iPhone Light Painting

Today, I read David Hobby's post on Strobist about using an iPhone as a light source. There was a video of some guy using his mobile phone as a light painting instrument. I watched it and said "I can do that!"

I was going to sell my battery grip on eBay, so I thought I'd try it on that first. Here is my set-up:


First, I took a shot without using the iPhone:


Here is the exposure process with the iPhone light painting:





And here is the photo with the light painting:


A couple of firsts for me - first attempt at Light Painting and first time using iMovie. The conclusion is that i suck at both right now.

I will attempt this again soon - hopefully with a better video. Thanks for reading!

Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L

I found the Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L tilt-shift lens on craigslist for $500. It retails around $1200, so even though I didn't have a need for it, or even have an idea how to use it, I bought it. Worse case scenario, I can always flog it back on eBay.

I was pretty excited to use it and play around with its unique features. Even though I've lived in Los Angeles for 13 years now, I had no idea where to go to be able to play with it. Yeah, I know - rarely get out.

After 15 minutes of driving around in Downtown LA, I thought my safest bet was the Walt Disney Concert Hall. When I say safe, i meant "pretty safe". Its dowtown, after all.

Can't go wrong with Frank Gehry's work. First thing I wanted to try was why this is the lens of choice of architectural photographers. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to do it. I just wanted to tilt and shift, if you know what I mean. Here is the best I can come up with:


I played around with it a little more to test the selective focus:




Quite fun, I must say. But unless I can learn more about architectural photography, I have no reason to hold on to the lens. I might as well sell it and and buy the new Lensbaby and pocket the rest if its just going to end up as that sort of toy. I'll take it out a couple of more times and decide. I'm still not sure if I like it.

Blogging Intro

The name ... I used to work for the Recycler Classifieds, a local Classifieds-only publication which back then was probably the largest resource of used vehicles and other stuff. That was before craigslist. Curbers are people who bought and sold cars without a dealer license. They would buy low and sell high. I dealt with a lot of them on a daily basis. They are usually not well-liked and thought of as a capitalistic opportunists. But hey, they are just trying to make a living from what they know best - automobiles. I'm pretty much the photographer version of these people. I make a little bit of money out of photography, but i'm not a full time photographer. I'm also a curber in the sense that I buy a lot of photo equipment to play around with, but I usually have to sell them on eBay to finance the next piece. A lot of lenses and camera bodies have gone through my hands

The content ... Primarily, I want to document my learning curve and growth as a photographer. This will include recaps of paid gigs and personal work. I also want to write reviews of gear that I've bought and played with, before I sell them.

The reason ... There is so much you can learn about photograph through the internet. You can be as good, if not better than some professional photographers from David Hobby's Strobist blog alone. Even though I've learned a lot over the last 18 months as a Digital SLR owner, I still have a long way to go. I will use this blog as a journal so I can look back and judge my progress and maybe someone who used to be as green as I was would find this information helpful.

The inspiration ... I sat through this video from Chase Jarvis' blog about Making the Web Work For You. In this video, Chase, David Hobby, and David Nightingale of Chromasia talked about the power of blogging. Chase actually said something along the lines of ... The only thing you can do wrong is not doing anything. So here I am. I also saw this video on youtube with Martin Prihoda shooting a band called Delerium where he described his business model as The best way to get ahead is by helping the ones around you get ahead. That philosophy has been stuck in my head and I really want it to be my business model as well.