Week 25: Misc

Trying to get back into the swing of things this week. I didn't want to go with a theme to give myself some freedom, but I think it had the reverse effect. All of these photos were taken on the same day, and it was kind of a frustrating experience. I was in a weird state of mind, and I think it came out in my photos. I was trying to latch onto an emotion instead of an actual theme, and it just wasn't happening. I came away from the day very disappointed and thought I didn't get anything good. Once I actually looked at the photos and did some editing, I found some that I wasn't too embarrassed by, so here they are.

I like patterns a lot in my pictures and I liked how this one kind of went from the bottom right third to the top left third. It seems very art school project though. Not sure.

I wandered out into a cornfield for this one. It just looked so lonely standing there.

Something about the combination of man and nature. That feels like a cop-out and a very easy theme to use.

This one was actually kind of cool. There was a band of sunlight shining through the trees onto this patch of grass that was being blown by the wind. It created a natural vignette effect. This is one of the few I actually kind of liked when I took it.

I feel like I kind of cheated with this shot. There's nothing really interesting about it, except for the fact that the colors are really vibrant. And that's because it's three exposures merged together into an HDR image. It would be one thing if the photo had meaning behind it and the HDR just brought that out more, but really it's just the HDR. 

Dandelions always look kind of cool. I was really hoping to be able to get some sort of action shot here with the seeds being blown off, but I feel like that's been done a million times, but more importantly I couldn't do it and take the photo at the same time. Even though it's played out, I totally would have done it. 

I don't know...barbed wire. Came out kind of cartooney for some reason.

Week 24: Fools

Since we had a tournament this weekend called Fools Fest, and I was taking some photos anyway, I figured I would kill two birds with one stone and dedicate this post to the tournament. I tried to pick seven of my favorite from the weekend.

I couldn't take many photos, because it's hard to coach and take pictures, but I think I got a couple of decent ones. I don't take nearly enough sports photos to be any good at them. I have a hard time with action and find myself resorting to taking pictures of handlers who are standing still. It's also complicated by the fact that I try and take a quick photo, and then yell something, or I find myself watching a big play instead of taking a photo. Oh well. My number one job is to coach, so pictures are just a bonus.

So many things are awesome with this shot. I really like the framing of the two players with the disc in the middle. And, of course, Kayla's face. 

I originally thought this was going to be a throw-away shot. How often do shots of the back of people turn out interesting. But I like the fact that the focus is mostly on the Cheshire hat, with Stephanie blurred in the background. 

I'm pretty sure this girl is short to begin with, then she gets down really low on the mark. Pretty much have no choice but to throw it over the top. This must be what it's like to be tall. Jealous. 

This was kind of an interesting shot. I was zoomed all the way in, focusing on the thrower when the huck went up. I didn't really have time to zoom out and compose and focus, so I just found the receiver and snapped off a shot. I should have held the shutter down to take a series, but I wasn't thinking. I was barely able to get Mollie in frame, but I sort of like it that way. Sure, I miss the defender and Mollie jumping over her, but you don't often see this sort of shot, probably because it's bad :-)

I had to include a team picture. So proud of everyone. 

15 people for a tournament, that's awesome. I hope we've turned a corner. 

There's so many things that I like about this shot that I can't put my finger on. It's probably not a good sign that I can't pick out what I like about a photo. Oh well. 

Week 23: Spring

I figured I'd do something obvious this week and choose spring as my theme. It's been pretty warm here lately and things are starting to bloom, so I figured it would be easy. Then it rained all week. Granted nothing says spring quite like rain, but it made photo taking difficult. As the week wound down, the weather improved, and we decided to go to the prairie, which I figured would be perfect. Turns out the prairie is still pretty dead and dry until it gets burned. Oh well, I still got some decent shots.

Kind of like last week, I'm going to let the shots stand alone. There's not too much to say about shots of trees and flowers.