anirama » photography

New Zealand Favorites

carl — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 02:35:04 +0000

After big trips I like to post a few of my favorite photos from the trip. For our trip to New Zealand last month, I’m instead posting a few favorite themes. You can read the full travel blog here, or if you’re just interested in the pictures, the full set is on Flickr in my New Zealand set.

If you click on one of the images in the sets below it will pop up a slideshow for you.

One A Day

Not necessarily the best shot of the day, but the one that I think is the most representative.

Horizons

We traveled the length of New Zealand’s north island, exploring its coastline, cities, farmlands and forests. Other than the Kauri trees and waterfalls, it is a basically horizontal land.

Food

We also explored a lot of restaurants, enjoying a wonderful array of beautifully prepared food. Dining in New Zealand is world class and locally sourced.

St. Louis Zoo

carl — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 06:37:23 +0000

Kudos to St. Louis for their zoo. We were out there a couple weeks ago and spent half of Sunday seeing the animals, and watching other people seeing the animals. Many of the residents are separated from the visitors by glass, allowing one to get face to face – I find it as interesting to watch the people in these situations.

The Hippo tank

Hippos are surprisingly graceful underwater, which this young lady is finding out – unflinching as the behemoth cruises by.

The chimps calmly take in the animal sights. They must see thousands of visitors up close every day, yet somehow seem to remain interested in the parade.

Eye to Eye

This older male seemed interested in the toddler, but I couldn’t tell how he felt about the older brother’s tongue antics – though it was simple to tell who had more life experience at this point.

Chimp to Chimp

Morphing Faces

In addition to allowing the camera to see both the observed and the observer, the reflections also afforded this real-time morphing between remote cousins.

Spying on the Neighbors

By just hanging there, these two monkeys managed to get their neighbors riled up to a full howling fit. I’m not sure why 20 people outside the windows didn’t have the same effect.

Finally, I played with one of the penguins for awhile. We did this routine for about 30 seconds before I started the camera rolling.

Stereo Lava

carl — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 05:11:01 +0000

Stereo Lava

I took this stereo pair in 2003 at Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho. Seeing it in 2D, it is a flat wall of lava, in 3D there are five distinct layers of rock. I think it’s a great example of the power of 3D in certain situations.

You need to be able to see 3D with your eyes crossed to view this properly.

Dino Ignacio

carl — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 06:47:13 +0000

Dino Ignacio of Visceral Games presenting to our ETC students.

Dino Ignacio is Lead UI Designer at EA’s Visceral Games. He gave a great presentation to our CMU ETC students about his work on Dead Space.

The photo was shot with my Canon 430EX flash angled to bounce of the wall to the right. This gave a wider soft light from the side, adding some nice depth to the scene. There was some editing in Lightroom to darken Kyu and Alex on the right, since they got the full blast of the flash. Dino was also the creator of “Bert is Evil,” so I added an homage to that in Photoshop.

Fall 2011 ETC Student Team Photos

carl — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 08:06:25 +0000

Each semester I take team photos of our students at the beginning and end of the term. It’s fun to do, the students need the photos for their project websites, and there is always a fun creative challenge to do something that is relevant to their project.

Five Sided Square

“Five Sided Square” is a student-pitched project to develop a game for the Sifteo Cubeplatform. The photo was made with an off camera flash simulating light from a Sifteo cube. The team logo on the cube and some table reflections were added in Photoshop afterwards.

antEAter Team

The “antEAter” team is working on a project for Electronic Arts. Shot outdoors with a lot of fill flash.

Crescendo Team

“Crescendo” is developing a music game this semester for Korean game company SmileGate. Photo shot outdoors with not quite enough fill light, so I had to do some work in Lightroom.

Stanford Sierra Camp 2011

carl — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 05:00:33 +0000

I had a surprisingly small number of good pictures from SSC this year. Usually I’ll have my camera with me all the time, and take some photo hikes as a reason to explore. In retrospect, this year seemed more active and social than usual for me. That’s good news, right?

Here’s a few of the good ones…

Marmot, Fallen Leaf Lake

I was planning to do some macro photography, so I only had my 100mm lens when I met this fellow. A few hikers spooked him before I got a good shot, so I stood still for three or four minutes and he came out to sun himself some more. You can see in his eyes that he isn’t too sure about me.

Angora Fire Area, Four Years Later

In 2007, this area was set ablaze by careless campers. It’s alive once again with flowers and wildlife, though a bit lacking in shade.

Morning Row Craft

I took out this skinny boat one morning, though I prefer the 'fat' boats I usually take out which have another couple inches of width.

Beer Selection

I’m the banker in the nightly poker game, and I thought I’d throw them off a bit with some unusual beers – one of which was clearly bought just for the name. The scale isn’t evident in the picture; these are mostly 750ml bottles, the same size as a wine bottle. Traditional ale, fruits, cacao, flowers, spices… I was hoping they’d be distracted from the betting, but no such luck.

Bachelor Bat

carl — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 05:53:13 +0000

Bachelor Bat

This lone bat has moved into a sun umbrella in our backyard. This is one of the large umbrellas used for shade that cranks open and shut. Last week I went to open it after a long rainy season and startled the bat that was inside it. I shut the umbrella back down to see if he’d (she’d?) return, and when I checked today he was back in there.

I like bats, and after seeing him in there I considered building a bat box for more of them. We don’t have enough insects to support a normal colony of bats (yea!), so I’ve abandoned that idea for awhile. At some point, though, he’ll be evicted so we can get some summer shade back.

A photoset of all the other creatures living in and around my house is in my Housemates set on Flickr.

It’s Like a Birthday, But For a Car

carl — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:49:34 +0000

100,000 miles on my Porsche. As a reward she’s gone in for a full valve job and checkup. I plan to see the odo roll over again.

odo

Kung Fu Panda Scan

carl — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 08:37:08 +0000

Slitscan version of Kung Fu Panda - images, colorspace, saturation, and brightness

St. Louis Arch

carl — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 07:49:55 +0000

I was in St. Louis two weeks ago visiting my son and speaking to a class at Washington University on entrepreneurship. We did a bit of sightseeing and went to the Arch. It’s a challenge to photograph an iconic monument in a unique way – a quick search on Flickr will reveal over 83,000 photos of the arch that people have bothered to tag.

I’m happy with what I was able to get. These are four of the ~140 shots I took – including views from the top that never seem to work as well as really being there.
These first two are abstacts based on the curve of the arch. Most people who shoot similar angles tend not to turn them ‘sideways.’

Sky Track 1

Sky Track 2

This third photo is a typical angle, but I like the contrast between the sides of the arch, the sky and clouds. Thank you polarizing filter.

The St. Louis Arch

In this final image I teased the arch, hiding behind the trees rather than laying it out there.

St. Louis Arch - Approaching Through the Trees