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Earth Day, Starwars Day, all that sort of stuff came up lately. I thought I'll join in, and create some SciFi stuff myself - Not earth though, but its satellite, the moon. This is a composite, using one of my earliest Milky Way images and one full Moon shot from around 2018. Putting the moon in this position was a bit tricky, you wouldn't be able to see this constellation from Earth - However, from a space ship you could! Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested photos@wernerkaffl.com However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal. 
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I experimented with some new techniques lately, and combined those with my images. I enjoyed the results of adding some abstract elements to my work. Here my first two results... Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested photos@wernerkaffl.com However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal. Not just due the recent lockdown, but pretty amplified by it. Nature instantly starts to re-claim areas abandoned or left alone by humans. There is a whole photography style around this subject. The first 3 images were taken in Newtown, yesterday. And when I posted those on Facebook, I promptly got a comment that this were a poisonous weed. Well, it actually isn't. Its name is Cymbalaria Muralis, it's actually even eatable and has some medicinal use as well (link below). Calling something a weed doesn't mean it's useless, it only means some people might not know about its uses. Nothing in nature is useless, everything has its purpose (the purpose of humans is a bit debatable though). What we humans, in our delusions of self importance tend to forget is, we share this planet with about 1.5 million other species. And that's only the official number. It's likely that there are up to 8.5 million other species on earth. It would be interesting to see what happens, if we changed from a <human dictatorship> on earth to a democracy... Not a popular opinion maybe, but I believe a very valid one! Oh, btw, humans make up 1/3 of the whole mammal population on this planet. This still doesn't give us a majority, but it shows what the term <overpopulation> means. Also highlighted by COVID-19. Maybe it's time to re-think our obviously outdated approach to our species' expansion ideas. Earth doesn't have unlimited space nor unlimited resources! During the lockdown I did a lot of macro photography. Many people were asking about setups and other tech details, so I thought I write something up in my Services > How-To section on my website (here a direct link to the relating article, though there are a couple more if you're interested). Here a final image and the actual setup behind it: Canon 5d Mark 3, Canon EF 50 mm F1.8 lens, 13 mm extension tube and 31 mm extension tube (those are needed to get closer to the subject). Background is a black umbrella on tripod, object and camera mounted on tripods, construction light on another tripod as a light source, RC remote for the camera, camera connected to PC to get a better view on what it actually sees (you see the screens in the background of the first BTS image). I shot the scene with an aperture of F2.8, which results in a shallow depth of field (the soft effect around all not-in-focus parts of the image). The blue-isch tint id not editing. It's one of the standard white balance settings in the camera, called <tungsten>. This is like using a tungsten based film in the older days.  Lockdown level 4 seems to come to an end, so I might get a bit further out of my home again. Especially down to the south coast, which is at some 5 km distance regional, rather than local. That's where this subject comes from, dried sea weed. So here some of my last macros for now. By the way, the blue-ish tint is not edited. It comes from a white balance setting before shooting, called <tungsten>. This has a similar effect as using a tungsten balanced film in the days of photo-film. Recent project - please do NOT attempt to do this if you don't know exactly what and where you can do it. Do not do this if you don't have appropriate fire extinguishing gear like a non flammable fire blanket (not the synthetic stuff you bought in warehouse) or fire extinguisher. A bucket of water isn't a good idea, in fact with certain flammable liquids water actually amplifies the flames. This is not a steady fire, just a fast burst of a split-second, which makes it less dangerous and harder to take a shot. Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested photos@wernerkaffl.com However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal. Very far back in my archives, the second day after I got my first half-way decent DSLR camera, I went out to Owhiro Bay to try what I bought this camera for - Long exposure of the sea, to get this milky water texture I have seen so often before. The day was 18/01/2014. The camera was a Canon EOS 60D, second hand, already pretty outdated when I got it, and not a full frame camera. The lens was a EF-S 15-85 mm kit lens. The tripod I used was some cheap 50 $ one, from some store I can't remember. I had no remote to trigger the camera without shaking, so I had to use its timer instead. I did learn a lot since then, and I gained a lot of skill in the following years. I also invested a lot of my earnings to get better gear - But I do like to look back to my beginnings and see what I achieved back then! Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested photos@wernerkaffl.com However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal. Some of my favorite images... Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested photos@wernerkaffl.com However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal. I revisited my archives a lot these days. And I found some of my images look also pretty good in monochrome. So I gave some of them a makeover, this is one of those. Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested photos@wernerkaffl.com However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal.  Another thing I started to up-skill during the lockdown, Composite images. Basically impossible fantasy worlds. Here the first result after finding some tutorials. People familiar with Island Bay, might recognize the cave mouth... In fact, I needed 4 of my older photographs to create this. That's enough tech for now, I don't want to give it all away... Of course my images are available as prints, please contact me if you're interested photos@wernerkaffl.com However, prints will have to wait till things are back to normal.  |
