DECEPTICONS!!!

Set out today with old McClancy friends just expecting to go see the mediocre Transformers sequel (which we did, and it was worse than mediocre; it was downright crappy), but came out of it with some nice post-rain amazing sky pictures, with brand new subject VINNY!

Vincent is amazingly photogenic, despite being real shy around the camera and generally poo-pooing his looks.

Damon was there too, sporting the shirt emblazoned with the phrase that he can't help but say at least 30 times a goddamn day (don't think I don't keep a running tally Damon).

I'm gonna hijack this post a little to say just how horrible Transformers 2 was. There were no human characters in this movie worth a damn or with any kind of personality. I wouldn't mind this in an action movie usually, but it tries so damn hard to get me to feel something for these people, but it just fails. The movie is filled with so much destructive shit going on around the main characters that they constantly escape from unscathed that they almost lose any kind of mortality. HUGE Main-Character Invincibility problems.

I will say that Jetfire was goddamn awesome, and that all the scenes involving him were amazing. A crotchety old Decepticon turncoat talking about his ancestors ('My grandfather was a wheel! And do you know what he turned into?! NOTHING!') who walks with a cane and has a beard made out of metal? I'm there. More Jetfire please.

Aaaaaaanyway, enough of that. After we got out of the theatre and the torrential rain stopped, we went to Astoria Park for some crosslighting fun with the setting sun. Mike was there too, but he was off in the bear-infested forest at Astoria Park taking some more landscape shots.

I have never seen a sky like this. It was freakin' amazing and an excellent background for a nice low shot of Vinny to end the night.

Secret Squirrel Spotted!

This squirrel was poking around some trash near the fancy restaurant near Astoria Park, nibbling on a little bit of pizza crust. He was so awesome. There was also a toothy homeless guy watching me take the pictures who gave me a real creepy smile, but I didn't get a picture of him.

The squirrel skittered off shortly after I took this shot, I'm guessing to a small hole or hide-away where he keeps his things. His pizza crusts, his apple cores, his tree nuts, his acorn cup that his squirrel wife uses to collect honeydew as a restorative aperitif each morning for him.

His wife loves him, but questions if he is really out collecting food all day or if he is off cavorting with loose rodents. She has her doubts.

Kung Fu Master

Above is the Black Belt Awesome Ninja Assassin, Damon Smallwood. He's amazing, even besides being able to do an amazing looking flying kick. We were shooting around the apartments near Astoria Park, and we eventually went from pretty standard portraits to kung fu moves and going to get Darth Vader helmets and light sabers.

Mike was there too, playing around with his new 3.0 ND filter taking long exposure landscape shots of the bridge. From what I could see in his viewfinder they were coming out really awesome. I snuck a couple good shots of Mike with his camera in throughout the day.

Here is Mike looking like Russel Brand. Oi mate!

Also, heres a cat!

Two Out of Six Cats

Terra is the oldest of our six cats. We got her along with her sister Gem (who is a bit harder to photograph, but will be at some point) from a shelter when I was about 9, which makes them about ten years old now. Shes huge, as well. Like absolutely massive. Gigantic. We originaly named her after a Final Fantasy character, but over the years shes come more and more to resemble her Latin root: earth.

Shes really lovely though. Like part of the family.

Artifacts From the Past: BOOBIES!!

Was going through my old stuff from High School today, reminiscing. One of my friends from McClancy, TJ, was the kind of guy who would tie your shoe-laces to your backpack when you weren't looking so that when you got up to go to the bathroom you tripped on the huge weight. He would also steal my calculator for a whole period and always do... something to it. One of these periods he used whiteout to write the above message on the back of the case; we both laughed about it and I decided to leave it.

I find the calculator now, and when I turn it on, I find it filled with the sum '5138008', which confused me for a long while. Once I turned it upside down though, I found another of TJ's many pranks and couldn't help but making it the photo for the day.

Mike and Cup

I quite like how this one turned out. I was just playing around with a setup at Mike's house while he read through a photo mag (read: naked lady pictures). I'm surprised at the range in shadows here, just created by simply getting the flash off the camera and fiddling around with exposures for a bit. Not a terribly exciting or different portrait, but interesting nontheless.

Oh, and uh.. I've got a cup!

Trigger Happy!

I got my Cactus V4 triggers today (along with all the other stuff in the Midwest Photo Exchange Strobist kit)!

Above is Kuchka lit with a snooted Nikon SB-80Dx, really tight on her face. Most of the difficulty in taking pictures of cats is that they jump around a whole lot. There's a reason it's DSC_181: there are about 200 other pictures where shes looking away or completely out of the (about one foot wide) beam of light. After a lot of aiming and repositioning, there were about 4 or 5 good shots!

Flash in the Pan

This was the best shot out of my first time using my new Nikon SB-80dx. Mike and I were playing around with it at his house, and I was taking the standard flat shoe-mounted flash pictures (no way to trigger the flash off-camera besides the optical trigger, atm). Bouncing off of his spackle textured dark green walls wasn't really effective and made for some really sickly looking light.

The only really reflective thing in his room was a big wall mirror, which I used for the above shot. I set him in front of it and bounced the flash really up close to his face. This made the light larger to him, leaving some nice soft shadow areas on his face.

Bikes..

Loved the way the 3-4pm sun was hitting this motorcycle from different angles and how different parts reacted to it. Shiny chrome on the telemetry bounced clear reflections back. Metal on the engine had a more matte, blurry feel.

This shot of the bike's wheel hub had a really cool industrial gritty abstract feel to it.

(Under) Street Photos

I really like shooting random bits and pieces of street art around the city, whether they're intentional or not. This shot was taken on the way to St. John's University. Train stations are always great places to find social commentary graffiti. Stupid advertisements get marked up, bare walls become platforms for anonymous people to speak their mind.