Week 33: Reflections

I was excited about this theme this week. It was my first time in a while really taking a theme and working with it, instead of working my photos into a theme I determined after taking the shots. It was nice, in a way. Having a specific them forces you to look at things differently. You're not just looking for anything that could be a good photo, you're looking for specific things. It's somewhat limiting, but forces you to grow creatively. Unfortunately I found this week kind of a bust. I'm not really happy with any of the photos and I had a hard time finding things that I found interesting. Not sure if it was the theme, or if it was me. I also had a few ideas that I thought were going to be interesting that totally failed. I really wanted to try to take some photos of reflections in a camera lens, but they all just turned out bad. I don't think my problem was finding good sources of reflection, I think it was finding interesting subjects within those reflections. Finding subjects seems to be a continuous struggle for me.

This was a shot that at least forced me to move around a bit to get what I wanted. I took some other shots of a tree reflected in this water and it wasn't working. Then I decided to move around until I got the sun to nicely reflect. I do enjoy when I have an idea that I can actually execute.

Not thrilled with this photo. It's the center of a sign light. There was a lot of reflective chrome, but it didn't really reflect anything. I tried moving around to get something, but it was just kind of muddy.

I can't decide if I like this shot or not. I like the contrast and the texture caused by the wet pavement, but I don't find anything about it particularly interesting.

Not much to say about this one, kind of boring. Just a reflection of my legs in a glass door.

This one I kind of enjoy. It was another one that I knew exactly what I wanted and worked until I got it. This was shot through a window and I managed to get equal focus with what was reflecting in the window and what was inside the building. I really love the composition and how it's really hard to tell exactly what you're looking at. The inside and the outside images blend really nicely together.

There was just something about the texture of this light, with some condensation under it, that I liked. 

This was one of the few water reflection shots that I liked. It sort of looks like the tree has been partially erased.

Not quite sure how I feel about this one. Again, I think it would be better if I could find something more interesting reflected in the mirror. 

Week 32: Time-lapse

I decided to do something a little different this week. I have always loved doing time-lapse photography. It's like long exposure photography to the extreme. You really don't know what you're going to get until you've edited all of the photos together and created a video. It's funny, I'm usually not a patient person. I barely have the patience to take a 30 second exposure and see what I get. And yet, I'm somehow able to have the patience for time-lapse. Don't get me wrong, it's difficult. I often have to sit out with my camera for over an hour to get a shot. And then you get back to editing and find out the shot just didn't work. But the payoff makes it worth it. Being able to see motion that's usually imperceptible to the human eye.

I've done some time-lapse in the past, but it was usually just single shorter events. I never really had the drive or the patience to get enough shots that I could piece together into a full-length clip. This week was my attempt to finally do that. I've mixed some old shots with a fair amount of new shots to get a video that was long enough, and overall I'm quite happy with it. It could certainly be better, but that's for future videos :-)



The Universe Within from David Hilgendorf on Vimeo.

Week 31: Utility

I've been lazy with this blog lately and have kind of abandoned themes and stuck with them for a week. This week is my attempt to at least half get back into that. I didn't exactly have a theme for this week, but I definitely knew what I wanted to take pictures of and I knew the general feel I wanted most of the photos to have.

There are some pretty interesting things in the basement of the place that I work. I've always been a little tentative to go into those places since I probably shouldn't be there, and there was always the potential that I could run into someone. Well, I had to go into work this weekend and figured it would be a good time to explore the bowels of my office. What follows is what I found.

This shot was taken in the air conditioning and furnace control room. I knew I wanted to do an HDR of this as soon as I saw it. Machinery and grease always make for good HDR subjects.

This is the motor that controls the ancient elevator in our office. I swear I'm going to die in that thing one of these days. I tried a lot of different shots of this before I got what I liked. I originally tried using just the available light with a long shutter speed, but the windows kept getting really washed out. So I picked a shutter speed that exposed the windows the way I liked them and then used my flash to fill in the motor. 

Just a couple of random electrical components sitting on a window sill. I really liked the light coming in through the glass block window. 

I couldn't really get a good shot that I liked of this. I think because the subject just isn't all that interesting. All of that said, I think I finally found a lighting technique that worked for what I was going for. I tried putting my flash in about 8 different configurations before wedging it between some pipes in the ceiling and firing it straight down. 

 

This one didn't work out quite how I would have liked. With the available light there, was a really nice tiny amount of light illuminating the railing and part of this boiler. Unfortunately I couldn't really get it exposed the way I wanted, so I decided to try and HDR shot. In general I like it, but it's not what I was hoping for. 

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. 

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.