The tops of things I saw on my walk
If the woods are brown, look up.
In the dead of winter, it seems I often don’t get many opportunities to go to places to photograph. So I walk near my house. I’m fortunate to live on a private road surrounded by woods and wetlands, so there’s plenty to look at.
The dead of winter also means there’s not a lot of color in the woods, so I’m forced to be creative. The last couple of days, I pointed my camera up and took photos of the tops of trees, plants, and poles. That sounds vaguely motivational and should probably be on a t-shirt: “if the woods are brown, look up.”
A photo a day keeps the lazy away
I’m doing a 365 and so should you.
In the year 2020, I decided to take one photo per day, using the same camera + lens combination and posting the JPG as generated by the camera, with no editing. It was a great experiment that forced me to get creative and actually shoot on a daily basis.
15/365 - iPhone 14 Pro
I’ve since learned that this is called “a 365” and lots of people do it. Including me, again, this year. This year I’m throwing out the rule book—except that the photo must be taken on the specific day of the year that I’m posting it. I can use any camera or lens, and I can edit as much as I care to.
17/365 - Fujifilm X-T5 with 16-55mm f2.8
Allowing myself this leeway has made me enjoy the process quite a bit more. If I opt for the laziest option (iPhone camera), I know I’m in for an editing headache to get the image to a standard I’m happy with. The same goes for drone or action cam photos. This makes me find more opportunities to go for a walk with a “real” camera.
12/365 - iPhone 14 Pro
I’m posting these on my Glass profile, so grab a not-free-but-cheap account and follow along! And shoot me a comment so I can follow you.
2/365 - DJI Mini 3 Pro
1/365 - Fujifilm X-T5 with TTArtisans 50mm f1.2
An icy river from the air
I guess you could say I’m a pilot now.
Besides farting around in my yard, this was my first real shoot with my DJI Mini 3 Pro. In general, I’m pretty pleased with the results from this flying camera.
Though this camera can shoot 48 megapixel RAW files, it inexplicably won’t exposure bracket in that mode. And I’ve learned—albeit, after this shoot—that I get quite a bit better end results if I bracket all the things. So now I shoot 12 mp with 5 bracketed exposures.
That said, I’m pretty happy with the photos I got that day, bracketing or not. The snowy, misty conditions did not hurt at all.
Yard plants on a foggy day
Boring is beautiful. To me.
The weather is weird. Freezing and snowy one day, melted and warm the next. But the fog gives everything a pleasant mood, at least if you're Scottish or insane. So I grabbed the camera and spent 12 minutes in the yard trying to get semi-sharp images with that TTArtisans lens wide open. And yeah. I think I like some of these.
Wandering Damariscotta
Snow, shops, cars, and water.
I'm really starting to develop a fondness for small town “street” photography. Towns with plenty of natural elements. Seaside harbor towns. Woodland villages. That sorta thing.
This is a set I took wandering the main drag in Damariscotta, Maine while the snow was falling.
A snowy Scotch run in Freeport
Cold and distilled.
Since I abhor outlet shopping (except Toad & Co., that's a pretty good store), a visit to Freeport, Maine, for my family often involves parking somewhere central and me walking to Bow Street Market for some craft beer or scotch whisky. Last evening, that meant a walk in fresh snow. I grabbed the X100F out of my bag and took some shots in the dark.
The scotch shopping part of my excursion was a also success. I finally found a bottle of the Lagavulin Offerman 11. There was only one left, so I grabbed it. Then I felt bad and offered it to the other gentleman in the aisle. Fortunately, he wasn’t interested. Later, he passed me on the sidewalk as I was trying to get some blurred cars in a photo and unwittingly became my next photo’s subject. This successful outing is dedicated to that anonymous fellow scotch lover.
A walk on January 4, 2023
The TTArtisans 50mm f1.2 delivers!
I went on a quick walk down the road to get the mail, with my Fujifilm X-T5 equipped with the TTArtisans 50mm f1.2. I picked this lens up used from B&H ($80 USD!) as an add-on to some other order. And I LOVE it.
I used to avoid manual focus lenses because I just couldnt be bothered to take the extra time (I sold my Helios 44-2, sad face). Lately, though, I prefer slowing down and embracing the process.
I will say that it is exceedingly difficult to nail focus at f1.2 on a close up subject (see water droplets below). Even with Fujifilm’s focus assistance tools, I had difficult getting a super sharp focus point. Part of the problem is that the lens is simply not sharp anywhere but the very center at f1.2. That said, I loved shooting middle range subjects (like the bush with the house in the background) wide open. The effect is otherworldly.
Overall, I’m very pleased with the results. For close-up subjects with this lens, I’ll probably stick to f2 or smaller in the future. But I love the effect the huge aperture and weird swirling gives those medium range nature shots.
Quarantine inspiration, part 2
Lemonade out of lemons?
While trapped for 2 weeks in quarantine, I got inspired to refocus on photography. Here are some photos from that time.
I’ve divided these images by camera. If you read Part 1, you’ll know that I succumbed to impulse purchases, almost entirely related to photography gear. One of those was the Fujifilm GFX 50s ii, which I nicknamed “my sweet chonky boi.” But I’ll make you scroll through the others before you get to my read thoughts on that.
Fujifilm X100F
I owned the X100T a long time ago, and upgraded to the X100F five (!) years ago. After using it for a bit, I gave it to my teenage son who was showing some interest in photography at the time. Big mistake. It gathered dust for a few years, but I recently got it back.
What they say about X100-series images is true. There’s a special… something to the photos they produce. And yes, of course the X100V looks even better. But the way I’m shooting lately doesn’t warrant the upgrade (and I refuse to pay scalper prices).
Fujifilm X-T2
This camera, usually with the 23mm f1.4 lens, has been my go-to for several years. I did a photo-a-day project with that combo in 2020, and have taken some of my favorite travel photos with it. My original interchangeable lens camera on the Fujifilm platform was the X-T20. This X-T2 replaced that, but I recommend either series, mostly depending on budget and whether you need the extra video features in the flagship series (I don’t, but here we are).
Oh, and I just kept the 100-400mm on this camera, so quarantine photo opportunities in a small bedroom were, um, limited.
Fujifilm X-T5
I preordered the X-T5 when it was announced, but hadn’t had much of a chance to get out with it before catching the ’vids. Unfortunately, I’d sold a couple lenses (including my beloved 23mm f1.4, since I’d recovered my X100F and didn’t need to double up the focal length) to help cover the cost of the X-T5, so I was left with the 10-24mm as my only reasonable walking around lens. Not a bad lens, and that ~23mm long end is my jam, but the f4 maximum aperture is challenging indoors.
Fortunately, with the return and refund of my sweet, sweet baby chonky boiii I was able to get some other lenses. More on those in future posts.
Fujifilm GFX 50s ii
I absolutely fell in love with the images the GFX 50s ii produced. This is a clunky camera if you’re used to the X series. But it works. It works very well.
I found that shooting with the camera forces a certain amount of consideration (if for no other reason than those file sizes will murder whatever storage solution you think you’ve got). The auto-focus is perfectly fine, no matter what every single review feels the need to point out about the technicalities of contrast vs phase detect. We’re so damned spoiled, we have to find something to criticize, I guess.
There’s just so much detail. You can crop an image however you like. You can recover any highlights or shadows. There’s no banding in bright→dark gradient areas. Even with the effectively-$500 35-70mm kit lens, there’s just nothing wrong with the photos. It’s the tool you buy when you’re tired of the tool limiting what you can do.
Unfortunately, you can buy a heap of gear for the cost of this camera with the kit lens. And it’d be a while before I could afford to improve my G mount lens collection. So it’s back in B&H’s loving arms. For now.
Quarantine inspiration, part 1
Some time to rethink my hobbies.
I finally¹ caught the Covid, the day before Thanksgiving, and have been confined to my bedroom (I live with between 5 and 7 other people) ever since. After an initial pity party, I decided to embrace the extra time to think.
(I did spend a lot of time watching YouTube, browsing the internet, reading. I made some impulse purchases online. More YouTube. Ate some soup. But mostly the thinking part.)
The line of thought that kept coming back was whether my pursuits outside of work are really what I want to be doing with my time. Do I really want to write about an engineering career and frontend development on my own time? There’s certainly pressure to be seen as an expert, especially when chasing promotions or considering a job change.
But my work speaks for itself. I continue to learn, continue to help those I work with, continue to do a great job with each project I take on. There are plenty of other engineers who enjoy writing about the finer points of what they do. I’ll let them.
The thing I love to do that I may have an undeveloped (rimshot) knack for is photography. I’m an amateur—or as I think I’ll put it from now on, a hobbyist—who has languished lately. After I left Instagram (because, I mean, come on, it sucks really bad), I started losing motivation.
I didn’t go out on top. I’d barely begun to develop (rimshot) any skills whatsoever. But I want that to change.
So this is my new site. It carries over the name of my old blog, Unsure, but I think it’s even more appropriate here because I’m only mildly familiar with all that’s involved in taking world class images. I want to push myself to learn more. And I would much rather share what I learn about photography than about React.
You won’t find my previous blog anywhere², and I’ve taken down my lame attempt at a newsletter. My leisure focus (rimshot) outside of work is (back?) on photography. This blog and a (coming soon) YouTube channel will be all there is to it. Oh, and obviously my Glass profile.
I made a logo and put it on a hat (see: impulse purchases). This is what middle aged male YouTubers do, presumably because of the hair loss. I’m not saying that’s why I’ll be wearing that hat anytime you see me on Unsure.
I would love it if you check back once in a while, or subscribe via RSS. The domain’s pretty easy to remember, but if you’re unsure, me³ will remind you.
In part 2, we’ll get to actual photos.
Footnotes
And strangely, given how careful I am. We’re still not sure where I could’ve been exposed, especially since everyone else in my house seems to have dodged it.
It takes some hubris to archive a personal blog somewhere and I just didn’t feel like it. To what end?
I had to go with “me” there to make the URL happen in a sentence. I’m very sorry.