Starving Artistry

Music Video

Ben — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:51:09 +0000

Trying to get my butt in gear and get this project launched and into the world. I’m just gonna leave this here…

Back from Hiatus

Ben — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:38:06 +0000

Well, I finished that game, so it’s back to business!

First of all, big news is that I think I’ll be closing on my house this coming Friday! It’s been a loooong time coming (I first put down my offer way back in August of ‘09) but it looks like the end is finally here! The end of living and eating free I mean… I’m gonna go do my walkthrough on Wednesday hopefully, so I’ll post a few pics then. In the meantime…

This week’s photo theme was “Blue.” I took like a hundred pictures of Harry ’cause I was deadset on capturing his blue collar. I wanted to have the contrast of his blue collar against my black bedspread. Here’s the picture I ended up choosing:

I like the way his eye caught the flash, and you can see a bit of the wetness. Almost like he’d been crying sad doggie tears. Haha, but not really. He was just tired, and probably just annoyed that my flash had been going off in his face a million times.

I almost went with this one. I just like how old and wise he looks.

And some leftovers from NYE…

And I’m still planning on editing that footage from Evan and JP’s party… hopefully will get that up at somepoint…!

Happy New Year!

Ben — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 17:47:07 +0000

So I bought myself the Speedlite 580EXII flash for my camera and I love being able to take pictures in dark places i hadn’t been able to before. I’d say my favorite thing about the flash is being able to pump up the shutter speed so high that there’s no chance of any motion blur. The pictures just seem sharper! Also, the fact I can angle the flash up so that it bounces off the ceiling for a more natural lighting look. Not so washed out, like with most consumer cameras.

So here are a few pics I took.

Here’s my Maudio Sputnik. Good times.

Me showing off my flash to Gretchen which really means me surprising her with a pic. Again, look how natural the colors look and everything! I didn’t edit these photos at all (except to resize them)!

Here’s Sunny again. I really like this shot. So cute.

And mid-yawn. Not as cute. haha, why do dogs always look like crazy killer animals when they get caught on camera mid-yawn?

Sunny wearing Taylor’s glasses. I don’t think he liked it.

Taylor before going out for New Years. AKA, big kid prom.

That’s all for now, still working on that video from Evan’s b-day, but DragonAge has been distracting me!

Photo a Week #4

Ben — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:01:37 +0000

This week’s theme “Alone.”

Took this at Taylor’s house. All the bulbs were burned out except for two so I unscrewed the last one and took the shot. Actually, I took many, many shots.

This was after spending 15 minutes outside taking a picture of a chair on a mound of snow. But none of them turned out THAT great (by that, I mean Taylor and her roommate both poo-pooed the shots I took). It was hard coming up with a picture to match the theme though.

This week’s theme: “Abandoned Places.” Where in NoVA is abandoned anyway?? Oh yeah, that Chicken Out place in the Giant shopping center. I just have to sneak inside…

So Close…

Ben — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:19:26 +0000

… to Christmas! Despite the snow on the ground, it doesn’t really feel like it! I guess that’s because for the last, oh… 8 years or so I’ve always had to travel somewhere to go visit my family. Since we’re doing it at home this year, it kinda feels like your typical day and whatnot.

Anyway, this afternoon I helped my mom make some Christmas sugar cookies. It comes from a family recipie, and I have to be honest, I’ve never actually had Christmas cookies that were quite this good. We rolled the dough today in preparation of making the cookies tomorrow.

This is a shot of the recipie as my mom had it on the counter. Then my fingers got all dirty and I had to stop taking pictures.

Harry was watching attentively as we worked, hoping to eat some buttery cookie dough I’m sure (4 sticks of butter! Ugh!)

Anyway, after that was all done, we hit the grocery store, but not before I did some quick research on HDR photography. So as soon as I got home, I wanted to try it out. Here are a couple of shots… I think it’d work better outside with better light and stuff, but you can kind of see that hyper-realistic look.

Shot of my living room from where I was sitting and conducting my research.

My mom workin.

Anyway, the whole family’s here now, so I suppose I should go spend QT with them. Merry Christmas…!

Photo A Week

Ben — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:15:04 +0000

Just a quick little update. Here was my submission for the week’s theme of “lights.”

Snowpocalypse

Ben — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:10:11 +0000

Here are my pics from Friday and Saturday.

So I’m dogsitting a little miniature poodle for a couple of weeks. His name is Sunny. Luckily I got him right before it started snowing.

Here is a shot outside my front door around 9 PM. You can see it was just starting to snow, but it was already sticking.

Meanwhile, Gretch was chillin with the doggies on the couch. They were uncharacteristically calm in this pic.

This is a shot out my back door at around 1 AM.

So I decided to try to pose the doggies. Harry likes to sit and look outside the window when the door is open, so I figure he’d do it again. But the lighting was sooo tricky because it was so bright outside. So i brought out my light, but you can see the reflection in the glass. =( Also, the dogs didn’t want to stay still.

So Gretch got some bacon grease on her fingers and was able to get the dogs to stay and climb at the window.

I was not quite as successful.

I eventually got them to look out the window though. Darn that stupid reflection and my oversight!

And then Sunny left and Harry just was staring out the window like he normally does. No coaxing involved this time.

Of course Harry had to do his business eventually. I wish I had gotten pics of him jumping through the main part of our back yard because it went up to his neck. He understandably stuck to the edges where the snow wasn’t so deep.

Anyway, it’s 6:10 now and it’s still snowing strong! More pics tomorrow I’m sure, including my photo-a-week submission.

National Tree & Stuff

Ben — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:05:37 +0000

So Taylor and I took a trip out to the mall so I could snap some pics of the National Tree. Every pic took so long to set up, ’cause i had to use a tripod since it was so dark… out of the 30 – 40 shots I took, I only had maybe 4 or 5 useable ones. But, c’est l’avie.

So here’s the national tree. I kept the exposure high so that it seemed like it was glowing. Stupid me, I accidentally had the ISO set to 6400, so it’s kinda grainy, but you can’t tell on Flickr. One benefit of them resizing it I guess.

They had these little trains set up going around the tree, with little towns on 4 sides of it. This was one of them. Again, kept the exposure high so that the lights sparkle like that. Also gets some motion blur from the trains making it seem like they were whizzing by, whereas in fact they were veeeery slow.

Here’s another shot, same village but you get some of the national tree in it. I like the light trails from the trolley going around the track.

They had a place set up where you could meet Santa. He was on break. Taylor was sad. Sad, sad, sad. =(

So, later on that evening I went home and was wrapping presents. Rather, Taylor was wrapping my presents for me, while I was taking pictures of the inside of a Tiffanie’s lamp. Interesting perspective, fun colors I think.

Then it was time to take Taylor home, but not before stopping by a nearby neighborhood to take some last minute photos. Each one of these shots were at a 30 sec exposure, so Taylor got really bored…

I like this shot, but I wish i had the house on the left centered. I like how many stars came out.

Incidentally, if you zoom in, you can see the stars are actually a little blurry. Apparently 30 seconds is long enough to see the stars move due to the Earth’s rotation. That’s pretty crazy! I really want to set my camera up and do a time lapse some time. Next time you notice the sky clear at night, let me know! It sure as heck won’t be this weekend. Anywhere from 5 – 20 inches of snow. Crazy!

Photos Galore

Ben — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:05:53 +0000

So I’ve decided I really want a flash. Considering I got this camera for video stuff, I’ve actually been shooting a lot of photography, and the inflexible lighting situations are really just driving me insane. Anyway, here are some photos I’ve taken that I happen to like…

So a couple weeks back I did a family photo shoot for some Christmas pictures for a friend of mine. This is the youngest daughter, whom I happen to teach Piano, right before we started. I actually have my studio light on her, which is why I think the colors turned out so well. She’s sharp and in focus, and that makes me happy. =) Too bad the background is a little boring, but she looks good and that’s what matters.

So anyway, this past weekend Mo had a party to celebrate his 26th birthday (incidentally the same day as mine). I was excited to see his house, I had heard it was pretty big. That was definitely an understatement if anything. This is already a closer up shot than one of my others (check out my flickr page) but you can still tell it’s fancy schmancy.

So fast forward to this past Sunday, and we have the KTC Winter Concert which was held at a retirement home in Springfield. This first pic is one of my co-workers performing an impromptu duet. The lighting was weird in that place, with the big ol’ windows, and then recessed lighting using both incandescent and flourescent bulbs. So the pic has a yellowish glow to it, but I think it makes it seem appropriately warm compared to the stark wintery outside.

This is a little girl watching the performers from the stairs. I thought it was cute, although I wish I had captured where she was looking. I haven’t even edited this one, and it came out really well. I submitted this to our photo-a-week group.

And this is one of my guitar students. He claimed he wasn’t feeling well, but I think his expression is very appropriate to how most kids react when they have to perform. I maintain that it’s a very important part of learning an instrument though…

This week’s photo theme is “lights.” I want to get down to the mall to get some pics, but… I dunno if i’m gonna have time to…! We shall see…!

I’m Yours

Ben — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:43:45 +0000