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.

Week 22: Music

Decided after a week where the theme was anger, something a little more calming would be appropriate. I learned a couple of things this week. If I run in the morning instead of at night, I'm much more motivated to take photos, and I have much more motivation with it staying light out longer. Motivation is a good thing.

I don't think I'm going to say much about the photos this week, just let them stand on their own.

Week 21: Anger

So after a week off I wanted this week to be a good one. I couldn't have come up with a better theme myself for this week, anger. This is perfect timing. I'm at the height of anger and frustration with my photography and I figured I could capture that in my photos. This is supposed to be a photo-a-day project, but I ended up banging all of these out in two days. It felt great. I finally felt creative and thought I got some really interesting shots.

This is easily my favorite shot. I feel like I was able to capture exactly the amount of frustration and anger that I feel when I can't think creatively. I also really loved how the lighting turned out on this one. I shot my flash through an umbrella behind me, then I also put another white diffusing panel between the umbrella and me. So any light you see is either wrapping around me, or is bouncing off the rest of the room. I think not lighting my face directly added to the thematic darkness of the photo. 

I call this one 'angry neck'.

Sometimes when you're angry you just want to punch something. I wish I could have gotten an action shot of punching something, but it's already hard enough taking self portraits without adding movement into it. 

This is me holding the camera by the lens, mad at it because it won't reveal its creative secrets. 

When you get frustrated with photography you throw and break stuff. Luckily no actual equipment was hard in the making of this shot. 

After the intense anger and frustration comes the crushing self doubt. I like how there's a little bit of light illuminating my eye.

And sometimes you just have to crush a hat with your hands. 

All in all I'm very happy with how this week went. It showed me that I can get some decent shots when I start feeling creative. Hopefully I'm over the hump and things will get a little easier from here on out.

Week 20: Night

I've been finding this project more and more frustrating. I've been really busy with work and coaching frisbee, which leaves very little time to take photos and feel creative. I feel like the last bunch of posts have all started like this. I took these photos as an attempt to jump-start things a bit. I figure I only have time to take photos at night, so I should make that my theme. Then I can embrace it. I ended up taking a bunch of photos one night, and then not really anything the rest of the week. I think there's also a bit of cabin fever sitting in, and it's hard to come up with new things to take photos of in the house.

After taking these photos I took the week off to try and rejuvenate. We'll see if that helps any with next week's theme. I'm encouraged by the fact that I know what I'm putting out sucks. I'm at the point where I know it's bad, but I don't really know what to do to make it better. I don't think it's execution, I think it's pure creativity at this point. I know I have the skill to execute my ideas, but it's those ideas that are failing me now.

I think it's important to keep churning away, because I'm not going to get better with my camera sitting at my desk. Hopefully I look back at this post as a turning point.

This is a photo I took of a little baby Adipose plush with a Curious George birthday hat. I stuck this little candle light in front of him and there was just something mesmerizing about his eyes. They're just black pieces of plastic, but somehow there's a curiosity in them. I can't explain it.

There's something I really like about this photo. It's not an interesting subject, or an interesting idea, but something about the background and the contrasting light and dark of the cat draws me in.

The main reason I like this photo is because of the reflection in the wood floor. 

This isn't great, but I kind of liked it at the time. I enjoyed the idea of taking a photo of something that's usually beautiful during the day and still trying to capture some of that beauty when it's lit by a yard light.

Lately I've been taking a lot of pictures with flashes, so I really wanted to work with the light I had and something that means motion. The first photo I took, I was just trying to take a picture of the light coming through our front door, but the shutter was way too long to make it crisp, so I decided to go with it and really move the camera around.

The only reason I find this interesting is because of the way the camera somehow only captured half of the numbers. This is the clock on our microwave. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the refresh rate of the display. 

I was slightly inspired by the Pixar lamp with this one. 

Week 19: Growth

This week went a little better than last week. I still didn't get anything great, but I felt like I had a little bit more time to take some photos. During the weekend I sat and thought and came up with four ideas and that was much easier to shoot during the week. I still only got six photos this week, so hopefully I'll get seven next week.

I did a similar photo to this one a couple of weeks ago, but I figured the same effect would be good for this week. Beard growth is best seen when back-lit. I discovered something helpful this week, I can use a ladder as a light stand. It made it so much easier to clamp my light to it and then just move the ladder around. It's not ideal, and an actual light stand would be nice, but for now this works well.

This photo shows my growth as a photographer, or at least my attempt to grow. I saw a video this week on how to take better portraits by emphasizing jawline, it was amazing. I was dubious at first, but it really is an amazingly simple trick. You have your subject bring their forehead and jaw out to the camera. From the side it would look weird, but head-on you can't tell that they're sticking their head out. Below I have two examples. On the left I stood like I normally would if I was taking a picture, on the right I stuck my head out. My beard helps with jaw definition, in general, but the right photo still shows so much more definition. Definitely something I will do with portraits from now on. This technique can also be used from the side, you just have the subject stick the side of their head toward the camera. Here's a link to the video: http://vimeo.com/35732667

I haven't done a silly shot in a while, so this was my attempt. I liked the idea, but the execution was a little off. It's hard to make a composite image look real, especially when both subjects are you. This is what I imagine I would look like if I was actually seven feet tall.

This photo is an example of my growth in running. I took this right after running six miles. And while that is nowhere near the longest I've ever run, it's the longest I've run in this current plan. So I guess that's something.

I got pretty lucky with this shot. We've had these flowers start to grow up through some rocks in front of our house. I knew I was going to take a picture at some point, but then I got lucky and it started snowing. It stopped snowing, leaving just enough of the flower pushing out through the snow.

This one also didn't turn out great, and I've done other long exposures like this that were better. The kind of interesting thing about taking this shot is I actually had a flash trigger in my hand and stood in complete darkness. I left the shutter open and just pressed the trigger every time I got into position. A little different way of doing long exposures.

Week 18: Work

I was sick for a good part of this week, and the photos definitely suffered. I was having a really hard time finding inspiration and motivation. It didn't help that I was traveling for three days this week. I'm hoping to get on track for next week's theme.

I just got some new collar stays for my work shirts, I'm pretty excited about them. Only problem is that a lot of my shirts don't have the little pockets for them. Time to get creative with some cutting and sewing.

It's hard work to do heart rate training AND drink whiskey.

This was a couple of days after I got really sick. I slept until 12:45 in the afternoon then tried to get dressed and go to work. As you can probably guess from the photo, that did not happen. 

This is another photo from the 'animal eats everything under the hood of my car' series. While I was driving to Madison I got stuck in a rain storm, without wipers, and the storm wasn't moving. I didn't have wipers because the animal ate a 4-inch chunk out of the wiper motor harness. Fed up with waiting around for rain that would never end, I bought some cable, some butt connectors, and rewired the motor harness. This photo is my handiwork. 

We have a door at work where the wood grain has an awesome kind of screaming fire face. I tried to get the face to pop a bit more by using HDR and then adding more contrast with the B&W. 

Only five pictures this week since I was sidelined with the sickness. Hopefully I'll get back on track next week.

Week 17: Excitement

I'm still trying to get the hang of taking pictures while working. I think it's getting a little easier, but I still don't have the time to think creatively. I've started trying to think about the theme while I lay in bed and I'll make notes of ideas I have. That makes it much easier to execute during the week.

We keep the door to the washing machine open all the time to let it dry out, so every time I go into the laundry room I can see into it. Lately I've noticed how interesting it looks. I took a static shot of the inside, then started to spin it slowly while keeping the shutter open. Then I took a third shot, spinning it faster. I feel like it captures the excitement (or terror) of what it would be like to be inside the washer while it is spinning.

Excitement can mean different things to different people. To me, excitement means getting a shipment of ten brand new computers from Dell. 

We have these cat figurines that shows them in an excited pose. Instead of just taking a picture of the figurine, I put two of them inside the light umbrella and fired a flash at them to give me the silhouette.

This is kind of the opposite of exciting, rolling out my IT band with a foam roller. 

More of the same, icing my knee after a run. 

This genuinely was exciting, plotting the route from Manhattan to Madison for the weekend. 

Excitement of the not-so-fun variety. After getting part way from Manhattan to Madison I tried to turn the windshield wipers on, and they didn't work. After pulling off the highway I open the hood to discover an animal had chewed off a bunch of wires and plastic. It made for a very exciting rest of the drive. This is just a small sample of his handiwork.