Week 9: Spirit

It's hard to believe I've been doing this for 9 weeks already. This project has been invaluable so far. My guess is that I would have barely touched my camera in the past 9 weeks, if not for this, and I think about how much I'm learning each week. It really is an incredible experience.

With all of that said, this was an incredibly challenging week. I had a really tough time with the theme and had to try and take photos while traveling for the holidays. I hit a frustrating creative block that was tough to crawl out of. I think I got some alright shots, but in general I was disappointed. It goes to show how my expectations have changed from the start of this project. The original goal was to just take a photo every day, and now I want every photo to be amazing. I have to try and keep the original goal in mind. Alright, on to the pictures.

Took the spirit theme quite literally for this one. I have a flash sitting on the table behind the bottles and I'm shooting through a bottle of Woodford Reserve and Bulleit Bourbon. Originally I shot it with just one bottle, but the color and light are much more dynamic using 2 bottles. I also really enjoyed the lens flares coming off of the sides of the bottle.

After that last shot I couldn't think of anything. I hadn't taken enough pictures earlier in the week and I was starting to feel the pressure of not having any ideas and running out of time. I decided to go back to smoke photography and see what I could get. I tried adding a second incense stick into the mix to make more interesting smoke, but that didn't really do anything, and I already did smoke last week. That's when I noticed the detail in the end of one of the sticks. If you look closely you can see the little strands running through the center, that I assume are where the actual incense smell comes from.

More playing around with smoke. I was hoping the smoke would be thicker in the glass, but it does give a nice kind of spirit effect the way it is. 

Finally, I got a picture that I liked. It took a lot of different tries and a lot of different ideas, but this one matched what I had in my head. I wanted to create a ghost-like image and I actually creeped myself out when I saw this one. I purposefully grained it up a bit to give that old horror kind of feeling.

This is the last remains of our old thermostat. Rest in peace little guy.

The spirit of compost. Doesn't look nearly as disgusting after it's been sitting in the machine for a while.

This is pilot for our furnace. It was hard to get a good shot through the grate, but I really liked the glowing end combined with blue flames. I believe this is about a 15 second long exposure.