Week 26: Solitude

I haven't been posting to this blog much. I've just been too busy with other things. I had some time on my hands with Amy out of town this week, so this is an attempt to get back into things a bit. The blog has been a bit lonely lately, and I've been a little lonely with Amy gone, hence this week's theme.

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.

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.