Week 30: Misc

I'm fairly disappointed with the photos this week. I don't think they're particularly bad, but they're just uninspired. Oh well, it's always good to get out and practice. The good thing is that I knew they weren't going to be great as I was taking them. So, I guess recognizing is something...

This one made the cut solely because it's a peacock out in the wild. I've never seen one out in the wild before. To be fair, I think it came from a farm nearby and might have escaped, since I saw four other peacocks fenced in on that farm. Ah well, I can hope and pretend that it's a wild peacock in Kansas.

I feel bad posting photos of flowers, just seems like kind of an easy out. Flowers are almost always beautiful and it doesn't take much skill to take a decent photo of one.

I really quite like this one. I'm realizing that I love the effect of shooting right into the setting sun. I have to make sure I don't do it too much, otherwise all of my photos will start looking the same.

Something about this one is just off. I feel like it should be decent, and the colors on the boat are great, but something about it just didn't turn out. I blame it on the HDR and the bad processing that makes the sky different colors. Or maybe just too much clutter in the background.

This was a shot I took of an old tractor. I really like it, but feel like it's missing just a tiny bit of color.

For this shot I was able to capture what I had in my head, but it seems a little out of place with the rest of the collection. I have lots of warm light photos, and then this black and white. I think it would be better standing on its own.

This one is just kind of...meh. I wanted to capture the sun reflecting off the water and needed a subject in there.

Week 29: Hot

It's been hot this week, it was hot last week, it's going to be hot next week, and probably the rest of the summer. What better theme to have for this week. I decided to fully embrace the heat and go out on a photo walk in the middle of the afternoon, when it's hottest. Last week I used the nice setting light to create a series of really nice soft warm photos. This week I wanted to do the opposite and use the harsh afternoon light to try and aid in the oppressive feeling of the heat.

There's something about cracked pavement and weeds growing through that just scream heat to me. Maybe it's because back in Madison you knew it was hot when the pavement started buckling.

A little bit of the sun peeking into the corner...a streetlight in the middle of a parking lot..there's nothing quite hotter than an asphalt parking lot in summer.

Proof that it was just a little bit hot when I was out walking. Not the worst temperatures we've ever seen, by far, but not exactly pleasant. 

This is going away from theme a bit, but this valve does bring gas into an apartment complex, which heats water...

For some reason construction barrels always signal heat to me. 

As a kid, I remember the thigh-searing pain of trying to use these types of swings in summer. 

Literal heat.