2013-05-28

Hook

The working end of this crane.

2013-05-25

Palace

The ceiling of the R.C. Harris pump house. If this was built today – not that we're building major civic infrastructure these days – it would be poured concrete and cinder blocks. It's certainly not something that would have its architecture draw hundreds of admirers eighty years later.

Fans

At the pump house of the R.C. Harris water treatment plant with the Nikon V1.

Pumps

At the pump house of the R.C. Harris water treatment plant with the Nikon D800.

2013-05-18

Built and Abandoned

Continuing to work with the new little camera and its wide-angle lens.

Wide lenses are so much harder to use than long ones. A narrow field of view makes it easy to isolate a scene, choose backgrounds, and limit focus. Switching to the different requirements of depth and subject that a wide lens requires, and understanding how this scalpel of a camera concept can work differently from what I'm used to, it going to make for an interesting month.

No Smoking

Continuing to work with the new little camera and its wide-angle lens.

I've posted photos of this sign at least twice previously, as it's something that I use to learn how new cameras see. I have to confess that adjusting to a wide angle has been far more difficult than I expected, requiring fundamental changes in how I work and see. That's a good thing, but it means that I still have a lot of work to do before I can easily switch between working with wide and long perspectives.

White Tank

Continuing to work with the new little camera and its wide-angle lens.

Most wide-angle lenses for full-frame SLRs generally range between mediocre and good, with very few that are excellent. A fixed-lens camera makes for a different set of design compromises, which can lead to a different kind of photography. This kind of conceptual variety in my tools is important to me.

Wooden Skids

Continuing to work with the new little camera and its wide-angle lens.

It's a tough compromise. An SLR viewfinder makes it much easier to see the tilt and skew of the camera, which wide-angle lenses are incredibly susceptible to. But the telecentricity requirements for a wide-angle lens to clear the space needed for a mirror box makes them large and introduces design requirements that have nothing to do with making a good image.

2013-05-07

Sakura

My favourite photo from the 2013 Cherry Blossom season at U of T's Robarts library.

Back Campus

The University of Toronto's 'Back Campus' field, with the Soldier's Tower prominent in the background. This grass is slated to be dug up, paved over with astroturf, and fenced off in celebration of the 2015 Pan Am / Pan Para Games. It will remain a restricted access artificial field hockey surface in perpetuity.

With construction expected to start in two months, this is likely to become an ongoing subject for me.

Super Speed 50

I don't often post blatant camera pr0n here, but for the Zeiss CP.2 Super Speed 50mm T1.5 cine lens I thought it would be worth making an exception. No, I don't own this lens, but there's something to be said for an eighteen-blade aperture.

People Reading

I'm a bad 'street' photographer, but I thought I should give it a try now that I have a P&S camera with a strong street-photography heritage.

And now, having tried it, I plan on stopping.

2013-05-01

Mechanism

This is where I've been for most of April, and a fair bit of the earlier months as well:

"Mechanism" artist statement.

"Mechanism" background.

"Mechanism" object.

More to come…

I have broken the links to hundreds and hundreds of photos, which will take a long time to repair. The workaround is to replace "photo.matthewpiers" in the link URL with "matthewpiers.smugmug". Awkward, but only temporary.

This is happening because I have revamped matthewpiers dot com. More of what I write and photograph will be going there, so check it out as well.

Older Photos by Month