Yesterday I shot a set of pictures for the home page of Hannu Pahajoki who is a candidate in a municipal election. Here’s a portraittaken of Hannu by the party, which I assume is used in their own advertisements. That particular picture had me tearing off my hair and reminds of all the stereotypes of a stuffed old politician (which my father is not . So we needed something a little more youthful and refreshing.

The Lutakko area and surroundings of the hightech Innova building in Jyväskylä, with the autumn colours and a traditional red brick industrial buildings, served as an excellent surroundings to present my father, who teaches building branch (construction) in a vocational school, in a more youthful setting. I attached the Sigma 24-60/2.8, ordered very cheap from the US, to my trusty Pentax K10D. The Sigma has not seen a lot of action yet, but this time the lens presented it’s best qualities in the great autumn light. I’m very satisfied with the pictures.
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Shot with PENTAX K10D, processed using K10D Ver 1.30

While driving home yesterday, I had an idea during a break to attach the camera to the backseat with the safety belt. Having it on a tripod, it was surprisingly sturdy. I have a faint recollection of having seen this before, so I don’t want any credit for originality.

Having the camera at manual focus and 2 second timer mode allowed me to reach to press the shutter release without appearing on the image. The most interesting pictures were recorded on a freeway with good lighting on the sides. And man, that windshield is dirty!

Shot with PENTAX K10D, processed using K10D Ver 1.30
ISO200, 1/125s, f/8.0 at 250.00mm (aperture priority (semi-auto))

(I noticed the thumbnail generation of the blog software seems to eat away the colour in the image (and no, the image is not in aRGB colorspace). I’ll need to tweak the software and add a way to examine the larger image.)

Because of being busy with other things, the camera has stayed on the shelf for a while. I’ve felt bad about not photographing more, but if I don’t feel like, and there’s nothing in particular that would demand being photographed, then why should I feel guilty? But now, autumn and the colours and fantastic light it has brought with it forced me to take a camera with me on a little tour on the streets of my home town.

This photograph is from the yard of the old Orimattila spinning mill, now converted to a shopping mall with lots of small boutiques. The image was processed in Aperture (I have three days left of the trial version, I should write a bigger piece on the software before the trial period expires) only to straighten it to fit my view of the scene. The shallowish depth of field was obtained by the only way the nice walkabout glass Tamron 18-250/3.5-6.3 offers: by using the longest possible focal length, 250mm. I don’t know if I have my goals too low, but for the huge focal length range of the objective, I quite like the sharpness of the Tamron.

Shot with PENTAX K10D, processed using LightZone
ISO160, 1/160s, f/8.0 at 47.50mm (aperture priority (semi-auto))

Let’s start this blog that is about photography, cameras, objectives, image processing software and other miscellaneous photography paraphernalia with a photograph. The photograph has been processed with LightZone, bought from the great MacUpdate promotion. I will probably be writing more about LightZone later.

The photograph is from Berlin, and the sun is just setting, creating an interesting lighting. It is really about nothing in specific, just the kind of “art photograph´´ my wife hates