Science of Chocolate - The Hipster(matic) Edition

This was a really fun event that K and I went to put on by the Illinois Science Council. One of the development scientists from the Blommer Chocolate factory here in Chicago (I bike by this on my commute almost every day) gave a presentation on The Science of Chocolate.

It was great, even though it felt a little like high school chem lab all over again. We got to do a few "experiments" and even a chance to make our own chocolate (moral, best leave the chocolate making to the professionals). And, of course we got to eat a lot of chocolate.  This really made me want to take the factory tour.  Lots of nerdy enjoyment (and a location that also provided for beer), what's not to like?

Science of Chocolate - IL Science Council Event

It's science! Tasty, tasty science.

Some Hipstamatic shots from the event to come soon.

Polaroid Digital Conversions And Thoughts On Digital Editing

One of the things that I love about film is that by picking the right type of film, camera and processing you can get results "right out of the camera" that would take a lot of work to recreate in Photoshop. However, this feature of film gets a little fetishized on a lot of the analog photo blogs that I follow. For some, "straight scans" are the holy grail, including some where only unadjusted scans of wet-printed photographs are legit, and everything else is somehow "cheating."

My view is a lot more flexible. Even my "straight" scans usually include adjustments for color, contrast and some sharpening to adjust for the the loss of sharpness you get when you scan any image. I also like playing with my images, sometimes engaging in some heavy (perhaps even heavy-handed) digital processing. Really nothing I do isn't something that someone highly proficient in a wet darkroom couldn't reproduce, but since I have no desire to become a wet-darkroom guru (and certainly no time), I'll stick with my digital toys.

Below are a couple examples of some heavy-editing experiments that I did awhile back, using scans of some paper Polaroid 100 packfilm shots, which I had scanned with my regular flatbed scanner. K hates them, but I like the effect. I wouldn't want to use the effect on every photo I took, but I think it works for these.

See the full gallery on Posterous

The Zipper

The Zipper: Memorial Day Neighborhood Carnival (Canon 40d, 17-40mm f4.0, handheld)

This was my favorite Carnival ride when I was a kid.  It's just such a gloriously evil, nausea-inducing blast.

The Life Cycle Of A Photographer

This is pretty great.  I am somewhere past "The HDR hole," but I keep falling back into the "Dammit, I suck" valley.

Cool Bicycle-Related Animation

The Cyclotrope from tim Wheatley on Vimeo.


Obviously, this space has been very quiet in the past few months.  Work has been crazy, I've been doing very little photography-wise and I've only recently gotten back to bicycling to work regularly after the bout of deep-winter snowstorms.  (Aside: "thundersnow" is some crazy s%#t!)  Saw this though, and had to pass it along.  Really fun and impressive.

Hope to get back to the blog soon, but I make no promises.  Mostly what I've been wanting to do lately is just curl up with a good book or play with the dog.  I love Chicago, but the winters out here can get pretty tedious.  We are up into the 60s today, though, so hopefully real Spring is right around the corner.