December 29 - Expose to the Right

December 29 - Expose to the Right, originally uploaded by Jesse_Laird.

Feeling rusty. I accidentally left the camera on manual exposure, and while I went through and checked/set WB, ISO, and even exposure compensation, I didn't notice the exposure mode setting.

I've been grudgingly trying to practice the technique of exposing "to the right" (slight overexposure to take advantage of more detail in the white range). With all the available light and strobe work, that competes against either limited light, or trying to conserve batteries and recycle time.

The strange thing is that I took some photos after Christmas, and the manual setting I had used indoors with bounce flash worked PERFECTLY for some outdoor shots on a cloudy day in the snow.

Anywho, just an old frost-covered chainlink by work. Took a couple, but it was the bit of old flagging tape that caught my eye and resulted in this shot.

And what do you know, even this blown-out photo could be saved when I exposed to the right......

December 15 - Pandan Life Cycle in Kaya

December 15 - Pandan Life Cycle in Kaya, originally uploaded by Jesse_Laird.

Photo blogging foreign food - couldn't be happier!

Soooo.... in my former life, I served as a manufacturing engineer. My work brought me to Penang, Malaysia several times (see past blog entries for some photos). I love international travel, and even more so when a place I might not have gone to.

I've changed jobs, and no longer have business reason to travel to Malaysia. But the heart of a traveler gets scattered around the world. So every once in a while, I feel a tinge of desire to taste durian, kaya, ban chean kuih. To leave the air conditioning and feel a place with every pore. To feel lost, and a bit scared.

Before I wax poetic about travel, let me return to the point of this photo.

One of my former coworkers returned to Malaysia, and found a way to bring me some pandan leaf. This is a plant I brought back after my last visit (I brought back leaves only, for food, not propogation, in case any border control officers are reading this!)

I read that Pandan leaf is the vanilla of SE Asia. And I think that's the perfect description. I had meat wrapped in pandan leaves, rice steamed with pandan, and had breakfast of Kaya toast.

So tonight I made Kaya, which is a jam made with coconut milk, egg, sugar, and flavored by simmering the coconut milk with pandan leaves. It's a mild, vanilla-ish, earthy flavor that I can't even begin to do justice to by trying to describe here. Served on white toast with butter, it is heavenly. Add a cup of tea, a hard boiled egg with soy sauce, and I'm a happy camper.

Photo-wise, I used available light because, well, I can't get pandan leaf every day and so wanted to use this chance to explain to friends and family what I was making. Wasn't really thinking of the photo blog, except that I did need a photo today.

I've never made a diptych, or triptych, or any other form of photo collage. But each photo didn't stand on it's own so much as the timeline I saw at the filmstrip on Lightroom.

A quick google pointed me to a Digital Photo School article on doing exactly what I wanted to do in Lightroom, without fussy movement/alignment of the photos. See link here: http://bit.ly/2mprI

So I captured the moment, was able to tell a photo story, and learned a tool that is just way too easy and I'll probably use more in the future, especially for some of the family portrait series I do. Stoked to learn an easy technique so quickly, and to have it meet my storytelling needs exactly.

The recipe I've used both times I was able to get pandan is from LA Times. See the recipe here: http://bit.ly/11jCSf

December 13 - Dirty

December 13 - Dirty, originally uploaded by Jesse_Laird.

I love Bend. I love bikes. I love mud. And I love taking photos.

Several years back when I showed up for my first Search and Rescue meeting, I came home and said, "These are my kind of people!" I had the same reaction today after shooting the Elite Men's race in the 2009 Cyclocross Nationals.

Hard to choose a shot -- there's a second which is very technically clean, iconic with the smokestacks in the background, great light, and even some great gear (Team S&M has the old-skool look down, and I think it's perfect for cyclocross!) But this one was a little different, and I wanted to share something that was a little more uniquely me.

The whole set is linked in my CX Nationals photoset here at Flickr, by the way.

Love, love, loving the D700's autofocus. Also seriously loving the 70-200 AF-S 2.8 VR (I). Crisp, fast, just great to shoot with. This is one of two lenses that I've wanted for a long while, and it was a joy to shoot with today.

Areas of improvement? I need to trust/set an AF point high on the frame, rather than keeping the center point selected. I was letting the D700 do continuous focus, and follow the selected point around the frame. Which works freaking awesome, by the way. But I was tending to cutoff the wheels. I need to get focus on the face, but keep composition in mind as well.

Also, wouldn't hurt me to have stopped down a bit. Plenty of sunlight today, which made for a slick, muddy course.

Huge respect for all the men and women out there racing in this stuff, because I know that it' s not just a day like today with beer and cowbells and guys in speedos with American flags. There's all those days in the saddle in even worse weather, worse trails, and zero fans. With laundry to do, bills to pay, and bikes to clean at the end of the day. I have tremendous respect for your commitment to cycling, and it was awesome to get the chance to host your race in our town.

Keep it in the big ring, -J

December 1 - Flipped Around

December 1 - Flipped Around, originally uploaded by Jesse_Laird.

Gotta give credit to my friend and colleague Engin for telling me about this fun technique of using a reversed manual focus lens for macro work.

In my case, I used a old Canon FD 50mm f/1.8 SC, wide open, reversed in front of a Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8 AF-D.

Learned that I need to setup some lights to pull this stuff off, so I just played around with it. In this shot, I did a poor-mans tilt-shift by changing the axis of the reversed Canon lens.

It's almost crummy phone / over-processed look, but there's something about the complex planes of focus and distortion, and the contrast in colors, that I really like.

Sort of embarrased to be playing around with a lens I probably couldn't sell on Ebay, when I have a new lens to learn. But this was easy to do after family time, and so it's my photo for the day.

Very, VERY happy to have another photo-a-day shot posted, even if it's late, and Engin had to bust my chops a bit about making time for my hobby.