Through the eyes of a stranger

With this theme, I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do but disaster struck, my Pentax came down with swine flu and is currently in intensive care getting the treatment it needs to get better, so I had to go back to using my point and shoot which, to be honest isn’t up to the task, much to my dismay.
Panic sets in, falls on my knees hands in the air shouting why!(think there may have been a slomo involved, no explosion tho).
And so after much deliberation and I must confess a little help from Mike( he’d already done his so thats ok innit?) here it is my new theme photo and it reflects my mindset at the moment.

“Through the eyes of a stranger” ~tam

I was the stranger wandering through these arched rooms. Once filled with gunners and canons, now empty. Only the arches, walls and floors are left.

This was my first trip to Fort Morgan. Oh sure, I have read a lot about the fort and the battles fought there, but to actually walk where so many lived, fought and died, was incredible.

No Words

Better late than never, eh?

Actually, I took these pictures about 10 or so days ago, but found myself putting off the processing and such until today. Very last minute stuff. My bad. No. Really. I should be spanked. Could someone kindly send round Kate Isitt in some nice leather bondage type stuff with an appropriate whip? Please?

Being the literal young (ahem) man that I am:

Signage

As I mentioned over on Flickr, I considered the less literal meanings of this month’s topic (kindly provided by Tamela – Hi Tamela!) and a handful of ideas had fluttered to and fro in the more dusty reaches of my mind, when I came across one of these signs while driving home from some light shopping at the stores. “Hummmm,” thought I. “No wording, but meaning clearly conveyed.” So I turned my car round, pulled over and fetched my ever-handy and trusty Canon Rebel XTi and snapped away.

As the days passed I realized that the image taken worked for me, so why fight it, right? After all, I so often seem hell-bent on trying to circumvent my natural tendencies when it comes to photography, which may explain my lack of enthusiasm of late for the hobby. Instead, I opted to embrace “me” and set out to discover other gems of signage.

So……where’s Ms. Isitt? Hum?

No Words Needed

The Number 13, Part II

Like I stated on Flickr, I had some relatively high hopes for The Number 13 during this month. Yet all of the opportunities I took wound up being pretty miserable. No. That’s not completely accurate.

They seemed good at the time they were shot. They seemed okay on the small LCD on the back of my Canon 40D. However, once home and uploaded to the iMac they were awful. I was about to type “..they seemed awful,” but that wouldn’t have been accurate. They were simply awful. Sometimes it was a failure from a technical standpoint, but more often than not it was a creative failure. One of my favs was where I had taken photos of the individual numerals that make up 13: the one and three. I then brought them together in Photoshop as separate frames, which I thought was a clever idea, but the failure always came in how the numbers looked together; next to each other. None of these ever had any uumph to them, if you will. They just laid there being boring (no offence PSB).

I had really pretty much given up on obtaining any other pictures for this month’s theme when suddenly the heavens rained down upon me an opportunity as I discussed on Flickr. I must have been some sight to anyone driving by as I sped along the little road in Moraine, trying to catch up and pass the train car in question. Of course, the situation was made worse by my need to find a suitable place to pull over whereby I could escape my car and snap a picture as the train car moved past. This was no small feat considering the lack of spots to pull off the road.

Once again, Chuff and his trains have had me speeding around some part of Dayton in hopes of getting a good shot!

The number 13

When I hear the number 13, the first thing that comes to mind is luck, bad luck, lord knows I’ve had enough of that this year so that can bugger off.
So I went for something else……ALUMINIUM, the Atomic number being 13.
Tricky bugger to photograph, being shiny and all but am quite pleased with the result.

13

My favorite thing about this photo is the shadow between the dice.

Dressed in Black

First, let me say how dreadfully sorry I am for not having made a submission to this month’s most excellent theme on a more timely basis. While my life tends to be rather uneventful, the month of May was consumed with a variety of activities, which precluded me from getting on-board in my more usual (i.e. earnest) fashion. In addition to the many impediments placed before me this month (an unexpected funeral, an anticipated wedding and a trip to Chicago) I also found my original plans for the theme did not work as my model was unable to fit their schedule into mine.

Drat, as our friend Mike might write.

Summer is definitely not my favourite season of the year, but I have created distinct musical connections to various artists over the years to summer. One such artist is Depeche Mode and while running through various songs in my mind I found myself quite quickly visiting and re-visiting Dressed in Black from the album/CD Black Celebration; one of my personal Depeche Mode favs. In need of a model for such a shoot I contacted my friend and neighbor Sandi, who was quite willing to assist in this endeavor and I think you can see why I thought of her for this project.

Sandi was a great sport in helping me with this month’s theme. I had actually stopped by her house to drop off a get-well card after she had surgery earlier this month and while there I noticed how nice she looked in the black around-the-house dress she was wearing. Clearly this thought remained in my head long enough to germinate and develop into the idea to ask her to model for me.

I confess I have very mixed feelings regarding the shot. I did get a small handful of good pictures and maybe one or two very good pictures, but the majority were so-so or fairly awful. But I’m not letting this bother me as taking pictures with a model isn’t something with which I have any real experience (other than the pics with the daughter from the Autumn of 2008). Lighting was difficult both indoors and out. Trying to convey my “artistic vision” was difficult as I really didn’t have one. After all, and I’ve stated this before, creativity isn’t exactly one of my strong points in life.

But I’m not walking away from this feeling badly. Nope. I spent a small portion of my afternoon with a great friend and neighbor. I enjoyed (and lamented) trying to think outside of my normal comfort zone (i.e. being creative). And I particularly enjoyed the process of going through the afternoon’s results and selecting what I thought were the best of the day’s work. Oddly, many of the ones I liked best on the small LCD screen of the camera were not one’s I selected for upload to Flickr. Go figure.

Getting close sometimes means getting wet…

I try not to be one to wait until too late in any given month to shoot pictures for our theme, but this month has proven a bit more difficult than usual. I was fairly busy early in the month working on…well…work for my little home business and then the past week or so have been very rain-filled, thus making outdoor photography rather difficult if not downright impossible.

But never let it be said that I’m not willing to suffer for my Art!

The lovely, and “close up” water droplets you see aren’t actually rain, but early morning dew that had not yet burned off in the morning’s rising sun. It was one of the most dew-covered mornings I had seen since probably last fall and when Mother Nature (obviously in a more charitable mood than usual) opted to provide such bounty, who was I to not take advantage?

While I love the single droplet clinging precariously to the tip of the blade of grass in the first image, I’m more fond of the above image. It is neat, clean, simple and linear; all qualities I appreciate. I also think it’s cool how, when viewed large (via Flickr), one can clearly make out both the trees in my lawn as well as my next door neighbor’s house through the prism that is the water droplet.

I confess that I was becoming concerned that I might not find another opportunity to shot out-of-doors as the rain was coming frequently and readily over the past ten or so days. While shooting indoors wasn’t necessarily an issue for me, I much prefer to be outside. However, I also recognize that I’m not exactly breaking any new ground here photography-wise. Pictures of rain or dew drops aren’t cutting edge photography, are they? Nope. But one must start somewhere and my new Canon 100mm f/2.8 USM macro lens does take a bit of getting used to.

Take the above image for example…I’m pretty certain I could have used a fair bit more light to make better use of the lens. I mean, macro lenses always have a rather shallow depth of field, but if one wants to increase the depth of field one must crank up the aperture, which, all other things being equal, means one needs a lot more light to help keep shutter speeds up. This particular image was shot after a rain and on a particularly cloudy day. I would have been able to increase the depth of field and managed to get more of the image in focus than I have done here. This would be particularly true of the image below:

I have two versions of this image (both are on Flickr, but only this one here): one with the focus on the foreground and the other with the focus on the background. Had I sufficient light I believe I would have been able to get more droplets in focus and perhaps have created a better image overall. Of course, I’d like to see all three samples first before rendering a final opinion.

For me this month’s theme has worked very well. Then again…I picked it, so I hope I would have gained something from it. Here is what I have learned thus far about close-up/macro photography: (1) strong lighting is key for extending your depth of field (if you want that), (2) processed macro shots MUST be looked at on Flickr at their largest available size, (3) motion blur as a result of subject movement is considerably more noticeable with close-up/macro photography so one must keep up shutter speeds (thus again reiterating the need for strong lighting under some circumstances), and (4) laying on one’s dew-covered lawn while sporting a camera does lead to folks driving by just a little bit slower than usual.

Up close and personal…

I’ve been wanting to take the plunge and purchase a macro lens almost as soon as I had purchased my Canon 40D. But other wants and needs interfered with that particular desire and so I relegated my want and desire to the proverbial rear burner.

Fifteen months later I realize that the various taxing authorities owe us a fair chunk of change from fiscal year 2008. And so our spending spree began with the acquisition of various items that we needed, primarily, and wanted, secondary. While not part of the original calculations additional money became available and so the put-off acquisition of a macro lens was thrust upon the front burner and damn near burned my hand! So without further ado…

I concede that my very first use of the lens was for the March group project theme Flux, but this wan’t the real purpose I had in mind for the lens, so I prefer to just ignore that original usage.

I found the experience both very gratifying and satisfying. It is clear that there is more to be made of changing the aperture in macro photography in relation to the changes in depth-of-field. However, there is a minor downside to the entire experience: wind. When one shoots outdoors any movement by the subject is amplified via the camera’s viewfinder. Thus waiting for stillness or shooting in burst mode is about the only way to deal with a breeze.

Still, I look quite forward to taking further advantage of the addition to my arsenal of lenses.