deviantART: gallery:lukeroberts/230952

Retro::Four

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:10:51 PDT

Back when I first started to realise that photos could be more than just simple snap shots, I took this peg photo.

That was one of the first times I experimented with creative photography, back in 2001 with a fancy Sony Mavica.

Ten years later and I'm still taking peg photos.

--

^{Camera: Olympus OM-1n
Lens: Zuiko 50mm f/1.4}

Canberra II

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:03:52 PDT

Canberra, ACT

Canberra I

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:01:25 PDT

Canberra, ACT

Adelaide II

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:01:55 PDT

Adelaide, SA

Sleeping in

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:41:41 PDT

Billy, taking a break from guard duty.

Adelaide I

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:59:57 PDT

Adelaide, SA

Destroy Ubuntu template file

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:21:35 PST

Template file for the Destroy Ubuntu wallpaper.

Includes the textures and mask file so you can make your own custom one. Add your own text or logo, change the colours - hours of fun for the whole family!

Includes:
- PSD with all layers (1600x1200px)
- PSD with flat texture for more compatability/less confusion (1600x1200px)
- Quick visual "how to" guide on using the alpha channel texture (click here to see it)

Also see:
Textured text for photoshop
Textured text for GIMP (video)
The whole collection

Deus SR400 Manx

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:21:29 PDT

Went down to Deus Ex Machina in the city (Sydney). Some amazing bikes there. This one is the Manx.

A few other shots from the day:

One
Two
Three

A triumph

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 02:55:35 PDT

It would be difficult to overstate my satisfaction with this. Despite all the wobbly flaws and poor craftsmanship, the fact that i made it makes me love it as though it were a real companion cube.

Anyway, i don't think it's a bad job, considering it's my first foray into paper crafts since primary school.

The schematic is here (is that what you would call it?)

I know it's from over a year ago, but i remembered seeing it and thinking it would be kind of fun to make. Using the computer so much for design and art and rarely having anything to physically show for it can be a bit demoralising. So it was kind of cathartic for a while to be using the scissors and glue and interacting with the paper, rather than just the mouse and stylus.

Always Greener

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:36:41 PDT

Since moving from a more industrial area in Adelaide to a more regional area in Sydney, my photos have taken a more natural turn.

I love taking bokeh-ful plant shots like this now. I guess it's because there isn't as much graffiti around or old textures. Don't worry - I still manage to find some

Graffiti 2006-2008

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:00:38 PST

1. Bill posters will be prosecuted, 2. Bill posters will be REWARDED, 3. No Dogs, 4. Remains, 5. Sloop, 6. Ikhonic Tribute, 7. Texture, 8. Door, 9. Graffiti, 10. ORANGE, 11. War Profiteers, 12. trigonometry, 13. Therml under wear, 14. Peeling, 15. ESCAPE DOOR, 16. Dangerous, 17. Surface, 18. Reliable, 19. y, 20. Fields, 21. collex, 22. Streets of NYC, 23. Pondlife I, 24. <3, 25. Farmers Union, 26. Untitled, 27. BA, 28. 1838, 29. Transport Workers, 30. TBL, 31. cardi, 32. Untitled, 33. Blue, 34. TBL, 35. Geometry, 36. Telstra I

Olympus OM-1n

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 04:45:47 PST

This is the camera I cut my teeth on, so to speak. Although it was about the third camera I owned, the ones before were fairly useless. The first was a little point and shoot 35mm Kodak of some kind and the next was a terrible VGA webcam that had about 10mb memory so you could carry it around and take (appalling) photos. Before that I used borrowed digital cameras (they were many thousands of dollars back then, even for a basic one – around 1998-2000), but this was the first camera I was able to really learn from.

It belonged to my grandfather who bequeathed it to me when he passed away in 2003, along with a few lenses and some paper, chemicals, enlarger, etc for developing black and white photos.

The camera itself is from the mid-70’s, has no auto-focus and the light metre is just a little stick that you have to balance between a plus and minus sign when looking through the view-finder. Just about everything on it has to be adjusted manually, so I had to actually think about the exposure and focus and aperture and so on. So it forced me to learn a lot about the technical side of photography. I got some nice shots from it as well.

After that, I moved on to a Minolta DiMAGE Z1 then the Canon 300D and now, just a couple of months ago, a Canon 40D. I think the Olympus OM-1n taught me more than any of them.

--

Oh, and about this shot itself – I was looking at the Olympus and seeing if the lenses would work at all on the Canon. They obviously won’t fit, but I tried holding them in place, as I have done before. Then I remembered the live view feature on the 40D. That made it a lot easier to see what was being captured so I had a bit of fun taking a bunch of shots. The window and sunlight outside, along with the red roof next door and the venetian blinds made some really interesting flare/light leaks.

You can see the rest of the photos here.

September 2008

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:45:28 PDT

Photos from September 2008 that I can't really be bothered thinking of titles for and submitting individually

Collage made with Picasa 3 beta. It made a couple of the photos tiny, but it does a good job.

Click download for larger version (1280x800px)

They don't go there any more

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:36:47 PDT

At an abandoned railway line

Ghosts

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:15:03 PDT

Slightly below-ground level car park in Adelaide. Some really nice textures around there. I'm going to have to go back there with the 40D, but the little Ixus doesn't do a bad job.

Ether

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:13:10 PDT

I'm enjoying my new 50mm f1.4

Kings Cross St Pancras

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 05:46:22 PDT

^{London, April 2008}

Quis custodiet custodes ipsos?

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 05:45:02 PDT

Quis custodiet custodes ipsos?
Who watches the watchers?

--
^{(Also, new camera Canon 40D. The secondary mirror broke on the 300D, so autofocus stopped working. It was time for an update anyway)}

Mean Streets II

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:28:01 PDT

I guess this will be the last of the NYC photos I put on here. You can read a bit about my trip here (with some videos ): [link]

^{NYC March 2008}

Mean Streets I

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:27:19 PDT

Google Streetview.

Incidentally, just to the right is Dave's pawn shop from Flight of the Conchords (which is what we were looking at, at the time )

^{NYC March 2008}

Streets of NYC III

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 05:21:46 PDT

Streets of NYC I
Streets of NYC II

Here it is in Google Streetview. I'd forgotten how close it was to this shot - the subject of which you can see in the background.

^{NYC March 2008}

Embiggened skin for Launchy

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 04:57:08 PDT

After making the Elegant Brit skin and seeing how easy that was, I've made another. This time with a few colour variations.

Was originally wood grain then i just made it black

I wanted a skin with large, clear text and good contrast. I started out with the woodgrain idea and embiggened the text, took away the grain and made this.

Abandoned

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:35:45 PDT

Such an awesome looking area. I'm glad we got off the bus too early and had to walk 40 minutes to the hotel - ended up seeing some great sites that you wouldn't see or have time to photograph when on the subway or bus.

^{NYC March 2008}

Update Here it is in Google Streetview

Elegant Brit skin for Launchy

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:23:58 PDT

I started using Launchy on my Ubuntu desktop but couldn't find a skin that went well with Elegant Brit. So I went ahead and made one myself.

Some skins have problems with the Linux version of Launchy. If the mask.png, alpha.png and background.png aren't perfectly aligned with the input/output boxes the transparency is messed up. Took me a while to work out what was wrong. So this skin doesn't have any problems on Linux. (The skin works on Windows too, but i'm not sure if anyone has ported Elegant Brit to XP or Vista)

ZIP file includes version with shadow and one without shadow.

Installation
Unzip file and move the folders to /usr/share/launchy/skins

Launchy
Elegant Brit
Wallpaper in screenshot
Ubuntu

Streets of NYC II

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 06:00:44 PDT

Somewhere near Times Square.

Streets of NYC I
Streets of NYC III

^{NYC March 2008}

Department of Health

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:56:24 PDT

heh.

^{NYC March 2008}

Avenue of the Americas

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 05:23:08 PDT

^{NYC March 2008}

Streets of NYC I

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 05:20:52 PDT

Streets of NYC II
Streets of NYC III

^{NYC March 2008}

Destroy Ubuntu

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:25:26 PDT

Follow up to Pirate Windows: Rusted edition.

1600x1200px
1650x1050px
1440x900px

Basically using my textured text technique.

Ask Why

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:00:50 PDT

Good advice.

^{NYC March 2008}

Times Square

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:20:15 PDT

^{NYC March 2008}

Jeff

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:18:07 PDT

Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.

^{NYC March 2008}

Pirate Windows: Rusted edition

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:04:37 PDT

Originally done as a request, it turned out better than i expected. So here it is in a few colour variations.

1680x1050px

Original clean version here: [link]

Sabotage Bulb

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 08:29:27 PDT

50mm f1.8

Photoshop toolbars: 1 to CS3

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:09:06 PST

It’s interesting to see how the toolbar has evolved. I started out using version 4, but the jump between 6 and 7 is where there is the most change. Version 7 introduced a lot of new features too. From 7 to CS2 there weren’t many huge changes but the whole interface update of CS3 makes far better for working than previous versions.

In particular, I like the ability to fit the toolbar into one column, making it longer, but letting it take up less horizontal space (click on the little arrows top, left of the toolbar in CS3 in case you missed it).

I originally made this in high school for a project in 2002 and have since added CS, CS2 and now CS3. Was originally in my scraps (the old one still is) but I've grown to like it. I mostly updated it for my site.

Sunny day in London

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 13:44:17 PST

Still cold though.

Phoenix

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 08:01:55 PST

Trying out this online image editing program called Phoenix. It's in closed Beta testing at the moment.

Part of a bunch of online editing programs from here: a.viary.com

Apparently i have a few invites if any one is interested

FAQ
Is it any good?

^{It's very good for an online application. I was impressed with the number of features, having only used a few other online photo editors before which were rather limited.

This one has quite a lot of the main features you need. I'd say it's about even with GIMP in some ways. It is sadly lacking in adjustment layers though, which i find hard to live without and having to upload a photo to work on it slows things down a lot.

Uploading an unedited JPG from most cameras is around 2-4mb. Maybe double that for a RAW photo. Unless you have very fast broadband it's a bit tedious.

It's pretty cool that it keeps all the source images and automatically keeps revisions of the work as you save it, so you can always go back.

Here's the link to the actual work which others can apparently edit (with all the layers, etc): a.viary.com/imagedetail?fguid=c9d62232-3087-102b-844c-003...

If you want to see what it is capable of, check out Meowza's work. Very impressive stuff. It does show that it's really not the tools, it's the way you can use them. Though, i dare say that generally Photoshop as a tool allows you to do things more quickly and in a less destructive way than other tools.}

Graphical Astronomy

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:18:12 PST

^{Kilburn, London}

Pattern Wallpaper Template

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:47:46 PST

I've always loved these simple pattern wallpapers. They're the only type i can stand for very long, other than a plain, solid colour.

So this is a little template to make your own. Click "Download" to get a ZIP file containing the Photoshop PSD.

The PSD will open very small. This is to keep the file size down. It's always annoyed me when people make a wallpaper, then have it in a thousand variations of colour and every possible resolution, making the download 50mb or something ridiculous.

So with this template, you can resize the image yourself to what ever size you like. It's built with adjustment layers, so it won't pixelate or blur. You can choose your own pattern or change the colour very easily.

The only problem is that you need photoshop to be able to do all this... so if you don't have photoshop and want it at a different size, i guess let me know and i'll see what i can do

Original pattern from [link]

Update
I've put some more sizes and a black version for download here

London

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:43:53 PST

^{Taken the first week or two after we arrived. I think this is how i'll remember London the most.}

Under the Persecuted Essence

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:36:00 PST

^{Farringdon, London}

The Listener Traces My Apology

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:00:41 PST

^{December 2007}

Gascony Avenue

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:57:23 PST

^{October 2007}

London Eyes

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 12:33:13 PST

New Year's in front of the London Eye.

Was hardly a week ago, but it feels like ages.

Click download for ~3600x850px version

The Underground Universal

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:50:37 PST

^{Leicester Square, London}

Triptych of diptychs

The Waking Unknown Bridge

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:49:51 PST

^{Leicester Square, London}

Triptych of diptychs

Below the Flowing Song

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:36:53 PST

^{Chalk Farm, London}

Triptych of diptychs

Extreme Phenomenon Leak

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 05:59:52 PST

Seeing if i could make something interesting out of all these useless night shots.

Also, happy new year And i'm back for 2008. Didn't do much on here in 2007, so i'll try and put more stuff on here in 2008.

Download for 2500x2500px

Fallen Star

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 08:13:03 PDT

objet trouvé

Overcast

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 05:42:47 PDT

Grange Jetty, Adelaide.

Vertigo

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 08:44:28 PDT

Took the lens off the camera but held it in place, moving it left and right to change the focus. Like a home-made tilt-shift

I see the light

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 08:39:25 PDT

Full view for 1600x1200px

Playing with Inkscape, seeing how it compares to similar vector illustration programs. I think it stacks up pretty well. I've been using it occasionally since late last year but i wanted to try it for actually making something good, so i did this.

Only used Photoshop to add a bit of grain and extra glow. The rest is Inkscape.

Based on a photo by Luís Vieira: [link]

Outline view here: [link]

PBR

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 07:34:39 PDT

It's hard to come up with titles for shots like this

Click

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:32:36 PDT

Good ol' iZone

Can you still get film for them? I haven't been able to find any.

New Horizon

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:08:16 PDT

Taken from Largs Bay beach, Adelaide

Here Comes the Sun

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 06:27:05 PDT

and I say
it's all right

Pirate Apple

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 06:03:49 PDT

Follow up to the Windows version

Click download for full size 1920x1200px

Pirate XP

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 08:07:03 PDT

Something a bit different

Click download for full size - 1920x1200px

CRW_0001

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:25:15 PDT

My 10,000th photo with the 300D.

This was on Mother's Day 2007 (13 May). I didn’t realise it was the 10,000th shot until I got home and saw the file names had reset.

I'm a bit worried now. Apparently the shutter wears out around the 10k photo mark...

The Beetles

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 01:44:51 PST

All you need is love

--
^{Made a video tutorial on how to get this effect here: [link]

View Larger here: [link]}