Glory Be, It’s Me!

Finished editing a self-portrait tonight to use on my website. I’ve needed one for a long time, but never wanted to do the cliched ‘looking at the mirror through the lens’ type or the  ’pose with  big lens and camera’ type either; EVERYONE seems to do those and I think they’re tacky. I also didn’t really want to put my face out there either, since I like a bit of anonymity in everyday life. With that in mind, I think my new portrait works perfect — you can see me, but not really, it’s somewhat of a unique viewpoint, and it’s automotive related. Bingo!

Grant St. Bridge Revisited

Title pretty much says it all. I went back this morning to re-shoot a pic of the Grant St. bridge here in New Castle because I wanted a better one than I could get on the day of the ceremony and posted earlier. This time the weather was playing into my hands, so got a great picture, and one much more in tune with the other New Castle pics I recently took. Here it is:

Works for me!

Caught With My Pants Down

Had some time to kill yesterday, and since the weather was so beautiful we decided to go out to visit Mill Creek Park in nearby Youngstown, OH (www.millcreekmetroparks.com). No problem, but it was decided somewhat on the fly, so I only had the G10 with me. That wouldn’t have been an issue except that the battery was near dead and on the way we came across a car show that used up nearly all of it except for a few frames(will post those later). The scenery was gorgeous and I wanted to take pics once we got there, so what to do? Yeah. Camera phone.

I don’t even have a good one — just an LG EnV2. As a phone it’s great; as a camera it’s . . . a phone. And not much more. That’s OK though, I stepped up to the challenge and managed to get some good shots just the same, it required patience though, that’s all. Here’s my faves from the day. You maybe could think of them as scouting pics, because I am most definitely going back with the good stuff to re-shoot a few of these. In the meantime, it was still a fun shoot actually; made me think and have to work with the limits given. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?

My favorite:

And one from some random industrial stuff:

Grant St. Bridge Ceremony (UPDATED)

Shot photos of the Grant St. bridge dedication early yesterday morning in New Castle, PA. The repair/completion of the bridge was a long time in the making, so the dedication was a welcome event for many of the participants and residents of the area. Overall, there were maybe 40-50 people attending, and aside from the dignitaries it was mostly local residents watching the ceremony. Newspaper was there as well and their photog was also snapping shots, so I tried to stay clear of her  because she had a job to do and didn’t need me in the way. I had the D3 w/ 24-70 on it and the D200 w/ the 80-200 as well. Probably overkill perhaps, but I don’t like changing lenses on the fly, so it works for me. In the end, I delivered just over 50 pics from the day, some of which are included below for your pleasure. Nice event all around, I hope I get a chance for more of these in the future.

G-caf

Was emptying out the G-10 tonight after a few weeks use and came across these two fine reminders of early morning comfort.

Moving Day

So as just mentioned, my main website is with a new provider now and I’ve just completed the transition this evening. Domain is still the same, www.emasterphoto.com, but the look is all new. Check it out when you have a moment!

Movin’ On Up

Just a short note that over the next few weeks you’ll see a change in my online website as I move from my current provider to a new one. This means that eventually all photo/gallery links to my site on the blog up to now will become inactive. It’s a bit of a hassle I know, but it’s for the overall good of my work. Anyway, just a heads up for changes to come.

Riverwalk Park

Shot some pics yesterday of Riverwalk Park in downtown New Castle, Pennsylvania. These were part of the series of pics shot earlier of various points of interest in New Castle for a website being worked on. It took this long to shoot them because the weather here has been less than cooperative most of the time, and even with these shots I lucked out to a degree as the sky was excellent — up until the end of the shoot that is, then it clouded  over and was overcast for the rest of the day. How’s that for timing? In any case, I got the shots I needed, and one of them will be used for the website, though not sure which at this time. I’ve posted all of the views anyways just for show. My personal favorite is the second as I like the framing of the bandstand with the garden planters, which I think exemplifies the feeling of the park in an accurate manner and gives the shot a nice, balanced and layered composition.

Backcatalog

Was going through older shots tonight looking for ones from New Castle and its neighboring areas and posted a small run of images to my Flickr account. Check it out if you have a free moment, I’ll post more as I go through them. EMaster’s Flickr Page

Night At The Fair

Went to the Lawrence County Fair tonight. Wasn’t planning on going initially, but we had some time to kill after dinner and we needed to get the Ape tired out, so it was a natural choice. Only had the G10 with me at the time, so no point in taking any standard fair shots as high ISO would have been required and the G10 sux for that. Instead, I decided to play around with rear-curtain slow-sync flash at low ISOs and the results were pretty interesting. Below is one of my favorites, and you can see the dramatic action this style of flash use adds to the photo — much better than the usual full-blast on-camera snapshots most people take.

Also played around with just taking pictures of the lights from various rides at really slow shutter speeds and got some nifty abstracts as a result. These are two of my favorites:

That’s about it for the evening. Going to go again this Saturday, but I’m going to have the D3 with then because it’s demolition derby night and I want shots of crashes galore, so I intend to be prepared!