The Zephyr Christmas

Last week I went out to The Zephyr in Kent to see 'Kill the Hippies' 'Lite Boys' and 'Team Neeson'. I snapped a few photos while there - the conditions were less than ideal(small club, black ceiling, crowded) but I still captured some images I liked. I used my 580exII flash with my omni-bounce diffuser on.

The Above photo is Matt and the below is Melissa - both of Kill The Hippies. The rest of the photos are on my flickr page.

Christmas Weekend Hiatus

I didn't have much time for blogging or editing any photos this weekend. I have been on the go non-stop since last Wednesday. I'm just starting to get my family Christmas photos posted and I have other photos from the weekend I'll edit/post soon.

Year In Photos

Here it is - the retrospective you've all been waiting for - Zipper City Photography's 2009 Year In Photos. Instead of the little one-blog-post-recap of the past I've decided to dedicate a whole page to it. Two photos from each month(with the exception of August as you will see) and a short caption about each one. I tried to use photos that had a meaning, seasonal feeling, or were just plain old good pictures. I hope you enjoy this little look back and had as good of a year as I did.

Laura and I.
A little credit to the person who made 2009 so great...

Your Christmas Card

Here 'Tis.
You Christmas Card from Zipper City.
I hope it is the cheesiest one you see all season.

The Gorge

I love winter hikes - so I was excited to get out for the first snowy hike this year.

These are at The Gorge Metro Park - one of my favorite places.

Lindsey

I went over to my friend Lindsey's apartment this evening for a bit. I hadn't seen her in a while and it was good to catch up.

I shot this with my 580exII flash off to the left with my omni bounce diffuser on it. I triggered it with my Canon 7D. In the weeks I've had my 7D the remote flash control has grown to be one of my favorite features. Not having to hook up my Pocket Wizards really gets me to do more with my flash off camera - even for simple things like this when I'm just hanging out. The ability to place my flash wherever I want turns average shots into something more interesting. In the next week or so I'd like to get out and shoot some live music firing my flashes remotely with my camera.

Blue Fig

This was the view from my table at The Blue Fig in Fairlawn the other night. The Blue Fig is a favorite spot of my girlfriend and I - they have a 5 buck burger and fries special on Tuesdays(not to mention dollar domestic bottles).

I shot this with my 50mm lens at f/2.2, my shutter was 1/125, and an ISO of 1000. This is another example of my new 7D handling noise well at higher ISOs.

Deep in a Game of Billairds

Woody

Justin

Here, Let Me Give You My Card

I finally bought some new business cards. I ordered them from Vistaprint.com which is alway fast and pretty cheap. f you use their templates they will just charge you shipping or you can upload your own designs for a small price.

Anyways - it will be nice to have something with current info to hand out to people who ask me about photography.

Grant Street

Today I was walking along Grant Street with my girlfriend and I noticed the near-sunset light on these old buildings looked really cool. As usual I had my camera on me so I took this shot. This was taken at 135mm, f/8, 1/200th, and ISO 100. I didn't do too much post-processing beyond a bit of sharpening(my 28-135mm lens isn't the best lens).

Camera Collection

I've decided to add a new page to my website dedicated to my vintage camera collection. I've been collecting older camera for a few years now. A few basic rules for my camera collecting:

1. I try not to spend over $30 on a camera. This rule can be a little flexible if I see something extremely unique or I think the camera may be worth alot more than the price.

2. I only buy something I find in person - thrift stores, garage sales, flea markets. You can find anything online(ie. E-Bay) and I don't see the fun in that(and I would be broke.

3. i focus my collecting on SLRs from the 60's through early 80's, rangefinders, and early point and shoots. I'm not really looking for pre-50's cameras.

Below is a little sample of my cameras....

The page isn't close to being finished yet but I'm working on shooting and posting more of my cameras and adding information about them. I'll also adding tools to make searching the cameras by category and model possible soon.

December Hike

Today I decided to brave the cold weather and take a hike on the Towpath Trail in the Cuyahoga Valley. I started at the Ira Trail Head and hiked to Everett. I took this photo at the Beaver Pond.

She Wakes Up, She Makes Up

I love this photo - the way the light from Laura's make-up mirror lights her face...

Merging Lock 3

Over the weekend I went for a hike from Cascade Locks to downtown Akron at Lock 3. I snapped this photo down by the skating rink. I tried something new in the post-processing(new to me). Since the rink was in the shadows it was far under-exposed. So what I did was create 2 separate tiffs from my RAW files. The first one I edited for the buildings and sky - the second one I pushed the exposure to make the foreground more visible. I then put them each in there own layer(but same file) in Photoshop and painted the second image through in the foreground area to give an all around better image. It worked pretty well. I'd like to try this with a tripod and separate images - then the different exposures could be taken with the camera - eliminating some of the noise from pushing the exposure of the RAW files.

Test Shots

Yesterday I was over at Laura's sister's house to take some photos of her niece for Christmas cards. Laura stepped in for some test shots so I could get my lighting set-up right. The top photo is a one strobe shot(a 580exII with a shoot through umbrella) and the one on left has two strobes(580exII and 430ex both shoot throughs). The photos of Laura's niece came out great but I had to post these tests because they are hilarious. Its great when you plan to do one thing and end up with a little bit of a bonus.

Today Laura and I are going to shoot our Christmas cards - they will be amazing as you will soon see.

Terminal Christmas

Last night I went to Cleveland with a few friends to see the Cavs play the Bulls. On the way into the game I had to stop and get a shot of the Terminal Tower all dressed up for Christmas. This shot was taken at a fairly high ISO(3200) because I had no tripod and I had to get a quick enough exposure to avoid camera shake. I'd really like to be able to get back to Cleveland before the Holidays are over to get a good low ISO shot with my tripod. It would also be cool to take the time and find a really cool perspective to take the photo from.

For the uninitiated the problem with having to shoot high ISO with a digital camera is the noise that is generated. When someone says a picture is "noisy" they are basically saying that it is grainy. While in the film days film grain could sometimes be desirable, digital noise is less so.

Anyways - I'll have some shots from the Cavs game posted soon.

I'm Back!

When I first started this blog(exactly one year ago today) my goal was to motivate myself to take, edit, and post a new photo every single day. My friend Kyle liked the concept so much that he converted his political blog, The Chief Source, to a photo blog similar to this and asked me to join. I decided to focus my attention there and I quit posting here for the time being.

Now I've decided to bring this blog back. The rough plan is to make this a hybrid of my posts on the Chief Source and my MySpace Blog with original content for the days that I'm not posting on those sites. There are certain things that I feel will fit here that don't work for The Chief Source audience. I'll also use this space to relate news about my photography business - Zipper City Photography.

Thanks for reading,

Tim

Akron Holidayfest

One of my family's holiday traditions over the last few years has included going to Akron's "Holiday Lighting Spectacular" Downtown at Lock 3. The city and sponsors put on a great fireworks display with an appearance/skit involving Santa. Afterwords we check out the Christkindl Market, watch some ice skating, then head out for a few drinks at one of the Downtown bars. Even with some of the cut-backs (due to the budget) it was still a good time.

My Thanksgiving

As I've gotten older Thanksgiving has become my favorite holiday. All you are supposed to do is eat good food, hang out with friends and family, and watch football(or play football(see previous post)).

The top photo is my family relaxing after diner - I took it from the stairs bouncing my flash off the ceiling. Below are a few of my other favorites from the day.

My Cousin Jeff brought a deep fryer this year and thats how we made the turkey - it turned out awesome. We also threw the sweet potatoes in the fryer which worked out really well too. I hope everyone had as great a weekend as I did....

Window Silliness

I wanted to go out and do some night photography last evening but the rain kept me inside - so this is the view out of my dining room window. I put my camera on a tripod and took a 13 second exposure with my 50mm lens - I added some saturation during post-processing. Nice corny post title, eh?

Browns Town

My brother was given some club seat tickets for the Monday Night Browns game - he invited Kyle, Laura and myself to go with him. Even though none of us expected to see anything too pretty from the Browns it is still fun to go up and suck in some atmosphere(and mess around with our cameras). This photo is of Kyle and Laura before the game started - when moods were still high. We stayed until there was about 2 minutes left in the 3rd quarter - which is about when everyone else stayed until as well.

Shapes of Things

This is a photo of the newish Towpath Bridge over the Akron Innerbelt. I hadn't hiked in the Cascade Locks area since they built the bridge. I used to love hiking down there when they had the old trail on the other side of the canal. I shot a roll of film here with my Minolta XG1 right before they put the towpath in, but I accidentally exposed it - which still annoys me when I go there.

I think that the cool shadows and shapes in the photo stand out more in black and white. I was also inspired to do some B&W by Mencken's last post.

My girlfriend was with me and she decide to show off her gymnastic abilities, you can check out that photo here. Kyle also took some photos of the bridge a while back when it was still under construction. You can take a peak at those too.

Final Farm Post

Winding down the season at Szalay's Farm.