f/8 and be there Category Archive



Monday, 01 March
no art without

I remember reading somewhere about a school of philosophical thought which holds that there can be no art without the resistance of the medium -- that the art is in the difficulty the artist overcomes when trying to make the medium express his or her message.

I don't know that I buy the idea, but I do notice that my cell phone camera doesn't have a very broad color or contrast palette, so it tends to blow out highlights and lose shadow detail -- and that I'm starting to recognize opportunities to exploit those weaknesses:



treeshadow.jpg



I'm not sure I like being trained to a particular visual style like that, though. I picked up a camera in the first place in order to see differently, and I've been very pleased with the change in my world that this practice has rendered. I don't think I want to put blinders on it.




Saturday, 02 January
turn, turn yadda yadda

Quite a difference two months makes (no, I didn't photoshop the colours!):



bvrtntcwinter.jpg



beavertontransitcenter.JPG




Monday, 19 October
no' bad for a cameraphone

From my flash new company phone:


beavertontransitcenter.JPG



downtown.jpg


The top image is from my commute to work in the morning, at Beaverton Transit Center where I missed my connection by (quite literally) seconds and had to wait half an hour for the next bus. The bottom image is from my commute home in the evening, at SW 9th and Yamhill where I had ten minutes to wait for my train. I took a neat little video too, soundtrack courtesy of a busker with a violin, but it's too big for snapfish and my phone is locked-in to Microsoft-related email services so I haven't figured out how to upload it yet.



Monday, 29 June
ARTifacts II: everything is pretty if you look close enough

When you count cells, you often mix them with a dilute solution of a dye which is excluded by living cells but can cross the membrane of dead cells -- this allows you to count viable and dead cells separately. Probably the most common dye for the purpose (at least, the only one I've ever used) is Trypan blue, which is a very pretty blue color.

Everyone has their own ways of adding the dye; I tend to recycle the lid of a discarded culture dish as a mixing surface, pipetting 10 µl of 2X Trypan blue in buffered salt solution onto the lid and then mixing with 10 µl of cell suspension. Since the cell counter only takes 10 µl, that leaves half of each mixture drying in spots all over the lid as I count my way through my cultures.

One day I decided to take some photomicrographs of the resulting patterns. The crystals are salts; I think the dye tends to dry into blobs rather than crystallizing. The round things that look like alien eggs in images 2 and 3 are what was left behind by air bubbles.




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Monday, 29 June
ARTifacts I: lightning autoradiograph

I was reminded today, by Björn's post about modern art, of something I've been meaning to post for a long time. I'm hardly the first person to notice that the products and by-products of scientific experiments can be very pretty, and I find that often the story and the science behind the object or image gives it an extra dimension. For instance this:


zap2.jpg



is electrostatic discharge, captured on x-ray film -- static electricity that really is static.

It's an artifact caused by wrapping developed chemiluminescent western blots in cling wrap prior to exposing them -- you have to wrap the blots so as not to wet the film, but it can create static discharges which fan out across your results when you peel the blots away from the film in order to develop it. This is one that was well away from my data, so I scanned it just for itself.

I'm sure I could string together 500 words of postmodern bullshit about the fact that this picture was the accidental result of a real experiment, a (literal) spark thrown from the anvil on which knowledge was being forged... all I need now is an agent with contacts in the art world and a bunch of people with more money than sense.

Update 090709:
Ha! I'm in good company, apart from my snotty remarks about the art world of course -- about half way through this story, modern master Hiroshi Sugimoto talks about pictures he made in the darkroom without a camera, using static electricity. And yes, they look a lot like my autorads!



Wednesday, 18 March
new neighbourhood at night

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Wednesday, 18 March
bird on a wire




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Being unemployed is not all bad. I like having time to make pictures.



Saturday, 19 April
Everyone needs a hobby.

Mine, when I have time for it, is photography. I'll still post some photos, like the mouse below, to this blog; but now I have a separate blog for those images I would (if I weren't worried about sounding like a complete wanker) call "my art". The link is at the top of the new column at left, where I'll manually add thumbnails from that blog. It's at Expressions.com, because I haven't the time to make exactly what I want and of all the photoblogging services I tried, only Expressions gave me enough control over the format to make it (nearly) as simple as I wanted.

So. Fwiw, there it is. Hat tip, again, to Andrew and Ralf.



Thursday, 27 March
athymic mouse



athymicmouse.JPG





Thursday, 15 March
Essence of mouse.
DNA.JPG

In case anyone was wondering, this is the sort of thing I do all day. That cotton-candy-looking stuff is mouse genomic DNA, about 600 micrograms of it, harvested from a tumor caused (we're trying to find out how) by deletion of the MNT gene in T cells. I was going to try to say something profound, but the little DNA monster (the "eyes" are air bubbles trapped when the DNA came out of solution) rather deflated my pomposity.



Monday, 27 November
for Ralf



leaves.JPG







Friday, 27 October
Impression, Sunrise



soleil.jpg







Wednesday, 03 May
camelia, tulips

I have the dreaded lurgy. It's not the Martian Death Flu, but it's not much fun either and my brain feels like it's packed in cotton wool, so in lieu of real content here is some flower porn:


cameliaC.jpg


tulip1.jpg


tulip2.jpg






Tuesday, 04 April
Daffodil, Woodstock neighborhood, Portland
daffodil_small.jpg

When I lived in Brisbane, daylillies were the harbingers of Spring; here in Portland, it's daffodils. Also cherry trees, tulips, magnolias, camelias, pansies and several flowers I don't yet know the names of. Portland is a good place to live if you like flowers. (Or if you don't.)

This is an old trick, but I never tire of it. What you do is shoot a pale flower against a dark background (the foliage will usually do), and expose for the highlights or even one stop over. Then simply process the print or digital negative so that the background is black.



Wednesday, 15 March
Dying roses, Columbia cemetary.



roses.jpg






Monday, 24 October
kitty in the window

kittywindow.jpg

That is a photo, but it's a photo of the shadow KC cast as she sat in the front window. I didn't have time to grab the tripod so it was underexposed, hence the noise from altering levels and sharpening in PhotoShop. I'd prefer it sharp, I think, but I like it well enough this way.



Saturday, 05 February
Ursus maritimus at the Oregon Zoo

polar bear, Oregon Zoo


polar bear, Oregon Zoo


polar bear, Oregon Zoo

f/8 and be there, kritters | sennoma | 05 Feb, 2005 | | [Trackbacks](0)


Tuesday, 01 February
vacant lot, SW 1st and Ash

wall at the end of a vacant lot



Tuesday, 18 January
thirteen four ways of looking at a blackbird table and some chairs (OHSU)

table and chairs, OHSU

table and chairs, OHSU

table and chairs, OHSU

table and chairs, OHSU


Although I only ended up with four I like, I made more than sixty images of this lunch area where I work. I like the top image best, and it's the closest to what I had in mind when I started.

f/8 and be there | sennoma | 18 Jan, 2005 | | [Trackbacks](0)


Wednesday, 22 December
gas station, SE 39th and Belmont

arco-sm.jpg



Wednesday, 22 December
lotus, bonsai; pdx classical chinese gardens

lotus.jpg



bonsai.jpg

f/8 and be there | sennoma | 22 Dec, 2004 | | [Trackbacks](0)


Wednesday, 22 December
door, union station

door1.jpg

I have something of an obsession with sunlight.

f/8 and be there | sennoma | 22 Dec, 2004 | | [Trackbacks](0)


Wednesday, 22 December
bus stop, OHSU library

busstop.jpg

I'm often bored waiting for the bus.

f/8 and be there | sennoma | 22 Dec, 2004 | | [Trackbacks](0)


Friday, 17 December
leaving work early

hallway.jpg

It's usually dark when I leave work, so I made much of this sunlight.



Friday, 10 December
hello world

me_color.jpg

I'll probably continue to post self-portraits every now and then; it'll be interesting to watch me age. Interesting to me, I mean. What, you thought I did this for other people to read?



Friday, 10 December
208 NW 5th Avenue

number208.jpg



Monday, 15 November
you always loved this time of year

leaves.jpg

(Five brownie points to the first commenter to explain the title.)



Wednesday, 06 October
sunlight on a wall

sunlight.jpg

Edward Hopper once said that all he ever really wanted to paint was sunlight on a wall, a comment that affected me powerfully when I first read it and has remained with me ever since. I think of it often, particularly when I see something simple and beautiful. This is sunlight in the corridor at work.

f/8 and be there | sennoma | 06 Oct, 2004 | |


Sunday, 05 September
nothing says boredom like pictures of a bike rack...

bikerack.jpg

f/8 and be there | sennoma | 05 Sep, 2004 | |


Sunday, 29 August
amanda and miss noshoulders

amanda and miss noshoulders

amanda and miss noshoulders

amanda and miss noshoulders

amanda and miss noshoulders


(Amanda: the unaltered originals of those shots, and a couple of others, are here. Apart from cropping and resizing, the only things I did to the smaller versions above was sharpened them slightly and altered the levels a little. If you don't have the requisite software I'll be happy to make whatever alterations you want to the larger versions.)

f/8 and be there | sennoma | 29 Aug, 2004 | |


Saturday, 28 August
portland light

pdxlightbw.jpg



Saturday, 14 August
oregon coast f10w3r pr0n

canna lilly
flower closeup
flower closeup



Saturday, 14 August
oregon coast snapshots

oregon coast panorama
oregon beach panorama
oregon beach panorama
oregon beach panorama

f/8 and be there | sennoma | 14 Aug, 2004 | |


Sunday, 25 July
lamp, King's Cross, Sydney

lampshadow.jpg

lampshadow2.jpg

Phooey. The full image is too busy, even after I deliberately lost a lot of shadow detail, but the cropped version is oddly proportioned and spoiled by that burned-out area on the wall.



Sunday, 18 July
aging daisies, phalaenopsis; Brisbane

daisies.jpg

orchid.jpg



Monday, 12 July
sunflower, gazania; the oregon garden

sunflower.jpg

gazania.jpg

(The top image is a humongous file because I wanted to avoid compression artefacts; don't look too closely at the gazania either!)



Monday, 05 July
opera house, sydney

operahouse.jpg



Monday, 05 July
doorway, king's cross, sydney

doorway.jpg

f/8 and be there | sennoma | 05 Jul, 2004 | |


Saturday, 03 July
crystal springs lake, portland

crystalsprings.jpg



Saturday, 03 July
mapplethorpe wannabe

lily.jpg

f/8 and be there | sennoma | 03 Jul, 2004 | |


Saturday, 03 July
nw irving street, portland

street.jpg

f/8 and be there | sennoma | 03 Jul, 2004 | |


Saturday, 03 July
glassblower, oregon coast

glassblower.jpg

f/8 and be there | sennoma | 03 Jul, 2004 | |


Saturday, 03 July
seagulls, oregon coast

gulls.jpg



Saturday, 03 July
koi pond, pdx classical chinese gardens

lilies.jpg

f/8 and be there | sennoma | 03 Jul, 2004 | |


Saturday, 10 January
light fitting with icicles

light fitting with icicles


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