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. 

Week 28: Country

This week comes hot on the heels of last week. It's been hard to find inspiration lately, so I finally decided to just get outside and do some exploring. I knew there was an old church out in the country that I found while biking, and figured that was a good place to start. I came to a revelation while taking these photos, turns out lighting is really important. Who knew? I went out right around 7pm, so the sun was nice and low and was showering everything in a nice golden light. I've always knows that this is the best time to take photos, along with sunrise, but I don't think I quite realized how important it was, until I realized that 7 of the 8 of these photos would be crap without the nice lighting. So, without further ado, on with the show.

Grass, wind, and nice sunlight always makes a great photo. It's so simple, but can be so beautiful. There's something ethereal about the way it moves and I'm always surprised by the way it can be captured on film.

This is a statue of Jesus surrounded by three other statues. Not really up to date on my religion to know who they are, sorry. There was nothing inherently creepy with the statues the way they were, but I'm very happy to have pulled off something extremely creepy with this photo. I wonder why creepy is my go-to stance when taking photos of statues?

Just a rusty nail sitting on some concrete. I really didn't expect this one to be that interesting, but there's something about the textures combined with the lighting and the slim sliver of focus.

I like to take pictures of the moon, but it always turns out so small and meaningless. Or you have to use a huge zoom, and then you just have the moon, with no other subject. This is the first time I've been able to photograph the moon with another subject and actually be happy with the outcome.

Cicada husks. I loved how the light was coming in from the back and shining through the husks. I allowed the lens to flare a bit and the focus to wander and I think it all adds to the airy beauty of it all. I have another couple of crisper photos of this, but they just didn't have the same impact.

HDR time. I love love love abandoned buildings and this one was fairly fascinating. It was just a house off the road surrounded by overgrown bushes and trees. How does a house get to this point? How old was the house? Without HDR this photo definitely lacks a certain amount of pop. But I think I managed to get it without it looking too over-processed.

I staged this photo a tiny bit. I found this old rusted oil can laying on the floor and propped it up in the window with the sun coming through the trees behind it. It took me about 8 different shots to finally get what I wanted, but I'm really happy with the final shot.

One last HDR of the outside of the house.

Week 27: Kansas City

For our 9 year anniversary, Amy and I decided to head to Kansas City and go to a free art museum. The museum was pretty amazing and we only saw a fraction of it because of time constraints, but I'm sure we'll go back. It's kind of weird taking photos of art, but I guess it's just like any other subject.

This was a really interesting house outside of the museum. I just really wish the railing wasn't smack in the middle of the shot. Not much I can do about it. I suppose I could try and photoshop it out, but that would be a lot of work.

 This was an exhibit inside of the museum. It was a giant egg made up of random stainless steel cooking items. I purposely had the white balance way off, thinking I would fix it in post, but I really liked the warm tint to the light, so I kept it. Hooray for happy accidents.

 There's definitely a sadness to this one that I don't remember when just looking at these statues in person. Maybe I just didn't look close enough. All of their eyes are closed, but I still feel like they're somehow staring at me.

 I found this statue creepy. It just stared right at me, so I figured I'd embrace it and stare right back.

 I couldn't get a good shot of this sculpture. The only lens I brought with me was 100mm and I couldn't get far enough away to get the whole sculpture. Even so, there was so much going on that it was hard to find a focal point. I have many different shots, but I tried to line this one up with the tree in the background to give some sort of man vs nature symbolism.

 Sunset on the drive home. Not bad considering I took the shot through the window of the car while moving.

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.