Lunch shots

I was at Starbucks with some friends at lunch.  I shot these on the way from the cafe’ to my car.  Guerilla shooting.

Fernando, one of the guys from lunch.

A plant in the parking lot.

The car parked next to me.

Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Photography No Comments » May 2008

From the Archives

While looking through some old pictures I found this one from 2005.  This was shot just a few miles from my house.  I sort of liked it and thought I’d share.

Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Photography No Comments » May 2008

Mirror Image

While walking through Ikea yesterday I saw a huge wall sized photo that looked strangely familiar.  For a few minutes I thought that the photo was mine (purchased as stock), but it turned out to be the work of another photographer.  I dug through my photo archive and found my photo from 2005.  I’ve posted both photos below.  Freaky.

My photo from 2005.

The photo on the wall at Ikea.

Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Photography, Useful Info No Comments » May 2008

Light Leaks Magazine

Light Leaks magazine is all about the low-fi. Our readers love unusual cameras—plastic toy cameras, crappy cameras, pinhole cameras, “technologically challenged” cameras. Light Leaks showcases these cameras, the photographers behind them and the photos created with them.

Light Leaks Magazine.

Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Photography No Comments » February 2008

Mexican Food! Yum!

Yesterday Craig and I ran up to Photomark to buy a few things.  While we were there I was able to play around with the Leica M8.  Wow, what a sweet little camera.  I’m just $8,000 away from owning my own.

After hanging out at Photomark we decided to drive in to Phoenix for some good Mexican food.  We found a place on the NE corner of 16^th Street and McDowell called Hacienda Mexican Food.  We knew it was going to be great when we realized nobody spoke any English.

Craig excited about our Mexican food find.

While we were in the restaurant I decided to play around with my wide angle lens.  We shot a few pics while we ate.

Craig waiting for his food.

A view inside the restaurant.

The food finally arrived and it was tasty!  The salsa was great and they gave us little bowls of alphabet soup as an appetizer.  The soup had been “souped up” a bit and was also pretty good.  We had 2 bowls each.

I loved the fact that our drinks came in glass bottles.  They were cold and delicious.  I can’t wait to go back!

Delicious alphabet soup.

Big Head Mark eating some soup.  I love the distortion of the wide angle lens.

 

Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Photography, Random Stuff No Comments » February 2008

Teleprompter?

Yesterday Diane and I were at the studio recording a new episode of Digital Photography 1 on 1.  This episode is heavy on math and technical data and I knew it was going to be rough trying to get through the script.  But then I remembered a little video I saw on YouTube about a low cost teleprompter solution.  Here’s the video:

We didn’t have a mirror so I came up with a different solution.  We hooked up our laptop to our video projector and then set up a softbox just under the video camera.  The softbox acted like a video screen and the setup worked pretty well.  Diane controlled the teleprompter while I read from the script.

Unfortunately I set up the video camera incorrectly so the footage is no good.  We’ll have to re-shoot the video soon.  I think I’m going to build a better teleprompter though because this rough setup really helped out.  I’ll post images and plans when I create my new system.

Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Photography, Random Stuff No Comments » February 2008

History of Photography Podcasts

I discovered an amazing resource for photographers today.  Jeff Curto from College of DuPage is making his class lectures available via a podcast.  Here’s more info from his site.

The Podcast
This podcast is recorded during class lectures for History of Photography, Photo 1105 at College of DuPage. The podcasts are intended as review for students in the class, but thousands of people around the world have found them useful to their education as photographers. Please be aware that there are many links to relevant class information on the class’ main web page, as well as a course syllabus - use the links to the right to find that information.

Listening, Watching & Subscribing
You can  listen to and watch the podcasts from these pages or you can subscribe to them using a podcast reader. The most popular podcast reader is Apple’s iTunes. If you subscribe using this link, each time there is a new class session posted on the internet, the software will automatically download it to your computer.

Enhanced Podcasts
The podcasts are presented in what’s called the “enhanced” podcast format. This means that they are embedded with still images that change along with the audio, sort of like an old filmstrip or synchronized slide show, but better because they have random access to the entire class. They can be viewed on a computer (using QuickTime or Apple’s iTunes software, both free to download and use) or they can be viewed on any video-capable iPod. The files are .m4a files, so they need QuickTime to view them, or an iPod that can show video.

Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Photography No Comments » February 2008

Looking out the window

I flew up to Portland, OR this morning.  Here’s a shot I took from the window using my trusty iPhone.  I plan to head to Powell’s tonight and maybe even do some street photography.

Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Photography, Travel, iPhone No Comments » January 2008

MS Pro Photo Shoot

Cool new stuff from Microsoft.

Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot is a new software add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook that allows photographers to add details of the client and equipment for a photo shoot appointment in Outlook. This allows photographers to greater leverage the power of Outlook when managing their photography.

http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/prophotoshoot.aspx

Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Photography No Comments » January 2008

iPhone vs 1D Mark III

Today I challenged my friend Craig to a friendly duel.  He had his new 1D Mark III and was telling me that there wasn’t much to shoot.  I told him there’s always something to shoot and told him to grab his camera.  We walked outside to a dreary drainage area and I proposed the challenge: 5 minutes in the pile of rocks, my iPhone vs. his fancy camera, may the best man win.

The scene of the photo challenge, just a pile of rocks in a parking lot.

As we shot I encouraged Craig to look for pattern (that’s easy in a pile of rocks), unusual point of view, rule of thirds, texture, line, form, etc.  Here are my results from worst to best.  Remember, these were all shot with an iPhone in about 5 minutes.

My shadow.  It’s not very original but I couldn’t resist.

Dried mud.  It’s a bit out of focus but I like the texture.

Tree from below.  Check out that blue!  The iPhone doesn’t have great white balance.

Rule of thirds from a nearby wall.

This is my favorite.  Some dead leaves on concrete.

Well there you have it. You can find a photo just about anywhere you look.  Now it’s your turn, take the 5 minute challenge.  Go out to your parking lot, back yard, park, etc and make some photos.  Post the URL to your shots in the comments section.  Let’s see what you’ve got!

Click here to see Craig’s shots and read what he had to say.

Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Photography 2 Comments » January 2008

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