Sometimes, you find something striking at breakfast. Leica M9-P, Zeiss ZM2.8/28 Biogon
POTD: Water, sun and birds
February 28, 2012 by
Water, sun and birds. Prague. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH
POTD: International Polar Bear day
February 27, 2012 by
Bob and Nadiah. Leica M9-P, 90/4 Macro-Elmarit M + SB700
Today is international polar bear day. Bundle up and turn down your thermostat a little (or if you live in the tropics like us, reduce your air conditioning power) to try to slow global warming a little. We don’t want all the polar bears to go extinct now, do we? MT
POTD: Bridge shadows
February 26, 2012 by
Bridge shadows, Prague. Leica V-Lux 30
A photograph doesn’t always have to have a point; sometimes the visual interplay of light, shadow, texture and pattern is enough. I shot this with a compact super zoom – the Leica V-Lux 30 (Panasonic TZ20) because my M9-P would not have been able to get the right perspective with ‘only’ a 50mm as my longest lens (this shot required about 105mm or thereabouts). MT
POTD: Breguet La Tradition, part 2
February 25, 2012 by
Another take on the same watch shot a few days ago with the Nikon D700. Leica M9-P, Visoflex III, Bellows II, Zeiss ZM 2/50 Planar. And one Nikon SB700, two SB900s.
A very different view to the D700, right? The transparent trapezoid is a pallet jewel, which controls the locking and unlocking (tick and tock) of the escapement, along with transferring rotation impulses to the balance. It’s barely visible to the naked eye, and no more than a millimeter long, which makes the whole frame around 8x12mm, or about 3:1 magnification. Lighting is normally tricky, but I got lucky with this watch – it has a transparent cutout around the back precisely where the pallet fork and jewels are, which allowed me to light it from behind, with just a little fill from the front to provide definition to the gears. MT
POTD: Reflections of sky
February 24, 2012 by
Reflections of sky, Kuala Lumpur. Leica M9-P, 35/1.4 ASPH FLE
POTD: Breguet La Tradition
February 23, 2012 by
Breguet La Tradition. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G + 2xSB900s
So how did I do this? It’s not that hard: watch your lighting, and watch your backgrounds. With a sufficiently dark background and perpendicular lighting (the key here is not too diffuse, else your background will also be lit) the reflective surface of the watch with shoot the light right back at the camera. Since the watch is several orders of magnitude more reflective than the background, exposing properly for the watch will completely dial out the background, or at least reduce its luminance to a level where it’s negligible. I could have burned it down to zero, but a hint of texture and delineation for the strap worked best. MT
POTD: Last cloud of the day
February 22, 2012 by
Sunset, Prague. Leica M9-P, 50/1.4 ASPH
My inner Magritte is trying to escape again. I love the contrast between the hard edges of the silhouetted branches and the soft roundness of the cloud in the sky; there’s also a nice compliment between the warm tones of the cloud and the coolness of the sky. If you wanted to be even more philosophical, I suppose you could say that the image is a metaphor for life or existence or the human condition or something similar – the cloud (warm, fuzzy, ephemeral, fragile, etc) against the cold, harsh, unforgiving (poky?) realities of its environment. MT
POTD: Vintage Tudor Submariner
February 21, 2012 by
Vintage Tudor Submariner. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G Micro + 2xSB900s
Yes, that’s a Rolex crown. Rolex is the parent company of Tudor; or, Tudor is the ‘entry level’ Rolex model. There weren’t really that many differences back then, but these days the main difference is in the movement – all of the Rolexes have in-house movements but the Tudors have Swatch Group-derived ETAs. If you’ve ever wondered how I get lighting like this, the trick is all in the diffusers; the better your lighting control, the less aggressive your specular highlights will be. I use a system of movable translucent but semi-opaque perspex panels to diffuse my flashes. (It’s custom built, so don’t bother looking for one). The other trick is that although the perspective appears to be one way, it doesn’t mean that the subject has to be shot in that orientation, only lit in that orientation and rotated later. MT
See the full series and writeup here on fratellowatches
POTD: Spot the snowflake
February 20, 2012 by
House near Strakhov Cloister, Prague. Olympus E-PM1, 45/1.8
The title of this shot is a bit of a red herring: yes, there is a snowflake, but no, it isn’t really visible at this size. What drew me to this scene was the balance of color; the simple geometry of house and sky; the texture of the tan wall and the two little details (visible in the full size shot) – the snowflake decorations in the window, and the moon hanging low in the early morning sky. I suspect this would make a great large print, but I haven’t had a chance to find out yet. MT
