The Author – Bart Busschots
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Feb
5
Photo of the Week 50 – Braving the Snow
Filed Under Photography | 2 Comments
With all the excitement of moving to Aperture I forgot to post a Photo of the Week last weekend, and I’ve only just noticed my oversight now. Better late than never I guess!
Normally I don’t choose very recent photos for Photo of the Week because I want to be sure to only pick photos I really and truly like, and not just ones that I like at the time. If I still like a shot a few months after I took it, chances are it really is good. However, today I’m breaking that ‘rule’ and posting a shot I took only two days ago. I’ve been in NUI Maynooth for about 11 years (first as a student, then as an employee), and in all that time it has never snowed while I was on campus. Until Tuesday afternoon that is, when the place was blanketed with snow. I didn’t even wait for the snow to stop falling to get out there with my camera, and I’m glad I didn’t, or I’d never have gotten this shot!
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/60 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: F8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: +1.0
Feb
3
If you’re not in the mood to “hear” me rant, best move along to another part of the blogo-web now because ranting is certainly something I’m going to do. The incompetent morons we are unfortunate enough to call a government have decided that the solution to their incompetence is to steal money from nurses, teachers, Gardai (Irish Policemen) and other government workers on the pretence of paying for the pension we already pay for! No one can deny that the government finances are a mess, or that the books needed balancing, but this is a dishonest and down-right unfair way of doing it. As is typical for our government, they haven’t got the balls to do things the honest way, so it’s done through stealth taxes. We have a taxation system for a reason, to bring in money for the government in a fair and equitable way. It’s full of safe-guards to ensure that those on the lowest incomes pay the least. With the 1-2% income levy on everyone in the countries gross income and now this 7-9% levy on public servants gross income the government are by-passing all the safeguards in a mad dash to make up for their incompetence.
Feb
1
Aperture 2 – First Impressions
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Photography | 12 Comments
As those of you who follow me on Twitter, or listen to the many Podcasts I appear on may well know, I recently got a copy of Apple’s pro photo editing program Aperture 2. (Thanks again Allison, it was a great Christmas present!) In case people don’t know what Aperture is, it’s a tool for sorting, organising and editing your photos – a very advanced version of iPhoto if you will. It’s really designed for people who shoot RAW and who shoot a lot, but it’s not a pixel editor like PhotoShop. The closest analogue would be Adobe’s Lightroom. Also, for context, I’m moving to Aperture from iPhoto’08, so I’ll be using iPhoto as a reference point a lot while explaining what I do and don’t like about Aperture.
Jan
25
Photo of the Week 49 – Backlit Butterfly
Filed Under Photography | 1 Comment
When I was starting photography my Dad gave me one very good piece of advice, keep the sun at your back! The vast majority of the time this is great advice, and I pass it on to beginners when they ask me for advice. However, like all guidelines in photography, breaking them intentionally in a thought-out way can lead to great shots. I’ve never really been great at shooting back-lit subjects, it just doesn’t work for me usually, but this shot is the exception.
I shot this back-lit Small White (Pieris rapae) butterfly in the Junior Gardens on the St. Patrick’s College Campus (AKA the NUI Maynooth South Campus) in Maynooth, Ireland.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/400 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: F8
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.67
Jan
20
Inaugural Reflections
Filed Under Polemics & Politics | 4 Comments
Given how historic a day today was, I’m hoping you’ll humour me and forgive a rare political post. Like millions of people all around the world I watched the inauguration live on the internet. Not TV, but the internet, a sign of things to come perhaps? Anyhow, that’s not really what I want to write about here. I just want to make three observations about today’s events from the perspective of an outsider. Or, to be more precise, from the point of view of a European gay agnostic.
Jan
19
As you can probably guess by the list of previous photos of the week, I’m not really into black & white photography. However, I do dabble occasionally, and particularly enjoy playing with the channel mixer to get more dramatic and contrasty images. This is my favourite black & white conversion so far. This shot of the Moon over the top of the spire of the Gunne Chapel (AKA the College Chapel) on the St. Patrick’s College Campus (AKA NUI Maynooth South Campus) in Maynooth, Ireland. The black & white conversion was done using the channel mixer in the GIMP (a free cross-platform image editor). It was shot during the day, but made more dramatic by turning the blue channel right down to zero so the sky goes black.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/250 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: F22
- ISO: 800
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing: Converted to black & white using the channel mixer in the GIMP
Jan
18
DeskLickr – Flickrize Your Desktop on OS X
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Photography | Leave a Comment
This week I went hunting for a piece of software to automatically change my desktop wallpaper using Flickr as the source. In particular I wanted it to use my set of desktop wallpapers on Flickr. There are solutions to do this kind of thing on Linux and Windows, but since I use OS X I had to go find one I could actually use. In the end I found just one solution that worked well, the donation-ware app DeskLickr.
DeskLickr is definitely one of those apps that does just one thing, but seems to do it well. I’ve only been using it for a few days but so far I’m very happy with it. I set it up, then forgot about it and watched my background change to a new photo every 30 minutes. It could be argued that the Flickr configuration could be a bit clearer to understand, and it could definitely be argued that it would be nice to have more options for choosing photos from Flickr, but, it works, and that’s the important thing.
Jan
11
Photo of the Week 47 – Into the Night
Filed Under Photography | 3 Comments
As a friend of mine put it on Flickr, this photo combines my three nerdy hobbies, Astronomy, Photography, and trains. This is a 5 second exposure of a commuter train approaching Maynooth reflected in the waters of the Royal Canal in the late evening while Venus & the Moon shine over-head. This is a shot I’d tried before, and each time I learned a few more valuable lessons. So, although this is the result of a learning experience, I’m still shocked at how lucky I was to get everything to line up as well as it did. The train, the reflection, the silhouette of the tree, those things I could control, but the positions of the Moon and Venus, those were a pure bonus! Anyhow, if I had to pick my three best photos yet, this is one I’d definitely choose.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 5 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: F5
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Manual
- Exposure Bias: -2.0
Jan
9
I’ve held off a while on writing this post to be sure the Apple Distortion Field had fully dissipated before I committed my thoughts to record. First and foremost, Phil did good. He was not as good as Steve, but when you compare him to that AT&T guy who came on during the iPhone Keynote back in 2007 with his cue cards, Phil was fantastic! He did show some signs of nerves if you paid close attention, but who wouldn’t on that stage!
I’ve heard a lot of very negative things about the keynote and to be honest, I doubt we’d have heard half as many if Steve had presented the keynote. The basic reality is that the iPhone announcement at MacWorld 2007 was the exception, not the norm. Just about every MacWorld keynote pails in comparison. There’s a very good reason for this, no company, not even Apple, can come up with something as revolutionary as the iPhone every year. We’re now two years on and none of the copycat devices come close the fit and polish of the iPhone. Apple have completely changed the Smart Phone industry, despite all the scoffing from people like Steve Balmer less than two years ago. The iPhone keynote was amazing, and people have very short memories, so the expectation now is earth-shattering new hardware every year, and Apple simply cannot deliver that. Sure, the expectation is unreasonable, but it’s there none-the-less.
Jan
6
I shot this photo last December, but since it’s so insanely cold tonight I figured this would be an appropriate time to share it as a Photo of the Week. In summer this same grass is full of people sitting out enjoying the sun chatting or studying or playing Frisbee, but now, in winter, it’s pretty much deserted except for the occasional very determined dog-walker. This area of St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth is referred to as ‘the Graff’, and the building is St. Mary’s House. You can also see the spire of the college chapel, the Gunne Chapel, in the background.
This image is composed of four images separated by 1 stop combined into an HDR image and tone-mapped with Photomatix Pro.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: F3.5
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority