Life Through the Lens

Going Away for Our Friend Lauren

This was the last weekend for Lauren in San Angelo, she got a new job in Houston making a bunch more money.  So we decided to head out to Sealy Flats for some dinner and Blues.  Texas Blues Runners was the live entertainment that night and they rocked!  I guess the guitarist used to play for the Doobie Brothers.  This was also the first true test for the Panasonic GF1. As I had hoped, it turned out to be the perfect low light people portrait camera.  The F1.7 was clutch, as I shot wide open the whole night.  ISO performance was decent, but much better than anything else in the compact camera class. Video quality was also excellent, but the lack of image stabilization in the 20mm made for some shaky video.

 

 

Panasonic GF1 20mm F1.7

I finally decided to dip my toes in the Micro 4/3rds pool to see what all the excitement was about.  I was also looking for better high ISO performance from a compact camera.  The G12 and S95 are great, but really start dropping off in quality above ISO 400.  The m4/3 cameras were supposed to have pretty good RAW performance, and the Panasonic bodies had the best AF around until Olympus released the EP-3. So I picked up a used Panasonic GF1 (best of the GF series because the controls were setup for a serious photography and the sensors haven’t changed any in the 12MP range) with a 20mm F1.7 lens off Fred Miranda forums for a killer price.  The lens is a pancake style lens with a fast aperture and a 40mm equivalent field of view…probably closer to the human eye than the 50mm is. I took some quick test shots with and was truly impressed.  The ISO400 output was clean, to the point of not needing any post production Noise reduction. ISO 3200 was pretty noisy, about the level of my 5D MKII at ISO 12,800, but could still get usable results out of Lightroom.  Here’s some shots of the new camera. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Labor Day 2011 in Dallas

I didn’t have any major trips planned for Labor Day, so I decided to make a long overdue visit to my friends Nicole and Ryan up in Dallas.  It was an epic weekend of photography, eating, and fun!  I drove up after work on Friday and met up with Ryan, since Nicole already had a dinner with friends planned.  We headed off to get some delicious Thai food at the Banana Leaf. I got the Waterfall Beef, which was a surprisingly tasty cold dish. Then it was off to Yogurtland for some Passion Fruit and Guava Froyo. The epic pics from the weekend are here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday started off pretty early with a quick trip to Panera Bread for breakfast, then headed off to meet up with some friends at the Fort Worth Zoo.

 

 

Since we were in the Ft. Worth area, I suggested we head up to Watauga, to a place that was on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.  The Chef Point Café.  It’s a Conoco gas station that has a gourmet dining restaurant attached to it.  The story goes that the owner couldn’t get a loan to open up a restaurant, since they had no previous experience, but they could get a loan for a gas station. Crazy.  We had some delicious Artichoke bottoms stuffed with crab meat and I had the Blackened Stuffed Chicken with angel hair pasta.

 

 

After we recovered from the food coma, we headed down to Deep Ellum, which is know to be a slightly rough, but artsy part of Dallas. They had a hot rod car show going on, so we went down to do some photography.

 

No stop would be complete without another meal. We walked over to the Twisted Root Burger, famous not only for their burgers, but for their home brewed root beer. Instead of calling your name, you’re given a card with a famous celebrity on it.  I got the original Karate Kid…Ralph Macchio.  I also had their burger of the month, Peanut butter, bacon, and Jalapenos…all things that I love separately, but were magical when combined with seared meat and bread :)

 

Sunday was The Coffee House Café for breakfast. Pancakes and Coffee.  We results were a bit mixed.  The service was okay, but one of their coffee specialties turned out to be pretty bad.  Nicole got a Pour Over, which is coffee that goes through some convoluted contraption to brew, then is mixed with a flavored syrup.  Turned out aweful.  Not a good thing to have on your menu when “Coffee” is in your name.  I had the Lemon Ricotta pancakes were were awesome.  The regular drip coffee was pretty good too.

 

After that food coma, we prepared for a Labor Day Cookout at Ryan’s friend’s house.  There was a lot of food…and kids running around.  We had brisket burgers, cookies…and best of all, Chocolate Salty Balls.

 

Then it was off to downtown to meet up with Nicole’s cousins and her friend Kelly…in another kind of rough part of town called Oak Cliff.  There was a margarita tasting festival, with booths from all sorts of restaurants and bars. Unfortunately, it was really poorly organized and tons of people were squished into a 1 block area.  First you had to wait in line to buy a wrist band, then when you finally got in, you had to wait in equally long lines to get a “tasting cup” which was maybe 2 oz of liquid.  After a while, we would just walk up and take cups from the side. When it started to get dark, we hightailed it out of there and met up at Village Burger in Uptown for some dinner.  Food wasn’t too bad, but a bit forgettable. I had the Portabello burger…having been burgered out the last few meals.

 

I planned on leaving late Monday afternoon, so I could get some stuff done before the week started. Nicole and Ryan make some blueberry pancakes with blueberry compote. It was pretty good, except for the smurf looking color the pancakes took on The weather had dropped into the 60’s that morning and we headed outside to to play around with the dogs and try to get some action shots.  On my way out, we tried to find an Greek restaurant that was open on labor, and ended up at Zoes Kitchen.  I had a pretty light Hummus and salad plate.  That really hit the spot after all that extreme eating.

Rattle Snake Lunch

On Friday afternoon, I was headed to the building where our refrigerator was to get my lunch when I almost stepped on this little guy hanging out along the wall right by the door I needed to go in.  This was just a baby rattlesnake, probably about 14″ long when all stretched out.  I called on the radio for Facility Maintenance to “take care” of it .  Here’s a pic of him staring right at me…as you can see the camera was pretty close (which made my manager, who just happened to be in the area, really nervous).

Birthday Weekend

I had a great weekend of fun, hanging out with friends and chillin’ in Austin.  Friday night I met up with my dawg Conrad (since everyone else wussed out) at Cork & Pig to take advantage of the Happy Hour and the insanely tasty pizza.  Afterwards, I went with Yama to the movies, intending to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but that was surprisingly sold out.  Instead we saw 30 Minutes or Less, which was pretty hilarious.  Then on a whim, I decided to drive to Austin got meet up with my friend Anne.  We hit up some Austin food trucks for a tasty Vegan lunch, headed off to the Asian grocery, walked into a random Farmer’s Market, ate some organic popsicles, saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes, ate some Vietnamese food @ Sunflower restaurant, then finished off the evening with Bubble Tea.  It was a surprisingly exhausting day.  Sunday, Anne had Tennis in the morning, but afterwards we met up for a breakfast burrito at Cucina de Consuela.  After parting ways, I walked next door to the Upper Crust Bakery and got one of their famous cinnamon rolls to go, along with a giant Cheese Brioche.  When I got home I watched Girl with a Dragon Tattoo (Swedish version) on my Logitech Revue (thanks Sis for the b-day present).

Pray for Rain - Rain in San Angelo!

It been months since we saw real rain in San Angelo…that actually wet the ground.  But tonight the sky opened up and brought with it some dramatic lightning and thunder.  Here’s the best photos from the evening, rain drops kept getting on the lens, so there are some blurry smears.

Canon 70-300mm F4-5.6 DO IS

I haven’t bought a lens in a while…so I figured it was about time for another one :)  On my recent trip to San Diego I hauled out my 70-200 F2.8 L IS lens for the maternity shoot.  As awesome as it was, it is big and heavy, and I only used it for that one shoot.  That’s a lot of weight to carry around.  I had my eye on this 70-300 DO for a while now, and one popped up on the internet forums for an awesome price.  It wasn’t mint, but I also didn’t want to spend the $1300 retail price for one either.  So I got this one for about half that, and am pretty happy with the condition.  Its got some dust inside, some paint’s worn off, and the zoom isn’t super smooth.  So here’s the thing, its only 4” long @ 70mm, which is about an inch shorter than the 24-70 F2.8L. Now that is compact. It uses Diffractive Optics (that’s the DO part of the name) to make it so small (and improve chromatic abberations) and has a true USM ring motor with pretty good build quality.  The downside is the slow max aperture F5.6 @ 300mm.  But I figured I would be using this for travel, and if I need to take photos of something far away, its going to be in bright daylight. The other big downside is that its not very sharp.  At least not compared to my prime lenses and the rest of my L glass.  It’s a bummer, but you can’t have it all.

 

 

Here are the rings from the Diffractive Optics element.

Marc & Ericka Baby Shower

Saturday was the baby shower and my services were called upon again to document the occasion.  See the photos here. Before the guests arrived and after they left…hilarity ensued.

Pre-party goofing off…

 

After-party goofing off…

Fun with helium balloons

Marc & Ericka Maternity Shoot BTS

As you can see from the slideshow in the previous post, the maternity shoot went great, see photos here. Of course, we had plenty of fun…as well as some bodily injury during the shoot.  Nensi was my assistant/stylist/prop carrier/voice activated light stand. 

 

Here’s the shenanigans…

 

A bike flash mob rode through our shoot…probably 100 bikes blasted through Balboa Park.

 

Here’s Nensi’s scrape from falling into a garden.

San Diego – Visiting Marc and Ericka

My good friend and old college roomate Marc and his wife are having a baby. Since its about as hot as the surface of the sun in San Angelo, and I haven’t been to San Diego in a couple years, I figured it would be a good time to do a Maternity shoot for them…and of course, they needed someone to document the baby shower. Have Camera(s) will Travel. I’m still in the process of finishing up the baby shower photos, but here’s a slideshow we made of the maternity photos. The song "Lia" is what their daughter is named after.

watch in HD if your connection supports it.