Last night's walk was over to the Los Angeles Mall and the Triforium sculpture. This six story, 60 ton, 60s inspired public light show was installed in 1975 at the corner of Temple and Main Streets in downtown Los Angeles. The best time to visit is at dusk when the lights can really be appreciated. But be warned, the lights turn off at exactly 8pm. Wikipedia article.

Sunday, April 27, 2008, was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. So, of course, I tried making a pinhole lens for one of my cameras. Online are many ideas and projects to make pinhole cameras, but being mechanically challenged and with only a couple hours to play around - I took the easiest route and drilled a one-eight inch hole in a body cap (left photo).



Then I taped foil on the inside and punched a tiny hole with a sewing needle. Once placed on a Canon Digital Rebel camera, I got fuzzy images like this one:



Its a fun project. Pinhole cameras go back to photography basics. The smaller the needle punch hole, the greater the depth-of-field and the sharper the image. I tried various size holes and locations of the foil, but the above fuzzy image was the best I got.

Of course a real lens gave this image:



Many people had better results. Go check out the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day web site and also Google pinhole camera. There is a major downside of using the hole in body cap method with a digital SLR. The image shows all the dirt. Tonight I have to clean the camera sensor.

My son Jonathan went and got his own dog this week - a golden retriever puppy. Years ago we had a golden named Woody. Of course he named the new golden Woody. I call him Woody Too as in "You also named him Woody too?"

The new Lightroom Beta came in handy, as my first good photo of Woody Too was strongly backlit. I was able to do all the correction in Lightroom Beta and not go into Photoshop and use shadow/highlight.

Say hello to Woody Too.

Last fall I posted a number of photos of the construction of the new LAPD headquarters under construction on Spring Street in Los Angeles. Well the exterior is nearing completion and the building is about $150 million over budget. Time to post a new image of the structure.



For this image of the new LAPD headquarters, three vertical images were combined using photomerge in CS2.

Last night I downloaded the new Adobe Lightroom 2 Beta. The top new feature is a retouching brush that allows selective dodging, burning, saturation and similar adjustments to photos. No longer am I stuck with global corrections only. I immediately worked on this recent image of the Continental Building in downtown Los Angeles. I darkened the sky and bottom half of the building and added saturation to the yellow lighting.



The finished image is above. The original image is below.



Localized corrections means many fewer trips from Lightroom into Photoshop. Once a couple more major features are added - like soft proofing - Lightroom will be a complete workflow application.