The theme for these photographs is day and night — more precisely, the night that followed that day, which was a beautiful spring day by the way, as you’ll see here. That night I tried capturing star trails for the first time. My PEN-F has a feature called Live Composite, which takes a series of short exposures and stacks them together in the camera, combining only the areas that contain changes in light and displaying the progress as it goes. This means that once you get it going, you can let it capture the star trails by itself, checking in every once in a while to see its progress on the display, which will also show you the histogram. This information updates with each new image, allowing you to get exactly the amount of exposure and star trails you like. It’s a very cool feature, which Olympus launched on their top cameras four years ago. Since I just bought my PEN-F, I only got to use it now, and it’s so cool!

Places

Today’s images

We had a beautiful night snowfall recently and even though it was after midnight, Ligia and I went out to walk through the garden. You may know these nights well if you live in a temperate climate. They tend to stick in your memory. Everything is quiet, eerily quiet. Even the sound of your own voice is muffled by the falling snow. If you’re in a town, the ambient light from houses and streetlights reflects off the blanket of white snow and shines right up to the clouds, which are near to the ground, weighed down by the water droplets that will become snow as they fall to the ground. So the whole sky typically shines a tint of yellow from the town lights, and it also reflects that light down onto the snow, lighting everything up even though there’s no moon in sight.

It was that kind of a night when we stepped out. Thick, well-defined snowflakes were slowly making their way down, stopping on branches, building up into impossible mounds on the thinnest of twigs. In the absence of a breeze, everything was frozen as if in awe, admiring the falling snow in concert. We walked through our garden, wading through the powdery white blanket, stopping to breathe the cold, refreshing winter air and to give thanks for the beauty before us.

I hope the photos reflect the atmosphere of that night. They were taken handheld with a 35mm lens at its widest aperture (f1.8) and at at a fairly high ISO (as high as 10000). That means not everything is going to be in focus and there is going to be plenty of grain. But that’s how I typically shoot: handheld, even in low light. I’m more interested in capturing the mood, the moment, than in having everything tack sharp or in setting up a tripod shot.

Events

A winter night

Places

A walk through town before daybreak

To celebrate the acquisition of a new camera (well, the acquisition is new, the camera isn’t), I took a pre-dawn walk through town. It was cold and somewhat rainy. Water got on my lens a couple of times and I’d forgotten to bring a lens cloth, so you’ll see some weird light artifacts on some of the photos. That’s from the partially wiped lens… I was hoping dawn would come soon and I’d get some nice photos of the “blue hour”. As it turned out, my battery ran out of juice and I got pretty cold before that happened. But it was really nice to walk through town with few to no people around me. I am after all an introvert, so the more time I spend alone, the better I feel.

I am quite pleased with my acquisition. It’s a camera I used and reviewed in the past (eight years ago, actually): the Olympus PEN E-P2. I loved that little camera and I should have bought it back then. After quietly pining for it all this time, I found it online a few days ago at an unbeatable price, second-hand, in great condition: about 100 euros for the body, plus another 100 euros for the viewfinder (yes, I got the VF-2!) and about 200 euros for a wonderful little lens for it, the M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 EZ (it’s a 2x crop factor so a 24-100mm 35mm equivalent).

Olympus PEN E-P2 Mirrorless Camera

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-50mm f:3.5-6.3 EZ Lens

Now I have the E-P2 and the E-PL1, which I bought several years ago with the two kit lenses offered at the time, the 14-42mm and the 40-150mm. Yay!

I took the photos without a tripod, relying on the camera’s optical image stabilization technology, which shifts the sensor on a 3-way axis in order to keep the shot steady. I shot at 1/10, 1/15 and 1/20, keeping the ISO at 1600 and the aperture wide open. Given that the lens goes from f/3.5 to f/6.3 when it’s at its longest focal length, that means some of the photos are darker. I squeezed every bit of light out of them in post processing, but having shot both RAW and JPG simultaneously, I can tell you the camera’s built-in noise reduction and image processing is so good (for its time), I could have just shot directly in JPG and uploaded them SOOC (straight out of the camera). Enjoy the photos!

A walk through Medias before daybreak

Places

Washington DC at Christmas time

These are photos taken on an evening walk in DC, during Christmas time, back in 2006. They should bring back memories for some of you, and if they don’t, they’ll give you a good idea of what to expect if you visit our nation’s capital in December.

Potbelly Sandwich Works, Washington, DC, USA.

Number 800, downtown Washington, DC, USA.

The Department of the Treasury, at night, Washington, DC, USA.

Executive Office Building, at night, Washington, DC, USA.

Places

Scenes from Tulcea, night and dawn

We stayed in Tulcea this past spring, at a nice little place called Hotel Select, which happened to have a great view of the city. I set aside the travel fatigue, stayed up late and then woke up early to take photos. Here’s a selection for you.