Week 44: Going Places

I recently took a trip down to Florida to visit my uncle. A delay of my flight out of Madison meant I missed my next flight in Cincinnati. Meaning a five hour layover instead of 45 minutes. I love taking photos in airports, so I made the most of the situation.

This really struck me. The reflection of one man, standing alone, staring in the distance...

I always love moving walkways for photos. Although I must look pretty silly riding back and forth with my camera on the ground.

I had this whole terminal to myself. I tried a ton of different shots before I got this one. The blurred stools in the foreground had a really interesting pattern, but it wasn't really working having the focus on those. I also tried cutting them out of the photo, but I really like the addition of them.

I've always thought outlets looked like faces, but until I took a photo of one, I didn't realize the pain in the face.

Black and white HDR. I really love it, and might try and do more of this style. For some reason this looks very WWII to me.

One of the few times I feel like I've used leading lines well.

Not in the airport, but I still liked it. It's surprisingly hard to get good photos of a sailboat, while on the sailboat. I bet using a fisheye lens could be cool.

Week 43: Petra's First Month

Not many updates to the blog lately, but having a baby and moving will tend to have that sort of impact. I figured it was only appropriate that my first post back should be of Petra's first month. So here you go.

This one was taken by our doula Emily. A bit of a cheat since I didn't take it, but I really like it.

This one was also taken by Emily, just after Petra was born. 

 As Mollie would say, this is her model face. Just look at those vapid eyes ;-)

Ahhhh, the joys of a sleeping baby. 

Almost smiling. 

This is her favorite hat, I know because she told me. Also, I'm pretty sure this face means it's her favorite hat. 

Again, so close to a smile. Maybe it will happen soon. She's definitely tracking my face a lot more and her mouth is turned up in an almost smile far more often these days. 

Week 42: Reunion

It's been a while since I've posted. Turns out that having to move your life in three weeks will tend to put a damper on photo taking and writing. Well, I'm now a tiny bit more settled into life, until it changes drastically again in one month, so time for some more photos.

I decided the theme for the week was going to be reunion. Seems appropriate being back in my hometown and this particular evening was a reunion of sorts, being with folks that I used to play music with.

These photos were an interesting challenge. The lighting was pretty terrible for photo taking and the room was very small. I wanted to get more close-up shots, but my 100mm lens was a bit too close, and my 17-50mm lens wouldn't get me close enough. So I was constantly switching lenses depending on what I wanted. It was also pretty much impossible for me to move around and get different angles, so everything was pretty much taken from the same place. I ended up shooting most things at ISO 1600 or even 3200. Really not much light. On with the show...

I love this shot. It's technically not very good, but the combination of the looks on Keith and Paul's faces are pretty incredible.

Pretty much the last time I played music with people we had notebooks and printouts of lyrics and chords. How things have changed...laptops, iphones, ipads...a very different experience. I like the dichotomy in this shot, a little bit of the analog with the digital.

I found out that I like taking photos of hands, and I know why. I'm still quite shy taking photos of people, even people I know, so hands are much easier. 

I think this is my favorite. Something about the framing and clarity and the bit of light coming from the laptop. 

Oh look, more hands...

Wait, you didn't get enough hands, well, here's some more...

Again, not a technically great shot, but I was happy to get a shot of people singing and playing. 

Week 41: Snow

Amy and I went back to Madison for the holidays and they were lucky enough to get a ton of snow just before we arrived. I was extremely excited to get some snow photos. Snow can be challenging to photograph. It tends to mess with auto metering in the camera and it can be hard to expose properly with people in the photo. No matter, I was up for the challenge.

Gabe and Nathaniel and I went out for some snow disc golfing. It was gorgeous. 15 inches of snow makes golfing difficult, but makes for pretty photos. There's something about this shot that I love. I like the contrast of Gabe's jacket with the snow and the depth in the background.

This shot is a lesson in subject. I took a lot of other photos of snow covered trees, but having the golf pin in the corner as my subject made this shot stand out against all of the others. 

Amazingly this isn't an HDR shot. The sun was setting and created some really nice colors. 

While I was back in town my mom and I went for a horseback ride in the snow. Horses love to roll in the dirt after a ride and apparently the same holds true when there's snow on the ground.

I love the rays of sun coming into the shot as well as the little ice crystals on the horse's eyelashes. Couldn't be happier with this shot. 

The snow was pretty unreal. It looked so fake. Very flaky and crystallized. Tried to capture some of that with this shot. 

Easily my favorite shot from the trip. The clouds combined with the sunset created some pretty unreal lines in the sky. The HDR brought out the contrast in the clouds a little more, but the scene was pretty breathtaking in person.