Just a few shots I took on the back of a moped on the way to Che Nam Bo with a Canon 5omm F/1.8.

Took another afternoon stroll today, equipped with my 70-200 F4/L to see what I could capture. Just grabbed a few candids of pedestrians and people on motorbikes so synonymous with visions of Vietnam. Nothing spectacular, shall have to give it another go soon.

Thought it would be fun to shoot an entire day with black and white in mind. In the mid-afternoon I took a stroll along Saigon river, rounding off the day in central Saigon for dinner at an Indian restaurant. There was torrential rain in the evening as well, which made things interesting. It is rainy season here after all, so i’ll need to get used to these flash downpours.

Just a quick photo update with a shot I grabbed in Bangkok airport whilst waiting to transit. The good ol’ Sigma 10-20 really comes into its own for interior architecture photos like this.

I’d seen some sneak peeks of the new Content Aware Fill function of Photoshop CS5 in video demonstrations, and whilst in awe at what I was seeing, I assumed it wouldn’t be as easy in reality and the workflow was generally sped up. Well, having downloaded the trial version of Photoshop CS5, I can say I am won over. Content Aware Fill is mind blowing. I’m not even sure how it works or what sort of algorithms are happening behind the scenes to be able to intelligently manipulate an image, but it just works.

But an image, as they say, is worth a thousand words. So look at these two images. The edit was a quick job, less than 2 minutes in fact. It’s not perfect, but look what you can achieve with just a few clicks.

Before Content Aware Fill

After Content Aware Fill

Not bad for 2 minutes work. Content Aware Fill isn’t going to give perfect results all the time, but it’ll certainly speed up your digital workflow exponentially. Hey, maybe we don’t have to worry about good composition anymore. Annoying tree in the way? Clone it out. That’s sarcasm by the way. I do not condone poor composition.

Hipstamatic is a neat iPhone application that allows you to take photos that emulate the unpredictability and quirkiness of old toy and plastic cameras. Which in essence means it makes your more mundane photos a little more visually interesting. It allows you to choose different film types and lenses for different effects, with a few available preloaded with the application, and more available as microtransactions. I won’t weigh in on the microtransactions debate; I’ve been having to deal with that concept in video games for long enough as it is. You can also turn on and off a flash effect.

Above are some examples of photos taken with the app, and yes, I took them all from the comfort of my desk. Expecting me to go outside is asking a bit much, no? Not the best examples for sure, better ones are available from the Hipstamatic App Website. Still, this should be fun to play around with when I have the time.

Swung by the Tate Modern today and saw the Miroslaw Balka exhibit, which is basically a big dark room entitled ‘How It Is’. Described by the Tate Modern as:

How It Is alludes to recent Polish history – for example, the ramp at the entrance to the Ghetto in Warsaw, or the trucks which took Jews away to the camps of Treblinka or Auschwitz. By entering the dark space, visitors place considerable trust in the organisation, something akin to the risks often taken by immigrants travelling. Balka intends to provide an experience for visitors which is both personal and collective, creating a range of sensory and emotional experiences through sound, contrasting light and shade, individual experience and awareness of others, perhaps provoking feelings of apprehension, excitement or intrigue.

In all honesty, I didn’t really experience any of that. It was just novel to wander in to a large darkened container for a while, then briskly wander back out. A sentiment likely echoed by the large numbers of tourists and frolicking children enjoying the exhibit. Frankly much of this ‘modern art’ is lost on me. This is what the construction looks like from the outside:

It wasn’t really that dark in there either. I was hoping the Call of Duty night vision goggles would be required equipment, but alas no.

Found this in the ol’ archives and decided it made a nice wallpaper. It was originally a photo of a phone dangly put into Photoshop with some liberal use of the Art History Brush for the painted effect. At least that’s what I think I did.

My sister recently got me one of these cute little Takara Tomy remote control cars in the shape of everyone’s favourite King of Koopas whilst on a recent trip to Hong Kong. Even though they’re pretty darn small, they’re actually rather fun. So since then I picked up a second, for some ‘multiplayer’. Just like you’d expect if Pikachu for whatever reason showed up in Mario Kart, he (she?) is much nimbler than the heavy Bowser. I’m not sure why that amuses me so. They each run on 4 x LR44 batteries, 2 in the car and 2 in the remote control. The remote controls also come with a ‘boost’ shoulder button, for when you need that extra juice. You can pick them up on the ‘bay for around £13-15, which is quite pricey.

Anyway, on to dissecting the photo. I put them in a home-made light tent made out of white poster foam board stuck together to make a box with a side missing. Canon 580ex on a wireless trigger bounced into the roof of the box. Doing this bounces the light off all the edges of the box, filling in all the shadows and creating a white backdrop. I could’ve gotten a purer white background in post, but I actually like the gradient. You can use more than one flash bounced into both sides of the box to better fill in the background if you want. I set the 580ex to Manual, lowered the output to 1/16 power and fired a few test shots at various apertures, stopping down until F/14 at which point the flash wasn’t nuking the subjects into a pure white photograph. Boosted the shadows in Photoshop to give it some contrast and that was pretty much it.

Just a quick note to say that a gallery of photographs from my time in Sa Pa, Vietnam, from way back at Christmas, are now available in the Gallery.

It only took 6 months…