Gone surfing

Here's the video from this Saturday. I'm so new at video that I'm learning as I go along, every step of the way.

The surfer

Nejc started surfing a few years ago, about the time I started climbing. Since I started playing around with video, we've been talking about making a short video of surfing - and today we finally got around to it. We left early, since the wind was supposed to be the best in the morning. It was a cold and relatively gray day, the light was definitely not the best for photography, especially in the end, when this was taken. The water was quite warm and Nejc wasn't cold at all, while I was freezing on the beach.

I spent most of the time shooting video, but I took a few stills (photographs), around twenty in all, with this being the best. The video will come later, I'll need much more time to edit it all.

Self portrait - the photographer

These self-portraits are surprisingly fun to do - the first one I did was the reader, the second was a reader of caves. On one hand they are quite easy, since the model has quite a bit of patience and understands where to stand and what to do. But being ones own model has its drawbacks, since, well, I have to do everything.

The most interesting part though is the journey from idea to final image. I saw a photo almost exactly like this in my head, though as with most art, once I started working on it, it started to change (however slightly). The end result isn't exactly what I had in mind, but it's interesting in its own right - I'm very happy with it.

For the shot I setup my camera on a tripod, and I had an external flash back and to the side, sitting on a shelf (I would have put it on a second tripod, but I didn't have it with me). I had to use the timer on the camera to trigger the shot, and the exposure (all of the settings on the camera and the flash) started out with guess work, but after three or four shots I figured it out (interesting how with time one gets a feeling for the camera and can predict what will come out). The focus was set by the scale on the lens, though this was easier since the lens was very wide and the aperture closed, both of which lead to a very wide depth of field (that is, pretty much everything is sharp). Then all I had to do was fire off tons of shots, positioning myself in as best a position as I could each time.

Corner of Leavenworth and Lombard

To many people, these two street names don't mean a thing and this is just another pretty picture. But Lombard Street in San Francisco is known one of the crookedest streets in the world - though the crooked part is just one block which runs down a hill with a grade of 27%. The block itself starts at Leavenworth and heads up to Hyde Street, and most photographs of Lombard Street are taken at the corner where Lombard Street intersects Leavenworth.

Hemi beast

I spotted this Dodge Ram 1500 (with a Hemi engine, no less) in San Francisco recently. For anyone from the US, this is obviously nothing special, but coming from Europe, we very rarely see a full-size pick-up such as this one.

Windy

Taken on top of London's Monument this spring. Gregor and I visited his sister for the weekend, and we did all of the usual touristy things one does when in London.