Photography Blog: December 2014

The blue hunt by Koen Cuppens

Thursday, 1st January 2015

Follow @EarthShots on Twitter.

Sorry for the radio silence—the buyers of my old house moved up the closing from the 15th to the 7th and now they want to close on Friday (i.e., in two days). I'm not complaining—God bless 'em—but with the New Year's holidays intervening, we're all scrambling. My pool table is still in the basement there and I have a trailer full of stuff in the driveway and a hundred and one things to do—I need the property tax receipt, my realtor has to collect lien waivers, all sorts of details I thought I'd have another week to plug away at. It's not so much that this move has been difficult, as that I'm just really bad at this sort of thing.

In a lot of ways, 2014 was one of the best years of my life. I'll be sorry to see it go, and I'll be hoping for a lot of carryover into 2015. I didn't have one of these—

Billy Hayes and Jay W. Johnson's "Blue Christmas" is mainly associated with Elvis Presley, who recorded it in 1957, but it had already been a hit for several musicians by that time and it would go on to be recorded by everyone from Shakin' Stevens to Polkadot Cadaver. Including a version by the Beach Boys in 1964 that's so schlocky it'll make your fillings tingle.

On the other hand, it's a perfect match for the antiquarian stylings of Mister Colonel Redbone, whose '20s jug band sensibilities and mouth-full-of-cotton-balls singing is perfectly matched to the lugubrious sentiment of the song...which benefits from the straight deadpan delivery and stripped-down accompaniment. Joined in this video by some beautiful playing by the swing stalwart Ken Peplowski (virtually all of whose many records are enjoyable—I love his Benny Goodman interpretations for instance) and some guy doing a pitch-perfect comedic impression of a TV host. I love it in the beginning when the camera pulls back from the host to reveal old Leon in his shades and top hat. Makes me laugh even when I know it's coming.

Have a good New Year's Eve and be careful out there if you're driving tonight. And don't be blue. Raise a glass of seltzer water to me and my beloved S. if you think about it. Here's to you and here's to 2015.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)

Featured Comments from:

jsmidt: "The host is a son of Wisconsin."

Mike replies: Oh, so he's a real music guy then. My bad. All is forgiven.

Indian Government Blocks Vimeo And Weebly Due To ISIS Content

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The post Indian Government Blocks Vimeo And Weebly Due To ISIS Content appeared first on DIY Photography.

Photographer’s First Trash The Dress Shoot Goes Insanely Viral After Groom-To-Be Bails Days Before The Wedding

It was just five days before the wedding when Shelby Swink’s fiancé decided to call it off and crush her plans and dreams. “The next couple days were a blur of calling guests, canceling services, and figuring out our living arrangements“, say Swink, but that did not prevent the 23 year old from Memphis from [...]

The post Photographer’s First Trash The Dress Shoot Goes Insanely Viral After Groom-To-Be Bails Days Before The Wedding appeared first on DIY Photography.

Magnificent Milky Way Photography Made Easy(ish).

Have you ever found yourself lifting your jaw off the keyboard, completely stunned by an out-of-this-world photo of the Milky Way? This is one of those subjects were you can either get an “Eh” shot that will accumulate a few likes on social media websites, or you can create a potentially viral piece of art [...]

The post Magnificent Milky Way Photography Made Easy(ish). appeared first on DIY Photography.

Andrei Zmievski Wigglegrams Kyoto

Note: this article may not appear properly in news readers.

This article contains interactive aspects that are likely removed by most news readers. Please see this particular article directly on Jeffrey's blog for full functionality.

Animatable — slowly sweep mouse from side to side to view effect

写真の上をマウスで左右にゆっくり動かすといろいろな撮影効果を楽しむことができます。

Andrie Zmievski Wigglegram

(version #1)

at the Fushimi Inari Shrine, Kyoto Japan

An old friend from my days at Yahoo! swung by Kyoto the other day, and we made a quick walking tour of a few sightseeing spots.

I first met Andrei Zmievski at an Open Source Conference circa 2002, and we worked together a bit on things related to PHP's regular-expression support (of which a chapter of my book on regular expressions is dedicated). As an expert in PHP, he later joined Yahoo! a couple of years later when Yahoo! made heavier use of PHP.

New Year's Prep at the Heian Shrine (正月の準備、平安神宮) a shrine's most busy time is the first few days of the new year -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2014 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38mm — ¹/500 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos

New Year's Prep

at the Heian Shrine (正月の準備、平安神宮)

a shrine's most busy time is the first few days of the new year

Selfie Stick -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2014 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 48mm — ¹/2000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos

Selfie Stick

These “selfie stick” (my word) things seem to have suddenly exploded in popularity. I've seen them around for years, but on this few-hour outing I saw more than in my entire life up to that point.

Andrei at the Heian Shrine -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2014 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos

Andrei at the Heian Shrine

Lighting Incense at the Chion'in Temple -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2014 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos

Lighting Incense at the Chion'in Temple

More Selfie Sticks at least three visible in this shot at the front steps of the Kiyomizu Temple -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2014 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos

More Selfie Sticks

at least three visible in this shot at the front steps of the Kiyomizu Temple

Snapshot the Old Fashioned Way -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2014 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos

Snapshot the Old Fashioned Way

Andrei Overlooking Kyoto -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2014 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos

Andrei Overlooking Kyoto

With Fox at the Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷) -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2014 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos

With Fox

at the Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷)

Inari shrines have a lot of fox statues; the shot above was taken almost next to where this fox shot was taken, though to much different effect. :-)

Gates Everywhere every gate, large and small, represents a donation to the shrine -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2014 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos

Gates Everywhere

every gate, large and small, represents a donation to the shrine

Here's another version of the wigglegram given at the top of this post. It's derived from the same original photos that the one above was derived from. As described in “The Art and Science (and Complex Frustrations) of Creating my Wigglegrams”, once you have the master shots in camera, there are still all kinds of different results you can get depending on how you crop the individual frames.

The version above has the apparent movement rotate about Andrei; the version below has it rotate about the far background...