playing with trucks


I found this old Dodge truck (it looks like a 1941, with the back bed and rear fenders taken off down to the frame) sitting in a pasture south of Lansing while driving to the Nelson-Atkins and Kemper Museums in Kansas. The black and white was taken on the way back Saturday, with the evening light coming in from the left. The other two colors were taken today, in the morning sun. The black and white works because of the softer shadow light over the body of the truck. The color works because of the direct morning light coming from the front, but still from the left.

There’s also the lenses used. The first two are the Olympus 45mm. The last is the Panasonic 25mm. I’ve been using those two lenses, and just those two lenses with the E-M5 the whole time I’ve been here. Some will dismiss such an arrangement, and some will argue about the right focal lengths. When I was first deciding what kind of camera to bring on this trip, I was only going to bring the 25mm. And then on a whim I decided to bring the 45mm so I could have some reach if I needed it. Turns out that was a pretty balanced pair, with about two-thirds of the photos taken with the 25mm. Of the three photos, regardless of treatment, the 45mm produced a better, tighter image than the 25mm. From an image quality perspective they’re equivalent. It’s their field of view that makes them useful tools depending on distance from the subject and the composition you’re after.

As for which one I like the best, it’s a toss up between the first two. It depends a lot on the mood I’m in when I look at them.

the insouciant photographer

So I’m bumming my way around the Internets this morning when I stumble into Kirk Tuck’s place, and what should I come across but this $5 word in one of his posts: insouciance. And I’m thinking to myself, I haven’t run across this word since, what, college? And we won’t get into how long it’s been since I saw a college classroom, shall we? So anyway, I tuck that into the back of my mind and go out and run my usual honey-do errands (this being Christmas Eve) and as my id chews on this word in the back of my mind, it slowly begins to dawn on me that perhaps I could rename the blog, or start a new one. The Insouciant Photographer. A play on The Online Photographer as it were.

I mean, look at that ugly thing at the top. How much more can I show a casual lack of concern or indifference?

Taken a little over two years ago when I first got my then-new Panasonic 20mm, mounted on the old but comfortable Olympus E-P2. Post processed in Silver Efex Pro 2, using the following recipe:

Wet Rocks
Brightness 0
Contrast -50
Structure 50
Fuji Neopan ACROS 100
Vignette – lens falloff 3