When Jen visited New York to write about San Antonio’s ties to High Line park, she called me and wondered if it’d be a good idea to make a time lapse-video of a walk through the mile-long urban park.
Abso-freakin-lutely.
Time-lapse videos are full of awesome sauce. Most I’ve seen involve the placement of a camera in a stationary location. But another cool method is taking the camera with you and snapping a photo every few seconds. It creates a cool first-person view of a journey or event. (more…)
So I bought my first DSLR camera, a Canon Rebel T1i, and I’m having an absolute blast taking pictures of Pete with it. This thing is addictive. These are a few Thanksgiving pics I took, which is a fraction of all the pictures I snapped yesterday without even thinking about it.
Why is this so much fun? Why not use a basic point-and-shoot camera? What’s wrong with me? Those are all valid questions. Jen and I own some nice point-and-shoots. But I wanted really good portraits of Pete in natural light and with blurry backgrounds. Our basic cameras didn’t really do a good job at that task — especially indoors, where Pete spends a lot of time learning how to walk and find new hiding places.
When I plunked down $575 for the Canon on Amazon and said to Jen, “Guess what I just bought?” she gave me the arched-eyebrow look, which usually happens after every gadget purchase. When she found out how much the camera cost, she said she was glad we have separate savings accounts.
But we both quickly learned that a good camera with the right lens can be a lot of fun, and we’ve taken a ton of pictures of Pete that we probably couldn’t have taken otherwise. I like this shot Jen took yesterday of me and Pete:
Now I just need a new gadget to store our massive collection of digital photos …
Flying into Chicago two weeks ago, I encountered a crazy thunder storm that stranded my plane on the tarmac of O’Hare International Airport. Turns out, more storms pounded the city the week after I left, and the light show was captured by amazing videos and photographs.
I worked a weekend shift today and covered this conference of the National League of Cities. It was a gorgeous blue day and on the way back to the office I took these pics:
View from above at the Convention Center
The Torch of Friendship
Hilton Palacio del Rio
St. Joseph’s Church
I’m not the best photographer by any means but lately I’ve been paying attention to lighting a lot more. The sun was at my back so I saw some shots that I thought were pretty cool.
