Lunar Bovine - Jason Cobill's Weblog » Photography

Whiter Shade of Pale

jcobill — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:52:20 +0000

Snapped a picture looking out over the experimental farm through this morning’s rolling fog. Those are trees and a little shed. No horizon line, though – just white meeting white.

Space Vortex

jcobill — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:16:40 +0000

I’m building a slide-photography rig to be able to quickly capture a bunch of old family photos, but didn’t expect the inside of a PVC pipe to be so shiny. So my first few attempts produced some really fun swirly distortions that I thought were neat.

A good friend lent me his slide scanner, which does an awesome job, but takes like two minutes per frame to scan them in – if I’m going to go through a box of a few hundred, I need something a bit faster. Turns out a digital camera set to macro and shot through a dark tube (lined with not-shiny black construction paper) can get pretty decent images! I’ll take a photo of my rig once I have it all figured out.

Need a Wider Blog

jcobill — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:00:35 +0000

Caught some deer out by the airport as we drove out to pick up Mom from work – and got a great panorama of Winnipeg while I was at it. Sorry if I’m reinforcing stereotypes – it’s not all fields, airports and grain elevators.

Luminous Shapes

jcobill — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 04:27:42 +0000

I snapped some pictures of will’o'the’wisps tonight out in the rain.

Sunflower

jcobill — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 14:30:53 +0000

I couldn’t resist hopping off the bus at the Experimental Farm to snap a real-life example of a phyllotactic spiral. Then I missed the next bus, chasing bees around with my camera. I still managed to make it to work on time!

Pictory’s Freaky Foods

jcobill — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 20:29:24 +0000

I’ve been a big fan of “Pictory” since it started, a cool website full of interesting photos and stories loosely gathered around their theme of the month. Their topic this go-around is hard to stomach, though – literally. “Eat at Your Own Risk” presents a number of creatures I didn’t know existed (including the totally alien ‘Pissing Shrimp’). I don’t want to even know if they’re edible. Why would you put it in your mouth? It’s just not right!

Prepare to be astonished!

Ugly Ducks

jcobill — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 23:41:21 +0000

Along the Rideau River just behind Carleton University, by the south point of Vincent Massey Park, you can often spot a pair of hideous deformed ducks swimming about. Life is cruel – they would have made a handsome set of swans.

Hog’s Back Chipmunk

jcobill — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 23:35:11 +0000

This little guy jumped out at us at Hog’s Back Park and begged to have his picture taken.

Planespotting

jcobill — Mon, 02 May 2011 02:38:42 +0000

Periodically (I think wind direction is the primary factor?) the Ottawa airport routes all the incoming air traffic directly over our house. Because they’re coming down not far from here, most of them fly over with their gear down, well within waving altitude. I don’t mind the bit of noise they make – planes are neat and I like watching them fly over.

I used to visit my aunt and uncle who lived at the air force base in Trenton, and when the Hercules planes would fly in at night they’d light up the entire neighbourhood and shake all the walls, even in the basement. The first time one flew over I thought it was the apocalypse.

Cinemagraphs

jcobill — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:43:25 +0000

A friend posted a link to a trendy new thing to do on flickr - “The future of photography!” – an invention called the Cinemagraph. Here’s two of the better, more subtle ones from photographer Kevin Burg. They’re sortof like the photos in Harry Potter’s world.

Calling them a fancy name is disingenuous really, they’re just sparingly animated gifs (which have been around since the 90’s), but there’s a lot of cleverness going into deciding which parts to freeze and how the animation is going to play out. Some of them -really- work, some of them are just absurd.

I guess I know what I’m playing with tonight. Meanwhile, check out Kert’s awesome cinemagraph of window washers on the TD building on Portage and Main.