Meckimac.com Photography

Ivan Makarov inspired me with his “Wrapping up 2009″ blogpost to do something similar and therefore you can find below my – in my opinion – best pictures I shot in 2009.

I would be interested to see your comments on which one you like most….

1. Wait a sec…
We went to Lake Compounce near Hartford, CT and shortly before we left the park, the light for that kind of shot was perfect.

2. The Dark Side
I went to the Explorer’s Club in Manhattan to visit a presentation by photographer Rick Sammon that night. It was raining when I was on my way to Grand Central to catch the train to Stamford when I took that shot.

3. The Wetlands of Cape Cod or the day MJ died
It was a beautiful day in Hyannis, MA (Cape Cod) and I took this shot just before I headed back to the Hotel where I heard the news that Michael Jackson has died.

4. Shithouse
This is another picture from the Cape Cod trip and I took it from a whale-watching vessel while leaving the harbor. That roof of that house was really full of bird poo and those 4 seagull were standing there and looked like that were about to p…. again.

5. A bright Monu(ment)
It was a beautiful but very cold day in February when I took that shot of the Washington Monument.

6. …and there was light!
I took this picture at Mystic Harbor, CT inside the cord factory building. I really liked the side light and the bright spot at the end of the hallway.

7. Yellowwwwww
I think it’s pretty obvious where I took that photograph. I shot around a dozen images of that scene and this was the only one where the policewoman stood still while yellow cabs were passing. I was leaning against a traffic-light pole and thanks to the IS in the lens I was able to hand-hold it still despite the quite long exposure of 1/5 sec.

8. Drips from the topfloor
This is my first picture (and the only one so far) that made #1 on Flickr’s Explorer site. I was walking down broadway from 42nd to Washington Square Park when I noticed the great tones and I was sure that this would end up as a black and white.

9. Where is the ocean?
This is one of the first pictures I took when I got back to Switzerland in Summer 2009. It shows a yacht under construction that gets built in the middle of a corn-field. The owner plans to sail the world with it once finished.

10. View from Rigi Scheidegg towards Lake Lauerz and Mythen
One of my last shots of 2009 shows the area where I live. The light was great as was the clear air.

Below pictures are a collection from a recent trip to the Six Flags Great Adventure Park in Jackson, NJ.

One of the pictures even made it to the front page of Flickr’s Explore and I thought I’m going to show the original version (Aperture calls it the Master) of that image just to show the capabilities of Aperture and its Plugins.

We went to the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport CT today and I shot some pictures that I wanted to share. All pictures have been taken with a Sigma 100mm-300mm f4 on my Canon 5D Mark II.

Photos were edited with Apple Aperture 2 and/or Adobe Photoshop CS4.

I recently went to the battlefields of Gettysburg, PA and found a statue of General Warren that overlooking Little Round Top.

I wanted to make that picture look like it was taken back in the days of the Civil War in the 19th century.

This was the original picture straight from the camera (RAW file conversion into JPG):

unedited version

I loaded it into Apple Aperture 2 and sent it to Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro to convert it into a black and white image with added grain.

The next step was to add the scratches in Photoshop CS4 using the brush tool on a new layer (~75% Opacity). I found a few great brushes – just google for “scratch brush Photoshop” and you will get what you need.

The end result came out like this:

I added a few pictures to my Flickr feed that I shot in the streets of New York of some random people that I don’t know.

More pictures can be found on my Flickr Photostream.

Let me know what you think.

Above pictures were shot with a Canon 5D Mark II with a Sigma 100-300mm f4 lens.

Check out following Video that has been created by Akihabaranews . Make sure you enable the HD option – the second part of the video shows the amazing low-light performance of the Canon 5D MarkII that will start shipping in the US by end if this month – November 2008.