I did less work than I would have liked in 2013. Various factors led to this, but mostly I spent the year either chasing client work that never came through, planning & putting work into personal projects that have yet to be realised (ahem, the webcomic, mostly), or actually enjoying myself with extended family. There […]
I should really not have forgotten about my compact camera. Since I’ve been quite prolific on instagram over the past year I have been neglecting my other cameras. Sure, the Pentax SLR gets trotted out quite often, but mostly it’s the smartphone camera that’s been doing the day-to-day shooting. An extra piece of kit to […]
Dammit.
Less than 72 hours back in Dubai after a long and joy-filled trip to India, and I have already gone and impulse-shopped. And yes, it is my Kryptonite, a nicely-tailored off-the-rack suit. This is probably the most ‘normal’ jacket I’ve bought yet, and I convinced myself that it was because I might one day need to blend in with regular working folk (though under what frightful circumstances, I shudder to think).
Business attire, like most things, is all about the accessories, you will note.
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PS I’ve never taken one of these ‘self-portrait-in-mirror’ type shots. Not since I first got my camera, anyway. I feel like I should not have, being neither a celebrity nor nude in this photo. Oh well. Next time.
A very happy new year to you all! Let’s hope all the rumours about 2012 aren’t true, and if they turn out to be, let’s hope Bruce Willis or someone sufficiently Bruce Willisian will save us anyway.
Here in Dubai, meanwhile, we kicked things off with a mildly exploding building.
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I recently acquired a new old lens, a Pentax SFX-era F1.4 50mm autofocus from the 1980s. While it is a lens ideally suited for night photography, I recently had the chance to give it a whirl while out and about. Here are a few of the good photos I got.
The Index is one of my favourite buildings to look at in Dubai, and not only because a friend of mine lives there. This Foster & Partners building is perfect for the Dubai landscape, with its pleasingly retro angles and box grater shape, its use of textured materials. And yet it’s completely different to the chrome and glass towers that make up most of the city’s skyscrapers. Chief among them is the Burj Khalifa, tallest building in the world, of-late Tom Cruise’s personal dangling venue of choice. I’m fairly indifferent to its design, though I guess it could have been a lot worse.
Despite the modern image of the Emirates being a glass & chrome metropolis, drive a little out of the city and you’ll end up on a road that looks very much like this, no matter where you go…
…and once you get bored and decide to return to the cities, chances are you’ll end up in a traffic jam that looks very much like this, no matter where you go!
It’s a small concession that once every couple of years, when you do get stuck in a traffic jam you at least get to see some aerobatics. (Also, I really, really need to clean all the dust spots from my camera sensor.)
The lens, by the way, performs admirably, even shooting straight into the setting sun. You can’t see it at this size and treatment, but I can read the number plates on most of the traffic in this shot.
These last two shots further demonstrate how marvelous this lens has turned out to be. Both of them are shot through a very dirty window, with harsh corridor lights behind and above me casting all manner of reflections on the glass. The second one, in fact, was taken at a sharp glancing angle to the glass. It’s a wonder I managed to get anything at all!
Needless to say, I’m only scratching the surface of what this lens can do, and future experiments will follow.
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Last year when I went to India I enlisted the aid of a cousin who was coming in from the States to bring me a bunch of photo equipment — most of which I subsequently never used, except for the M42 mount adapter ring that allowed me to use my old 58mm manual F2 Zenit lens on my Pentax K200D digital SLR.
Because the Zenit has sat on my camera for the past six months (I love it!), I have not really given much thought to using the other lens I got, a 500mm mirror lens. Mirror lenses are odd beasts, behaving like reflector telescopes rather than straightforward lenses. The upshot is they’re a shorter size for more zoom, and give you odd donut shaped bokeh.
The downside is that this one, a Samyang 500mm F6.3, is heavy, super-sensitive to focus, and has a very steep learning curve. Also, since I live in Dubai I’ve been too afraid to take it out with me and try it, mostly because I don’t want someone to think I’m wielding some strange super-weapon and toss me in jail.
So, I basically haven’t touched the thing in ages, but thought I’d at least see what I could get around the house in 5 minutes.
I got, um, one.
Not that I was trying very hard, and oh man do my hands ever shake. Need to fix that. Deep breaths, cut down on coff–naw.
Truth be told, I bought this thing mostly for the donut bokeh, which I think looks quite pretty.
And here’s another shot of the beast, to close this post out.
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I took pictures of rocks, and also some buildy things. Then I messed around with them in the GIMP. It was fun.
(UPDATE: I took out two of the crappy ones with the bad gradient skies and replaced them with two slightly less crappy ones)
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Still trying to get the hang of the 58mm Zenit lens. Getting better, but need to clean a lot of dust out of it (as seen in the Burj Khalifa shot).
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At my local chai refuelling station, this cat — the calmest, cleanest little thing you’ve ever seen sitting on the edge of a garbage can.
Apparently, the best thing to do when photographing a shiny new city like Dubai is to do it with an old 1970s Zenit lens…
Since I’ve been doing little else, I thought I might as well put up some photos.
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Of late I’ve been trying to take more photos of the country I live in. After 12 years of living here, and coming from a place like India that is infinitely more visually chaotic, it becomes a bit of an effort to keep boredom from setting in. I can’t say I’m taking better photos here now than perhaps I ever did, and I still yearn for a place that isn’t just desert and buildings and malls, but I’m trying.
Recently I finally looked into this whole
They’re all a bit over the top — nobody said Indians were subtle and I am, in that regard at least, 100% desi — but I do like the strangeness the techniques bring to otherwise bland, brown and grey photos of the UAE. Here’s six more examples.
(Okay, I lied in the title — this one above is actually in Sharjah)
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