A new telephoto - 5/5/18

Michael Ward January 4, 2020

At some point I was wishing to continue to build my credit, and I received an offer for an Amazon Prime credit card. Which for me, was pretty great. No annual fee, an interest rate that was lower than my other cards, and I would be able to actually receive something back for spending. While all of the other cards I had just took money away from me. I bring this up because Amazon has been my choice for any and all photography gear. At least of writing this. And with a card that gave me points to use directly on the site, or to apply towards my balance and spend that money to continue to earn points. This gave me a bit of freedom. Earning small percentages on the purchases I was already making. I moved all of my recurring charges that I could onto that card, and only bought what I could afford at the time.

If you’re reading this and are thinking about how to raise your credit. I highly recommend this. Credit cards don’t have to be scary, even if I don’t agree on a moral view, it absolutely helps you in the long run. You do have to be smart about it, but I had already had near 10 years of having a credit card that I had run up. I’m happy to say that the Amazon card remains after several years, paid off in full twice a month. The points I get from it is really nice, just a little extra that I put specifically towards camera gear. It also is more secure I hear, than using a debit card. As if it’s ever compromised the credit card is quicker to refund the unauthorized charges and you’re not left moneyless in limbo while you wait.

But that’s enough of a financial lesson, not sure I’m qualified to talk about that at length. But I do feel qualified to talk about the purchase I made with these points. For a grand total of $69.49, only $7.41 came out of my pocket at the time. I made my first lens purchase.

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Try a google image search for “Canon 75-300mm”

Not running the risk of a copyright claim by using someone else’s photo.

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The Canon 75-300mm F4-5.6 III

This is an awesome starter lens. It replaced the Tamron telephoto I had been “borrowing” from my dad. Which I did have to give back to him as we went in together and purchased him his own digital camera. It was actually purchased the same day as this lens. My siblings and his SO pitched in and we got him a Canon T6i. A few steps up from my own camera and a very nice replacement for the film camera he had purchased way back when. More on that later, as it would be a bit before I made the trip up to see him for his birthday and deliver his present.

But armed with my new telephoto that was slightly longer than the one I had been borrowing before, I went outside and shot some of the geese that live here during the summer.

Such cute little goslings.

Also here’s a picture of my cat I took the day and she’s being cute reaching for a treat.

A Christmas of manual exposure - 12/23/17

Michael Ward January 2, 2020

More months past, and we come to the end of 2017. Still only bringing out the camera to special events. This time we took a trip down to Callaway Gardens for their Christmas lights show.

A silly picture of my younger siblings in the back seat as we started our trip. It wasn’t too far to get there from outside of Atlanta where I currently live. A few hours drive I think.

Not a bad experience, lots to spend money on that’s for sure. I remember throwing caution to the wind and getting at least one or two alcoholic drinks. And then eating whatever I felt like, which was really pricey for the food being just okay. But we wondered through the gift shop, and found a giant nutcracker.

They look so thrilled.

But on to the main event, the sun was going down and they started playing the story of Christmas with a little light display.

It was interesting, from a technical standpoint I would have liked to see the behind the scenes for this. All the different lights they had set up for the different parts of the story.

But on to the main event, we got loaded onto the trolley and started the miles of lights. Which I think got hyped up a little bit too much from my girlfriend who hadn’t been since being a child. I imagine it looked a lot cooler before. And maybe part of that was my own expectations. I think I was expecting every second of the ride to be lights. There was a lot of dead space between the stuff they had up. Also people ruin everything. There were people talking the entire time so you couldn’t hear the music and the voice recording to go along with the ride. Several people decided to try and record or take pictures with their phone, which meant the flash was constantly going off.

Which brings me to my own shooting experience. Not knowing what to expect I put my camera into an auto mode. Which typically worked out for me at the time because I didn’t know what I was doing. But if you’re going to try and shoot barely lit objects, or light itself. From a moving trolley. You get something like this.

Not really what I had in mind when I thought about how the images would turn out. Now thankfully I did review these shots during one of the many blank times between displays. And started trying to learn how to correct this on the fly. I knew I needed a faster shutter to cut down on the motion blur, but too fast and there wouldn’t be any light at all.

Getting there. Still too much motion blur, but you could tell what this one was. I won’t go through all the shots I did before I got it down, but it was a fair amount of playing around.

Besides these being grainy messes with the ISO having to be cranked up so high, I think I was getting the hang of it. I probably missed half the shots because I kept checking the screen to see if I was getting it right.

This swan was really cool, it was out on a lake as well. If I had thought about it, should have got a shot of it and the reflection for a cool mirror effect. I do also notice the lens swap here to the telephoto. Since this was taken at a range far beyond my kit lens of 18-55mm.

Very important lessons learned here. About shooting events where you can’t bring certain things with you. Couldn’t really bring a tripod onto the trolley. Being prepared for what you’re going to see, if you know about it ahead of time like I did. And just general camera knowledge I would gain later on. I’m sure given the same equipment now I would have been able to shoot at the very least, more photos. I’d like to think better ones from a technical standpoint. Or maybe just better composed ones.

But overall, a lesson in manual exposure on the fly was learned. I still think back to this when I’m out shooting in low light situations.

Custom Hot Wheels cars, first attempt at product photography - 7/7/17

Michael Ward January 2, 2020

One thing about me has always been consistent. An inconsistency with hobbies. I’ve taken up and dropped off of more hobbies than I can count.

Without a job in NC I did a lot of woodworking projects. Made a nice wooden box I still use to this day, spent hours and hours sanding it. Also bought a real nice tabletop, cut a kind of cross pattern along it on the tablesaw to create one inch squares. Then drilled about a hundred holes, one in each square. To create a D&D tabletop that I could create 3D maps with. I took some pieces of wood and carved out little brick and wood walls, painted them and stuck little pegs in them. So you could attach them to the peg holes in the board. Spent a good while on that, along with carving little tables and chairs. Before I had to get a job and dropped off of that hobby.

I’ve collected more Funko Pops than anyone should. I believe my last count was over 250. After I returned from NC and was living rent free at my girlfriends parents house, I was making $15 an hour and only really had my new car payment to worry about. I sunk a lot of money into the hunt for all the Funko Pops I found interesting. I also have boxes full of Star Wars action figures, 5 or 6 long boxes full of comics. Collecting was a big hobby for many years.

Oh and LEGO. If you’ve been following along you may remember the Minecraft Lego sets I took pictures of. That’s just a fraction. Lego is quite literally the oldest hobby I have. Some of it passed down from my older brother, I have Lego pieces that could be twice my age. Becoming an adult with my own money did not help that hobby slow down.

But one of my old coworkers turned me on to another type of collecting hobby. Hot Wheels. They have chase variants that are rare as fuck. There’s all kind of color combinations. Real Rider wheels (basically just rubber instead of plastic)

I dove headfirst into that collecting as well. No idea what a count of that would stand at. At least I know I spent considerably less on that then any other collecting hobby. Most Hot Wheels are just a dollar each. Until you start getting the series ones with the rubber tires and full metal cast bodies.

But to the point, after collecting Hot Wheels for a while I took a crack at making some custom ones for myself. I set up a whole work station and bought tools in order to take them apart, swap the wheels. Had a whole painting setup, and put the whole thing back together. Which I started work on probably a dozen different cars, and only ever completed 3. Which I then took pictures of.

Before and after shots would have been good to get. But I know I stripped the paint off of this metal body, painted it all black and played around with a gold splatter effect.

For the actual shot, all I knew was from the product photography setup my brother had at work. I knew multiple lights from my training in technical theatre. And I think I mentioned on this blog before that I had picked up two little Neweer dimmable LED lights. I think I used a plain sheet of construction paper as the white backdrop.

Now this next one was actually the first one I did. But not the first one I completed. It took a lot more time as I replaced the wheels with some real riders. I blacked out the windows and painted the whole thing in a kind of metallic blue. Then I went back in to do the details. Which took a lot of tiny pieces of masking tape an x-acto knife. Now the details may not be great, and the lines didn’t come out as clean as I wanted them. But I learned a lot and I’m still proud of how it came out.

I only have one shot of this last one. I think it started out as a plain white body. Which I stripped down to paint purple and then did the underside in green. Even did green on the wheels.

Now those were just the ones I custom painted or modified in some way. I did do a lot more of Hot Wheels straight off the card. Because as you can imagine this was a lot easier to shoot, didn’t have to put hours of work into them.

Apparently I took this one with my phone. I think because I didn’t own a macro lens, and none of the ones I had would let me get as close as I wanted and still be able to focus.

This was also when this website underwent one of the several massive overhauls I did since I started it. I had decided I wasn’t going to try and make YouTube videos of let’s plays and I wanted to try something different. I had a lot of different ideas for what I wanted to do, but all of them centered around trying to make money off the internet. And this was no exception, I liked being creative with the custom Hot Wheels paint jobs and I could see it picking up steam and me making an etsy page or something. But in the back of my head it really was just about the photography. And that was a way to accomplish myself as a product photographer was to shoot my own creations.

It would still be a few years before I found that when you just create for the sake of it, and stop trying to turn a hobby into a money making venture, that it all falls into place and you enjoy it a lot more. Even if I never got to the point where I was actually making any money from my plans. Once I stopped coming up with ideas to try and make a living off of it in the future, I started doing them just because I enjoyed it. And you know what, even if I still have to keep a 40 hour job to fuel the hobby I have had several gigs now, some paying actual cash some just for the mutual benefit of creators.

Every image tells a story

But not the full story

A new telephoto - 5/5/18

A Christmas of manual exposure - 12/23/17

Custom Hot Wheels cars, first attempt at product photography - 7/7/17

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