounded by a see of green, and I think the diagonal orientation of the butterfly makes the composition work despite being centred.
The Comma Butterfly (Polygonia c-album) is exceptionally rare in Ireland. I does show up here from time to time in the very extreme south east in Wexford, but those are individuals who migrate over from the the UK if the summer is very good. In Belgium however, these wonderful butterflies are quite common.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/500 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing: the exposure, saturation & contrast were selectively tweaked in the butterfly using Aperture’s Dodge & Burn plugin
Nov
8
Photo of the Week 89 & 90 – Steam Loco No. 186
Filed Under Photography on November 8, 2009 | 4 Comments
Since I was ill last weekend I’m doing a double-post this weekend. In this case, it’s actually the same shot post-processed in two different ways.
Both shots are of the steam locomotive No. 186 which started it’s life as a mainline locomotive for Ireland’s Great Southern & Western Railway (GS&WR or just GSWR). No. 186 is now lovingly maintained by the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland (RPSI), and gets to stretch it’s legs on various Irish Rail mainlines on steam specials. This shot was taken when No. 186 was pulling the Ghost Train steam special from Dublin Connolly to Mullingar and back to Dublin Connolly. Here we see No. 186 crossing the Leixlip Viaduct on her way out to Mullingar in the morning. You can read more about No. 186 on the RPSI’s Website.
Normally when I tone-map shots I like to keep them looking natural, but in this case I really liked the result of pushing things a little further. The result is still quite natural, but yet also somewhat hyper-real.
The second version uses the first as the base for the conversion to monochrome. Because black and white shots tend to pick up a lot of texture anyway, the hyper-real look of the first version is completely lost in the second. We’re used to Sepia tone shots having this level of texture and detail in them.
You can see all my photos from this steam special in this Flickr Set.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/320 sec
- Focal Length: 55mm
- Focal Ratio: f/4.5
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing (Version 1): Started by tonemapping a single RAW image in Photomatix Pro, then selectively tweaked the exposure, contrast, and saturation using the Dodge & Burn plugin in Aperture.
- Processing (Version 2): Took the veresion described above as the starting point, then converted to monochrome using the Channel Mixer brick in Apeture, then added a subtle Sepia Tone using the Colour Monochrome brick.