To Market we shall go

Chelsea Market - wow, what a fun place! - has some truly unique architecture and decor. According to the CM website, "To walk through the Chelsea Market is to stroll through a sort of postindustrial theme park, carefully festooned with the detritus of a lost industrial culture, interspersed with food stores and restaurants." Reclaimed safety deposit boxes run up the wall by a set of elevator doors in the picture below.

Canon 5D Mark II
24mm - ISO 5000
1/30s- f/10

Wet Radio City

It was a wet night tonight, but I took advantage of a break in the rain to take some pictures of Radio City Music Hall.

Canon 5D Mark II
32mm - ISO 4000
1/40s- f/6.3

A blur in Times Square

This is going to be a scary week.  Not because I am in NYC for a conference, but because I only have a netbook with me that can't handle Canon's software.  So all photos posted this week are going to be straight from the camera, not even cropped.

This was a fun shot of a little pedicab zipping through Times Square.  I used this technique a lot in taking soccer pictures for a project a few years ago, and it is now just second nature, even though I haven't used it in several years.  Basically, you follow a moving object with the camera, which creates motion blur on the surrounding area, but your subject is perfectly crisp.

Canon 5D Mark II
65mm - ISO 2500
1/30s- f/7.1

A lion abduction

My mom took my sisters and I to Gage Park all the time when we were kids.  I don't actually remember playing on this particular toy, but from the looks of it, it might be old enough.  I wanted to take the flash off-camera and do some freehand lighting, for the whole bright white overhead spotlight alien-abduction shot.  So, I needed a shutter speed long enough to allow me to hit the shutter button and then get in position directly above the creature to fire the flash using the manual fire button before the shutter closed. 

But, I didn't want the shutter open so long that the ambient light from the streetlights and building lights would interfere.  The 1 sec. exposure allowed me to get into position, but didn't do enough to solve the second problem of ambient interference.  In retrospect, I should have decreased my ISO so I could keep the same long shutter but decrease the ambient light in the background to nearly nothing.  But, I was getting chilly and decided to call it good.  

There are times when you don't want to gel the flash (see yesterday's post), to get a certain effect.  That is what I was going for this time - I just didn't take it far enough. 

Canon 5D Mark II
75mm - ISO 800
1s- f/7.1

Canon 580EXII
14mm zoom @ 1/164 power
Fired approximately 3' above subject at a slight angle down towards the lion

A nice light rain

The picture below is a great illustration of why you should gel your flash.  Do you see the white beam cutting across the middle of the picture?  It is pretty obvious that it was made by a different light source than the gold light hitting the rest of the raindrops.  The same thing happens when you pop a pure white flash in a room which is lit by normal light bulbs.  It really stands out.  Adding a simple color-balancing gel (good source here) will help your light play nicely with the light in the rest of the room.

Canon 5D Mark II
102mm - ISO 2500
1/50s- f/4

Lay it down

Spent some time at Rundown Studios today listening to local metal band Invictus working on their first album.  Here is lead guitarist RJ Soldani laying down some rhythm parts. 

I was chagrined to realize that I had forgotten my wide angle lens, which would have come in handy.  You have to be careful when using a wide angle that you don't introduce too much distortion to your pictures, but in the right circumstances, the distortion can be controlled and you can get some really cool shots.

Canon 5D Mark II
85mm - ISO 3200
1/50s- f/4

Pickle car!

The Shawnee County Public Library held it's fifth annual Edible Book Report night.  Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things that Go is a cute book which was well represented by a young reader.

Canon 5D Mark II
105mm - ISO 400
1/100s- f/4