Parkour Slideshow

 

I'm really starting to enjoy shooting parkour. Last weekend, I shot a jam in Herndon, Virginia, with both my Nikon Df and Zeiss SW (film camera) with Voigtlander 12mm f5.6 ultra wide angle lens.

 

(Click Here) to see my short (1.5 minute) slideshow of images I took with the Nikon Df and 35-70 f2.8 AF-D and 20mm f2.8 AF-D lenses.

 

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Making Tea - A Quick Slideshow

I was looking for something to photograph this evening, and decided to try out the new Teavana tea infuser that I got for Christmas. I set up a black cloth background, put the Nikon Df on iso 200 with my 28mm f2.8 lens and 3-stop ND filter. With this setup, at f16, I could leave the shutter open for minutes at a time without ambient light showing up in the pictures. I then proceeded to "paint" my subjects with a small flashlight, making images at various points in the tea making process.

 

Here's how it turned out:

 

Relaxing Holiday Tea, by Reed A. George

 

Just a little diversion for an afternoon. I learned a few things from this. First, I needed to be more careful about spots on the glass infuser. Second, I needed to pay close attention to the flashlight being directly reflected from the ceramic and glass surfaces. But, it's definitely something I could perfect in a second shooting, if I decided to. I see now why product photography is painstaking and difficult. But, it's actually pretty fun.

 

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50 Years of Nikon - Slideshow - Historic Corncrib

Here is a brief slideshow of images I took of an old farm building near where I work. I was able to convince my coworker and friend Wendye to let me photograph her there.

 

 

If you have trouble getting it to load, just (Click Here).

 

I shot all of these images with Nikon - the first of my "50 Years of Nikon SLRs" posts. This includes images from my early Nikon F film SLR, and my new Nikon Df DSLR. It's a lot of fun shooting these two cameras, separated by 50 years of Nikon history, going into the 50th year of my own life.

 

The music is from my friends The Woodshedders. Enjoy!

 

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Lessons from the Forest - My Upcoming Exhibition

I spent some time yesterday printing and preparing for my upcoming photography exhibit, as part of the "Coffee and Critique Exposed: The Exhibit," to be hosted at Glen Echo Park, Maryland, from November 21, 2014 - January 5, 2015.

 

I've been working on a set of photographs related to my meditation practice. I've put together five prints for the show, printed on matte paper. I'm using Epson matte paper at the moment, but may experiment with some other papers before the exhibit hangs on November 13.

 

One thing I learned from the Magnum Days workshop with David Alan Harvey is to make short slideshows of my work, as part of the editing process. Here's one that I made and posted on youtube for this exhibit:

 

 

Lessons from the Forest, by Reed A. George

 

All five images were shot on 4x5 film. The first and final shots were made with a Graflex Speed Graphic, the others with a pinhole camera. I have a lot more to do on this project, but the goal of this series was to share something of the state of mind that I achieve in meditation, and particularly in walking meditation.

 

I hope you find it interesting!

 

DMC-365.blogspot.com

 

 

O'er the Beautiful Snow

It's another snowy, stormy day here in Northern Virginia as I write this. Rather than let it keep me inside, I decided to take a walk in the woods and try to capture the mood. Choosing a simple and durable setup, I grabbed my Lumix DMC-TS5 (waterproof, everything-proof compact camera) and figured out how to set long shutter speeds manually. I wanted the longest exposures I could get, so that I could get some nice motion blur as I walked.

 

In order to use 1 second (or 1/2 second in some cases), I had to hold up a 3X neutral density filter over the lens on the TS5. No problem.

 

I've set a short selection of the images (unedited jpegs from the TS5) to one of my favorite songs, "O'er the Beautiful Snow," by Melissa Wright and the Acoustic Burgoo. The mood of the song is perfect for what I wanted to portray.

 

O'er the Beautiful Snow, by Melissa Wright and Acoustic Burgoo

Images by Reed A. George

 

(Click Here) to see the slideshow set to the music (~4 minutes playing time). Be sure to have your volume up to hear the music!

 

Melissa was nice enough to give me permission to use the song for this purpose. I hope you enjoy.

 

DMC-365.blogspot.com

 

 

Japanese Kyu Do Archery

 

Click to See the Series (Five Shots)

Panasonic DMC-G1

 

Here are the individual shots in order:

 

Kyu Do, by Reed A. George

Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1, Pana-Leica Macro-Elmarit 45mm f2.8 Lens

 

I was recently going through old images, looking for something I could share at the Glen Echo Photoworks monthly critique. I came across these five images of a Japanese Kyu Do master, which I took in Japan a couple of years back.

 

The exposure for these was really rough, since the archer was in shade, and the target area was in bright sunlight. This time, I decided to stop fighting the high contrast, and go ahead and push it. In post-processing, using SilverEfex Pro, I chose a "Noir" style. It's stark, very strong contrast, but I like it.

 

The critique was pretty, well, critical. Most people who saw the five prints did not pick up that it was a series. Some didn't even see it as archery, one person saying they thought he was holding a fishing pole. This is one of thos examples where my own experience of being there influenced how I feel about the images. To me, it's quite obvious; not to anyone else, apparently. I can even see the arrow in flight (white streak in the fourth image); no one else saw it.

 

So, this is why we have critiques. Not to see if people "like" our work or not, but do they get it? In this case, no. So, I'll keep working on it.

 

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