Over the weekend, Erica and I visited the Yerkes Obervatory, near Lake Geneva, WI.

Yerkes Observatory, which calls itself “the birthplace of modern astrophysics,”[1], is an astronomical observatory operated by the University of Chicago in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. It was created in 1897 by George Ellery Hale and financed by Charles T. Yerkes. The observatory represented a shift in the thinking of observatories, from mere housing for a telescope and observer, to the modern concept of observation equipment integrated with laboratory space for physics and chemistry. A 102 cm (40 inch) refracting telescope built by the master optician Alvan Clark is located inside. It is the largest refracting telescope used for scientific research (a larger demonstration refractor, the Great Paris Exhibition Telescope of 1900, was exhibited at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900). ~Wikipedia

I pieced a few shots together to make this panographic photo (click it to see it bigger):

Panography using 100+ photos.

Click on the image to view it BIG.

Over the weekend, I joined a few friends at Bucketworks to model T-shirts for Teecycle.org.  Teecycle sells used shirts and gives a portion of the proceeds to charity.

Simon and Jake from Valo photography shot the whole thing, and they are extremely talented as you can see below.  Well a good model doesn’t hurt of course ;-)

Here I am doing my best praying mantis attack

And then I made it rain…

And here’s genuine smirk for ya

If you’d like to know more about Teecycle, check out the video from when I interviewed Tim, the founder, for ActionsTalk

Tonight I’m trying some cross processing techniques that I first saw in a tutorial from Layers Magazine.

“Cross processing (sometimes abbreviated to xpro) is the procedure of deliberately processing photographic film in a chemical solution intended for a different type of film” – Wikipedia

It’s a fairly simple process in Photoshop, achieved with a new curves adjustment layer.  The three steps were as follows:

1. Alter the red curve: raise it in the highlights and lower it in the darker portions of the photo

2. Alter the green curve: raise it in the highlights and lower it in the darker portions of the photo

3. Alter the blue curve: lower it in the highlights and raise it in the darker portions of the photo

You can tweak the curves until you get the desired effect…

If you know of any particularly good Photoshop tutorials, let me know.  I’m trying to pick it up after working with Macromedia Fireworks for years.

“Grand Place”

I like this photo because it abstracts the incredible structures of the Grand Place (Brussels, Belgium) and focuses on the cobble stones below. It’s always good to look at things from a different perspective.

“Pudong (Shanghai) from The Bund”

Well, how often does one travel to China? For most people, not very often. I used a tripod and a long shutter to capture Pudong, a region of Shanghai with an unforgettable skyline.

“Brussels (Parc)”

To get this photo, I used my point and shoot Casio camera. I set it on a stone next to a fountain and pointed it towards two strangers (you can see their outline on the right side). I used a timer on the shot to eliminate camera shake in the low light. I really like how the reflection turned out, and it reminds me of an ink blot.

“Le Louvre Nuit”

This is a photo that almost didn’t happen. After walking all over Paris taking pictures all day, I was ready to call it quits with no real winners. A friend of mine pointed this scene out when we walked through the Louvre courtyard. I used a tripod with a long shutter for the shot, and I think the results were amazing. With the location of the moon, the scene was almost too perfect. If you haven’t figured it out, I really like taking long shutter night shots. It’s even better if there’s a reflection involved.

“Light Bass”

This was the first time I had ever tried light painting, which is a ton of fun. Here’s an explanation of how I did it.

“Amsterdam Bicycle”

This photo was taken during Slamsterdam 2K8 with Tad. Bikes like these are all over Amsterdam and they make great photo subjects. I love a few things about this photo: The colors, the tight focus on the bike creating a bokeh effect, and the blurred out people in the background.

“6th Street Bridge”
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This photo was taken in Milwaukee. I like how the bridge structure and the light streams are framed. I used a long shutter and tripod.

“Oslo”

This photo really takes me back to my trip to Oslo, Norway. The colors came out very true to life and every time I look at it, I feel like I’m standing there, staring down the path in the brisk winter air. Awesome place to visit by the way.

“Summer Concert”

I took this photo during the Kanye West concert at Lollapalooza 2008 in Chicago. It’s one of my favorites because it captures the Chicago skyline and the details on the faces of the summer concert goers.

“De Toren”

Dutch for “The Tower”. I took this photo in Amsterdam, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t think it was anything special. Then my friend Tad made it into Black and White with Photoshop, and I really like it now.

One of the greatest things about Flickr is the phenomenal photography from the community. Here is a slide show of my favorite photos. These are a great inspiration to a hobbyist like myself.

Do yourself a favor and watch Eclectic 2.0 by Ross Ching.  What a great thing to wake up to!  And if you’re interested, here’s how he made it. I’m already looking for this equipment…

Two new applications I’ve been impressed with are Piclens and Animoto.

Piclens is a plugin for Firefox that lets you view photos on the web in a new, completely immersive way. Once you have it installed, it integrates with all the major photo sharing sites: Flickr, Facebook, Google Images, Smugmug, etc. With Piclens you can view sets of photos on a virtual wall, and fly through them with a drag of the mouse.  It can make the most boring Facebook album seem interesting.

Watch the demo here, then download it — Trust me.

Animoto is a new site that lets you create amazing videos by combining a group of your photos with some music. I’ve never seen an auto-generated slide show come out so well! You can make the videos for free if you go with a length of 30 seconds, and it’s cheap to make a longer one (~$4). After your video is complete, you can embed it on your website, Facebook, etc. As I sift through 1000’s of pictures from my time in Europe and try to put a video together, I’m thinking it makes a lot more sense to have Animoto do it for me. I would be very surprised if Animoto doesn’t get bought up by Google or Yahoo (think Flickr integration…) in the near future.

Here is my first crack at an Animoto video

Light painting is brand new to me, but I saw a few examples scattered about the Internet, and decided to try it last night.

Here are a couple of the better pictures:

And here’s how you do it:

Ingredients:
1. Camera that can be set to have a long shutter
2. Flashlight
3. Pitch Black Room

That’s it…

Ok, so if you’ve got all that, it’s easy. Put your camera in a stationary position, set the shutter speed for something long – like 30 seconds.

You don’t want anything screwing up your photo, so put a timer on it (to reduce camera shake from pushing the button) and turn off the flash.

When you start the shutter, you can begin to “paint” with light. You just shine the light on anything you want to show up in your picture. If you want something brighter, then shine your light on it longer. If you want bright streaks of light, shine the flashlight in the general direction of the camera. Try to not shine right at the camera though… or you’ll end up with some weird twinkle effects – but maybe you’re into that.

Here are a few more photos from my first attempt at light painting…

Link to your best light painting photos in the comments section

The photo above has received more comments and views than any other picture I have ever put on Flickr, so I thought that I should post it here. What do you think? I’m a big fan of night photography like this. I’ll post more of an update soon. I’m in London this weekend, and I’m typing on a French keyboard – which is difficult…

Here are the rest of the Paris photos from my most recent visit: