Week 16: Old and New

Second week trying to do this project with a full-time job. Once again the photos suffered, but I found it a tad easier to work it in. Hopefully it continues to get easier. The biggest problem isn't finding time to take the photos, it's finding the motivation, but more importantly, finding the motivation to think creatively. It would work great if I could come up with ideas while at work and then just execute them when I get home.

This first photo is what sparked the idea for this week's theme. I just got a new Garmin running watch and have been playing around with all of the features. I didn't like the original them for this week, so I decided to come up with a new one, and thought it would be interesting to do photos that have some element of new and old in them. This one was obvious. I have this weird problem where I assign feelings and personality to inanimate objects, so seeing this photo, I felt bad for my old trusty running watch, relegated to spending the rest of its life in a drawer.

I kind of liked the concept of this photo, but the execution was pretty terrible, or the just wasn't a way to make the subject interesting. The other weekend I removed some crappy looking lights in our kitchen and replaced them all with recessed lighting. The only problem was that the paint and drywall under, under the light I removed, was cracked and painted a different color. Since the recessed light is smaller than that light, I have a pretty crappy looking part of ceiling that I need to fix at some point. I figured it worked well with the theme of old and new, but there's not much of anything interesting in old paint and a recessed light. So I decided to make things more interesting in post-processing. I turned the image into a negative and now I have a photo that I actually find kind of interesting. The blob on the right is a lens flare. You can kind of see the outline of the old light.

Old scotch and slightly less old scotch. Both good. 

This is not a good, or interesting photo, but it does fit my theme and it gave me an excuse to document some cabinet work. Amy and I really don't like the look of our kitchen cabinets, so I decided to do a test and paint the end cabinet white. I think it's going to turn out well. And yes, that's Dilly on the counter being naughty. 

Ham the Astrochimp. He signifies the newness of the space program, with the old of chimpanzees. Ham was the first chimpanzee sent to space. 

I'm not exactly sure what this has to do with old and new, but I liked it anyway. I could make up some story about how a plumb-bob is used in both new construction and old home remodels, but it's a bit of a stretch. 

This is easily my favorite image of the week. I'm not exactly sure why the best image is often at the end of the week. Maybe it's because I've exhausted the obvious photos, or that I've had the week to really let things set in, but it consistently happens. It also wasn't the first iteration I did, showing that it's often not enough to just take one photo and be done, you have to work and refine to get what you want.

I shot this with a 100mm macro attached to my camera and a 50mm lens in between my camera and the old PowerShot. I really love the composition of this and how the camera is in focus through the lens, but blurred outside of it.