Friday, March 06, 2009

Skating Is All...

Wow, it's been quiet around here. To be honest, the only thing I've done standing sideways over the last couple of weeks is some skating. I did a couple of short, evening sessions last week, and I think I'll head out a little later tonight.

The last time I was at the skate park there was a small crew there; 4 good skaters and one of the guys had a nice bag of camera gear, video and still. I took some photos too. It was fairly late so I was literally in the dark, but seems as though they had a couple of remote flash guns, I had some chance of getting an image.

Here are some photos. The first two are mostly too dark, but the timing was ok. I included the second two to show how the lighting might have worked, and me fumbling with a slower shutter speed :)


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Oh, I bought some wax from the local skateboard shop too, because the rails get kinda sticky. I was using regular snowboard wax before, that worked just fine, but I've spent that waxing snowboards. The front-board is progressing.


I'd definitely like to buy some basic camera gear. A tripod for sure. I'm skating by myself at the moment, and with a tripod I could at least video some stuff. A better flash too. I'm gonna check if the d60 has a remote control... I wonder what it would be like trying to take a photo of myself? That probably wouldn't work out too well - although Mike Basich does a good enough job :)

Part of reason for these pages being dead lately is that I've had some laptop trouble. I'm sure my electronics are cursed. Last week the hard-disk became corrupt and I had to spend some time recovering the data and then wiping the whole lot. I nearly lost some important data - all my wsg photos from Morzine.

Up until now I've been backing my stuff up once a month - to a usb drive. The hard disk went a couple of days before the end of the month, which sucked. Still, I shouldn't have left all those photos and words to chance.

So, I've signed up with backblaze, for online backups. I'd like to say how good it is, but right now the initial backup is still running... it's taking ages, probably gonna end up being 2 - 3 weeks, and that's only about 75gb. Wireless, but still slow.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice skate photos, Gavin!

Basic camera gear is a great idea. A good tripod is any Manfrotto. Definitely get something with a smooth feel in case you ever start to film video, and make sure it has a level built into it. Make sure there's no shake on the head too when you turn it.

D60 definitely has a remote control. It's the standard Nikon remote for about $40 or so :)

Flash can run you $200-1000 ;)

I actually use my remote and tripod ALL the time. I don't have a Flash, the built in one is fine for me but I don't shoot much in the dark.

The remote is great, especially if you want to shoot skate or boarding photos of yourself :D

Hope you're doing well Gavin!

Anonymous said...

Nice shots! I don't find the first two to be too dark, and with a little Photoshop they would be perfect.

Sucks about your electronics, you should look into an external HDD. They run fairly cheap now for even up to a 250gb and the file transfer is exponentially faster than any online service.

Gavin Hope said...

Hey Allie,

yeah things are cool, although I don't think I'll be heading away anymore this season, which sucks a little. Not too easy for both of us to get time off work right now, plus, we're saving for our wedding (next year), and I want to go back to canada next season :)

Anyhow, more of that later. Yeah, tripod for sure and I'm gonna look into the remote...

Dan, thanks. Photoshop or similar is something I'm gonna have to get hold of, and play around with the photos a little :)

Anonymous said...

Hey Gavin, I wanted to stress how useful a little Photoshop can be when it comes to your photos. Instead of dropping hundreds on equipment, just adjust the "shadow / highlight" in Photoshop and check it out. I also cropped it.

Without the flash you actually get some really nice details in the clouds.

It only took about 2 minutes.

Gavin Hope said...

Hey Dan, that's pretty good :) I'm not completely naive - I know that people use photoshop a lot - it's just something I've never done. Cheers! Thanks for the upload!

Anonymous said...

Haha I'm just Photoshop whore who is trying to avoid working for as long as possible..

Keep on shooting!

Mal said...

Mate, based on what I've seen on Wilka's PC, you might want to look into Lightroom for your photos. It's pretty sweet.