Here goes:

Fixing What’s hot on Google+ (Media Tapper) - (#75 of 366 X 2012 project)

Running out of ink (EuroTech) - (#76 of 366 X 2012 project)

WikiLeaks: Assange To Run For Office (EuroTech) - (#78 of 366 X 2012 project)

Apple in Hot Water in Europe. Again. (EuroTech) - (#81 of 366 X 2012 project)

The Pirate Bay To Hover The High Seas (EuroTech) - (#82 of 366 X 2012 project)

Shot with a Canon EOS 50D (w/ 17-55 f2.8 IS USM lens)

• Shot on Aperture priority
• Focal Length: 55mm (35mm equivalent: 88mm)
• Aperture: f2.8
• Exposure: 1/2500s
• ISO 100

I spotted this windmill in the middle of a field while on a day-trip to Gozo last week. I’m not a big fan of heavy editing to give pictures a retro look (I know I do it, but not too often). This one just begged for it – I felt that as it is it could have been a shot taken somewhere out in the Wild West in the US some time in the ’60s.

(#80 of 366 X 2012 project)

P.S. Yes – I know, I’m lagging behind in posting my daily updates. I have been incredibly busy lately, and have been finding it very hard to cope with everything. What’s keeping me going is the fact that I know that most of the daily material is being created – I’m just not finding the time to edit and post it.

I have an excel sheet with all the photos I’m meant to upload and articles I need to link to and it does not look as depressing as the state of this blog

Shot with a Canon EOS 50D (w/ 17-55 f2.8 IS USM lens)

• Shot on Aperture priority
• Focal Length: 17mm (35mm equivalent: 27mm)
• Aperture: f3.5
• Exposure: 1/320s
• ISO 160

Remember the Filigree shop from in the Crafts Village from yesterday? The rest of the crafts-people work from Nissen huts that were left over from the time when this area was a British military base with an airport.

The sun was going down and the shadows were creating lovely patterns on the corrugated metal of the huts. Even if the photo feels static I think that it works as a true representation of the area. Unfortunately not all subjects are as interesting and exciting as we would like them to be, but some (like this one) still deserve to be documented.

(#78 of 366 X 2012 project)

Shot with a Canon EOS 50D (w/ 17-55 f2.8 IS USM lens)

• Shot on Aperture priority
• Focal Length: 17mm (35mm equivalent: 27mm)
• Aperture: f3.5
• Exposure: 1/250s
• ISO 160

Visited the Crafts Village in Ta Qali (Malta,) recently and took a few shots in the area. The place is usually bustling with activity most of the day because tourists flock to it to buy gold, glass-ware and filigree at rock-bottom prices. After 5pm, however, it becomes a ghost town.

It offers many photographic opportunities because the crafts-people all work from huts which are very derelict. There has been a renovation project in the pipe-line for over ten years but nothing has ever materialized. In the meantime no one spends money on making their place look ice just in case the renovation project suddenly becomes important once again.

One of these days I aim to re-visit when the shops are open. Shooting the artists at work would be another lovely opportunity.

The shot has no special techniques. I simply reduced its saturation (colour levels) significantly in post-processing to make the place seem even more desolate.

(#77 of 366 X 2012 project)

Shot with a Canon EOS 50D (w/ 17-55 f2.8 IS USM lens)

• Shot on Aperture priority
• Focal Length: 55mm (35mm equivalent: 88mm)
• Aperture: f2.8
• Exposure: 1/100s
• ISO 400

An experiment in extremely shallow depth of field. These are miniature clay snakes that were being prepared for a crafts lesson. Offhand I can calculate a depth of field of a couple of centimetres (around an inch at best). To achieve this I went in close, zoomed in as much as possible and opened the aperture as wide as I could.

(#74 of 366 X 2012 project)

Shot with a Canon EOS 50D (w/ 17-55 f2.8 IS USM lens)

• Shot on Aperture priority
• Focal Length: 35mm (35mm equivalent: 56mm)
• Aperture: f2.8
• Exposure: 1/100s (and 1/30s and 1/500s)
• ISO 100

This is a photo of one of my favourite haunts – a small bar in Lija, a village that is adjacent to Balzan (the village I live in). It accommodates around 20 people at its fullest, but it can usually get quite noisy. Since seating is limited, getting there quite early is imperative, and once you’re there you surely don’t want to leave. I go there with my friends, with my wife, with my parents – basically anyone who cares to join me. Drinks are dirt cheap and with every round bought you are served with 4-5 plates of “nibbles”. Usually you get to a stage where you have to stop them from getting you more food.

As if this was not enough, the bar’s owner, Sonny, is not only a great guy, but he is also a brilliant magician. At some point during the night, if you’re lucky, he will start performing tricks for his customers.

Onto the photo. I took this early this morning (at around 6.30 am), which is one of the few times this place is closed. Since the wooden Grasshopper sign is covered by the canvas one there was a major difference in tonality and I therefore had to go for HDR. I bracketed  by two stops each side when taking the shot and fused the images in Photomatix.

(#73 of 366 X 2012 project)

Shot with a Canon EOS 50D (w/ 17-55 f2.8 IS USM lens)

• Shot on Aperture priority
• Focal Length: 55mm (35mm equivalent: 88mm)
• Aperture: f2.8
• Exposure: 1/800s
• ISO 100

Hadn’t been shooting the street for quite some time but this was a shot I could not resist – I was not out to shoot street photography and was carrying my DSLR (I usually prefer to use the G12 for street-photography since it is much smaller).

Even though I’m posting this photo I’m not too sure whether it would have been wiser to focus on the girl’s face instead, but at the time I was scared that if I focused on her I would have lost the drawing since it is light and in pencil. In hindsight it might have been a good idea to shot down the aperture and have both subjects in focus, but that’s life. We only get a moment and can only hope we do the right thing. In spite of its imperfection I still quite like the shot though, don’t ask me why.

(#72 of 366 X 2012 project)

Shot with a Canon EOS 50D (w/ 17-55 f2.8 IS USM lens)

• Shot on Aperture priority
• Focal Length: 55mm (35mm equivalent: 88mm)
• Aperture: f2.8
• Exposure: 1/1250s
• ISO 400

I was walking by a church and spotted these flowers on the steps outside. They seem to be a bouquet that the bride throws behind her after she gets married. Whoever caught them left them lying on the floor, so I wonder what was going on there.

Onto more technical issues, I walked as back as I could, then I got up close and personal with the flowers by zooming in as much as my lens allowed me to, opened the aperture up wide and therefore isolated the flowers. The depth of field is shallow, the field of view is narrow and therefore the scene feels even more lonely. Even though at first glance the picture looks like it has selective colour in a B&W picture, as you can probably notice by the small tufts of grass, I did not play around with the colour of the rest of the photo – the stone was really that grey.

(#71 of 366 X 2012 project)

I Fiori (Flowers in Italian)

Shot with a Canon EOS 50D (w/ 17-55 f2.8 IS USM lens)

• Shot on Aperture priority
• Focal Length: 17mm (35mm equivalent: 27mm)
• Aperture: f2.8
• Exposure: 1/400s
• ISO 200

Shot this image in Siracusa, Sicily, which is where I’m travelling over this weekend. It is terribly windy and mostly over-cast, but this shot was taken in one of the few times I had good weather.

I got in, up, close and personal with the flowers at a stall at the market – set the aperture at its widest and let the shallow depth of field do its job of blurring out the rest. I’m not a big fan of floral shots but I loved this when I saw it and could not resist showing it off. I have to leave most of my other shots on standby for a few stories I want to write about Sicily.

(#70 of 366 X 2012 project)

Shot with a Canon EOS 50D (w/ Jupiter-6 180mm f2.8 lens)

• Shot on Aperture priority
• Focal Length: 180mm (35mm equivalent: 288mm)
• Aperture: f2.8
• Exposure: 1/320s
• ISO 640

• Shot on Aperture priority
• Focal Length: 180mm (35mm equivalent: 288mm)
• Aperture: f2.8
• Exposure: 1/50s
• ISO 100

(#69 of 366 X 2012 project)