Carleen and Mike » photography

Photo of the Week: Week 5

Mike Huxley — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:47:29 +0000

I knew I couldn’t keep a schedule. At least I know not to work for a newspaper. This week’s photo’s are pretty much about me just ~~trying to get something posted this week~~ having fun in front of the camera. Self-Portraits. I did have fun with these, as I tend to do once I get an idea and start messing around with it. No attempt at decent quality - it’s all on-camera flash, pointed straight at my face in the middle of the night. It’s neat to see how my expressions changed from what I wanted them to be to what they become after the pre-flash burned out my retinas.

I was pointed to a great website: Strobist by my friend Josh recently, as such, I’m looking to pick up a decent flash unit and and try some studio work. I’m looking at a Vivitar 285HV. It’s a workhorse, a powerful flash, and almost totally manual, which is all that I’ll need once I can get the flash off the camera (tripods, cords/Pocket Wizards, umbrellas - $$). Anyway, hopefully within a few months you’ll be seeing some studio style shots from me - I’m looking forward to it!

I can’t remember what I was trying to show in the above shot - but I got this from a long series of pre-flashes as the camera tried to get focus and evaluate the scene. Flash in your face + night time = seriously burned retinas.

You can tell I had fun, and that was the point.

Note: the next Photo of the Week will probably be coming to you from my parents computer in NY, as we’re going up for a visit at the end of this week. It’ll be nice to get a change of scenery.

Photo of the Week: Week 4

Mike Huxley — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:56:43 +0000

Sorry folks, I’ve missed the past 2 weeks of PotW - the first week I needed to get the bathroom done in a hurry for the 4th of July, which put PotW on hold for the next week. Also, you’ll notice I’m early - I’m hoping to get downtown so as to shoot things that aren’t in my backyard, but not sure if I’m going to get down there. If so, you’ll get a bonus PotW this Friday. But we’re back with an extra special HUGE PotW to make amends - this weeks set is a theme: Decay. I’m working on a self-portrait set, but I’m having trouble deciding what exactly I want to say with that one - generally if I don’t make self-portraits that are me hamming in front of the camera, they end up being all emo and dark. I’m not a model (you know what I mean?).

I love “old stuff” like this. I really like old barns filled with lots of rusty farm machinery. I should be able to find one of those around here if I try.

Scanning Pics

Mike Huxley — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 10:56:45 +0000

I’ve been slowly working on scanning our Honeymoon pics from Norway. The project was going along quite well until I opened what I have scanned in Photoshop tonight to start doing some tweaking. Everything - every one of the 40+ pics I had scanned, straight from negatives, was blurry. Remember, I have a B.F.A. in Photography, and was using a Nikon camera (arguably some of the finest lenses out there). So I’m guessing my scanner is what’s turning my beautiful pics into garbage. Which isn’t surprising since it’s a 3-in-1 scanner, copier, printer.

I’d love to get access to a really high quality film scanner so I could get my entire portfolio saved digitally. I’d hate to buy something like that, since after I had all my old photo’s scanned it would be pretty useless. Meanwhile, I’m a bit frustrated with my new digital camera, a Canon Digital Rebel XT - but it’s only a minor frustration. It takes really sharp pictures and there’s plenty of manual control, which I absolutely demand out of a camera. My one pet peeve is 2 things that are inter-related so I’ll only count them as one: under low light it has a very hard time focusing. But I’m not talking darkness, I mean subdued light; maybe overcast skies; and the sensor does not seem to be as sensitive to light as I would like. In a room where an ISO 400 should handle the job, it’s telling me I need to use ISO 800.

This could be my lens - in fact, both these problems could be the lens that comes with the camera. I’m going to have to eventually invest in a straight 50mm lens. I’ve been using zoom lenses for years now on both my film camera and now the digital, and I have never been terribly happy with the quality - they tend to be a bit on the fuzzy side.

Anywho - click on our Flickr Badge (below, right) to see the new (old) pics.

Belly in Mirror

Carleen Huxley — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 13:38:08 +0000

Objects in mirror are not as large as they appear…

web site update

Mike Huxley — Sat, 13 Mar 2004 07:48:45 +0000

My brand spankin’ new web page is finally up! Though not complete, I have uploaded several of my still-life and portrait photographs. Anyone who had my old site bookmarked should update their bookmarks, as I had to change my hosting company, and now have my very own domain name. You can get to it by following the link that says “mike’s photography” in the menu at the right. Any updates to the site itself will be posted here on this blog, since I didn’t want to clutter my photo page with updates, which probably won’t be happening too often after I get it up and running. But keep checking back over the next few weeks, I still have two more categories of photographs to upload. And once I finally get my scanner, updates should happen much more frequently. Any and all comments, questions or concerns about the anything on that site would be greatly appreciated.