Day Forty One: Shape and Color

As many of you may have noticed, I had a bit of a dip in motivation yesterday.  It was a long day and really the first time since the project began that I had to make myself go take a picture.  If my motivation dips only once every 40 days I'll be happy.

Today I wanted to atone for yesterday.  So I went out looking for abstracts that blended line and color.  Here, the weathered top of a red fire hydrant is set against a an out of focus background.  The distinctive circles you see in the background are known as "bokeh" and gets it shape from the diaphram in the lens.  Different lenses have different diaphrams (comprised of 5 to 9 blades) which give differnt bokehs.  Some lenses are prized for their bokeh,  The lens I used for thsi shot is not one them.  But it's not bad either.

Tomorrow I am giving a tutorial on portrait photography for my local photo group.  So I am set for tomorrow's shoot already.  It's nice to have a day off from trying to figure out what to shoot.  Til tomorrow...


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Day Thirty-Nine: Spring is in the (COLD) air

Today only hit a high in the low 40's and it's still only early February, but signs of the upcoming Spring are all over in Durham now. Trees and early blooming bushes are starting to bud, and flocks of birds are moving through on their way from South to North. I saw birds all over today, on wires, and lawns and, as here, on fence posts.

The sun was pretty directly behind this little fellow as I was driving by the golf course and was in an area where there wasn't any place to park so I just stopped the car in the middle of the road (it's a Southern thing) and took a few quick frames.

While not taken under ideal circumstances, and needing quite a bit of TLC in post processing, I chose this image because it will remind me that today was the day I saw the first signs of Spring.

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Day Thirty-Eight: Super Bowl Sunday!!!

I am a huge football (NYG) fan and I am ready for some football. 

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Day Thirty-Four: Found along the way

I had a definite plan for today's shoot.  The weather was great and I packed my super wide angle lens and my tripod and planned on shooting at a park I know.  The blue sky, white clouds, and the unique architechture at the park were all on my mind when I set off to shoot this afternoon.  Then..along the way, I passed this solitary tree.  It was on a berm right along side an apartment complex, but from the street angle I noticed that it looked great against the sky and that, from this one single angle, I could isolate it from all of the lamp posts and buildings that were all around it. 

So I stopped the car and took a few shots.  Then went off to the park.  But the place I'd intended to shoot was a swamp today.  And there were some construction verhicles in my planned shot.  Ok.  Change of plan.

One thing the 365 has taught me is to pay better attention to my surroundings.  Each day I have to find something to photograph, try to photograph it well, try to think of what I want to say about the subject, or the circumstances.  Somedays it's hard.  Other days, something just jumps out at me and serves itself up as the photo of the day-- like this tree.


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Day Thirty-Three: Well dressed on a dreary day.

Cold and gray today in Durham.  It drizzled off and on throughout the afternoon.  I had hoped (again) for some real rain because I have an idea for a rainy day picture.  But I need a real downpour for what I've got in mind.  It will come.  At least with the only occasional rain, I was able to get out and take pictures for an hour or so this afternoon.  This time, on one of the Duke campuses. 

I knew when I saw the gray skies this morning that it was going to be a black and white day.  While it was rainy, it wasn't terribly dark and all the snow lying around everywhere works like a big reflector to bounce a lot of light around.  So I saw the possiblity of getting some good, high constrast black and whites today. 

While I was walking, I came upon this gentleman who was quite well dressed and walking along the snowy sidewalk next to the campus path where I was.  I jumped over the stone wall and moved off into the street to get a quick couple of shots of him as he was coming toward me.  Only had about 10 seconds til the light chagned and I needed to be out of the street.  But I got what I came for.

Please check out my main blog: http://bmcportraits.wordpress.com/

Day Thirty-One: Best Snow Day EVER!!!

I know yesterday's post was also sledding...but yesterday was cold and sleeting when Molly and I (and very few others) took to the hill.  Today is 35 degrees and sunny and we've had a whole bunch of neighbors out sledding the hill at the top of our street.  In this photo are Sunny and Nick.  They are across the street neighbors and were out with us for most of the early afternoon.  My self imposed rule is that I pick one photo to be the photo of the day, and this one is it.  But we had lots of folks and lots of fun today, so I'll post a bunch more on the main blog (link below),

Please check out my main blog: http://bmcportraits.wordpress.com/

Day Thirty: All down hill from here.

We got a good six inches of snow and Molly's been sledding since shortly after she woke me up (too early) to go out for the first time.  It's very cold (23 degrees) so we do four or five runs then come back inside to get warm for a bit. Dryer has been running pretty much non stop all day.  

Molly is having a BLAST!!  Have to admit, I am too.  We'll be going back out soon, and taking more pictures, but I like this one because you can see snow getting sprayed up at the front of the toboggan.  And...with my post out of the way for the day...it's all down hill from here.
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Day Twenty-Seven: The Decisive Moment

This afternoon I drove out to Chapel Hill to shoot on Franklin Street and on the quad there.  The light was filtering through the enormous old trees and making interesting shadows on the paths and lawns.  So I found myself a spot into which life would move, and I waited.  I liked the balance of the lamposts on the left and windows on the right.  And I wanted the figure in my photo to be moving perpendicular to the point of view, which creates tension in the composition.  Then I waited for life to stroll by.

I had groups, singles, people walking dogs and pushing bikes.  I shot some of them, but none of that was what I was looking for.  I was waiting for the "decisive moment."  That term (coined by Henri Cartier Bresson) has always seemed somewhat limited to me.  While I understand the objective, to me, it's not necessarily that the moment be decisive, but rather that the elements in the composition be caught at the apogee of their action within the frame.

Here, the gentlemen striding down the path interplays with the girl in the background,  His stride is long and purposeful, moving along his path.  Her stride is more casaul.  He is moving across the frame, she deeper into it.  While there are two figures in the frame, they are isolated from each other.  The eye is drawn to the path into the photo by the placement of the subjects-- the static lamposts and windows, and the dynamic figures.  Neither has crossed into the plane of the vertical path...in an instant, both will.  And an instant ago, they were not yet in the frame.

This is the apogee, or, if you prefer, the decisive moment.
 

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Day Twenty-Six: Today is January 26, 2010

I'm not exactly sure why this photograph captures my day.  It could be the sense of marching in place that these towers give me from this perspective.  It could be the connectivity they represent.  It could be the bleakness of their industrial architechture.  Or the disconnected mazes the lines create.

I guess all those things spoke to me today.  I took a bunch of pretty pictures.  The sun was out and the sky was bright with puffy white clouds.  I looked for vivid colors as I usually do on a day like that.  But what spoke to me today was something darker...more menacing. 

I struggled with this post.  Picked a nice picture with lots of rich colors.  But found I didn't have anything to say about it.  Then I thought about this image.  I hadn't priocessed it yet, but I remembered taking it.  I remember visualizing it in my head to look like it does in this post.  I remember I made an illegal U-turn and parked in some mud on the side of the road to take it.  One of the things about the 365 is that it's a chance to chronicle a year in my life.  I've talked to people who've done one before and many of them have remarked about going back and looking at the images and remembering the day they took it.  And that made me realize that this image and this day are linked.  And I want to record that, so when I look back at the end of the road, and see this image, I'll remember why it's there.  It's January 26, 2010.  And this is how my day was.

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Day Twenty-Five: KISS

As in Keep It Simple Stupid.  I am three weeks into this project and each day I have a plan to go somewhere, set something up, find someone to sit in front of my camera...But part of being a good photographer is being able to use the simplest of subjects in compelling ways.  Here, some dry brown foliage, sitting against the bright sky and some distant branches makes a simple sketch.  I used split toning (an old process for adding color to monochrome prints) in Lightroom to get the green tones which are soothing and seem well suited to the subject and composition.

So much of being a better photographer is embedded in seeing the possibilities and then composing to realize them.  And my goal for today was to shoot something simple in a compelling way.  I am quite pleased with the result.  Hope you like it too.

Please check out my main blog: http://bmcportraits.wordpress.com/

Day Twenty-Four: A morning ride

I managed to make it out for about an hour this morning while breakfast was being made and the baby was sleeping.  I still had the big lens on the camera from my rugby shoot yeseterday and went off to see about photographing some nearby horses.  But the horses had blankets on and were all on the far side of field and I just couldn't get anything interested.  Giving up on that plan, I was just about to pull off when a bicyclist came up the road.  I liked the strong graphic element of her hat and knew it would make a nice black and white photograph.  The light was gray and flat, though bright enough to give nice crisp lighting to the cyclist. 

Molly and I also set up a quick studio shoot (actually in the hallway in our basement) with a background and lights and I shot both Molly and Isaac for a bit this afternoon.  Some nice stuff.  You can see it on my main blog.  Thought about using one of Isaac for today's official photo, but I am trying to limit the number of times I photograph the kids for the blog, and with something I liked already in the can, decided that shoot would be just for fun.  http://bmcportraits.wordpress.com/

Please check out my main blog: http://bmcportraits.wordpress.com/

Day Twenty Three: Rugby

I got an email from my buddy James (Flickr: Jimbo N http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimbon/) yesterday asking if I wanted to go shoot his son's Rugby match in Chapel Hill today.  Jim's son, Cole, plays for State and they kicked off their season (with a win) against UNC this afternoon.  Cole, unfortunately wasn't able to make the game, but James and I had some fun and got some nice stuff.  I am way out of my element shooting sports.  But being out of my element is a lot of what this project is intended to be about.  I have a plan to go shoot some Duke Women's tennis soon with another buddy and if anyone has suggestions for sporting events I can shoot for the project, please let me know.  I'd never shot Club Rugby (or any kind of Rugby) before, but I've seen it played and the great thing was that we were pretty much free to roam the sidelines, even wander out onto the field during timeouts.  We minded our manners, of course.  I love how accessible it was.  I will definitely shoot more rugby there at UNC. 

I was going to post some additional images from the match, but am going to make a post about today's shoot with all my keeper images on my main blog instead.  Please come check it out:  http://bmcportraits.wordpress.com/

Please check out my main blog: http://bmcportraits.wordpress.com/

Day Twenty-One: Not much to see here

It was a rainy and gray afternoon here in Durham.  Hoped it would rain hard as I had a few locations in mind where I could shoot from under cover and wait for a colorful umbrella to come along.  But it just rained lightly off and on...enough to make the day gray, but not enough to prompt that many umbrellas.  I gave up on my original plan and headed off to the bus station.  It was all but deserted, with one lone passenger waiting for a bus.  In the end I decided it was a good representation of the kind of day it was. 

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Day Eighteen: We're not in Kansas...never were.

Today was a long day at work and all day I couldn't figure out what I was going to shoot for today's shot.  I had nothing.  Usually I go for a couple of short walks during the day with the point-n-shoot at least just getting some suff that I could use in a pinch.  But today, didn't even manage to do that.  I had about 45 minutes when I left work and decided I'd shoot Molly's Wizard of Oz figurines.  They've been living in a pocket of my camera bag for the last two weeks, and I've posed them in various places for my idea file I've been keeping to draw back on when things get to feeling stale. 

I remembered seeing yellow bricks at a location I was shooting at last week.  The picture of the castle at the bottom of this post is also from that location.  It was one of last weeks runner-ups.  I brought a flash and reflectors with me, but the light was nicely broken up and interesting looking filtering through trees, some high grass, and the castle and I was able to position Dorothy and the Witch to take advantage of the natural light.  I under exposed to give an ominous feel and pumped the saturation up a good bit (the yellow bricks are kind of pale and faded) to get rich warm tones.

One of the concepts I really want to learn to develop is having a good sense of visual weight for the subjects in my photos.  After years of practicing classic rule-of-thirds composition, producing relatively boring photos that weren't snapshots...but weren't much better, I started reading some ebooks by David duChemin, (http://www.pixelatedimage.com/blog/) Drawing the Eye, in particular,  and learning to think not in terms of thirds of the frame but rather about the visual weight given to the subject matter.   In the past, I've tried to shoot stuff like this and have always been disappointed.  But it occurred to me today that all I needed to do was to apply the same principles to make a shot like this work. 

Here is the castle which is also at this same (abandoned) location:

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Day Fifteen: Warm and Sunny

Today was a beautiful day, with afternoon temps in the low 60s and a clear blue sky. My only time to shoot today was mid afternoon which left me out in the kind of harsh light photographers are taught to avoid. And it's true that it's not a good time to photograph people (unless you can find some open shade or create some of your own). But a day with a clear blue sky is a day I go looking for vivid colors. I don't mind the deep shadows caused by the strong front lighting on a sunny day. As long as the colors pop, the contrast in the shadows just gives them even a bit more life.

This is part of the facade at Sitar, an Indian restaurant (and a good one at that) in Durham. I love the Indian architechture they added when they took over the building from the Lone Star. And the bright red trim, against the bright blue sky, makes this image my favorite from the day.

But it was tough to choose, as I went to a few different locations and got images I liked at all of them. Here are the rejects and also-rans that I considered for today's post. Guess they all won in a way.

Day Fourteen: Things are looking up.

Finally today it was warm enough to actually enjoy some time shooting outside. I went off this afternoon with my 10-20mm zoom lens, a flash and a plan. And I executed...got some perfectly pleasant self portraits of me lit against a darkened background and dramatic sky. Nice. But kind of boring, and kind of in my niche. And I need to save the things I know I can do quickly and easily for the days when I am up against it. I have a few favorite places and favorite approaches that I am saving for days when I need to pull something out...days when my motivation may be low or I'm pressed for time.

So instead today, I am using this image. I took it under an archway at St. Barnabas Greek Orthodox Church on Fayetteville Road. It's an architechtually beautiful new church and I've been shooting there since it was just an unshelled steel structure. For this image, I put my camera with the zoom set to 10mm on the ground pointing up at the arch and then leaned over into the frame. I took about 10 of these from sligtly differenn angles. This is the one I liked the best.

Strobist: Natural light (again).

Day Thirteen: Getting (a little) warmer

Had some time to get to downtown (Durham) this afternoon and went up to the top floor of a parking deck to get an aerial perspective on the new bus station. Unfortunately, didn't have the right lens with me and wasn't able to get what I went there for. But I walked around the permieter of the parking deck taking pictures of people on the sidewalks and courtyards below. In the end though, I liked this shot of the warm sun on the bricks of one of the facades of the American Tobacco development. The 200mm lens compresses the distance between the brick spires and makes for a strong pattern which stands out against the gray wall of windows that sits in shadow across the street.

Day Eleven: Alien Landscape Abstract

I went for a walk at lunchtime around my building and the adjoining one...now empty due to the struggling economy. I had my "real" camera in the car and just took the Canon point-n-shoot (which is technically Molly's) and took shots in the full harsh light of the afternoon. Looking for contrast and color. Walking along the backside of the vacant building, I came across this arrangement on the wall and took the picture because I liked the minimalist composition. The one drawback of shooting with the point-n-shoot for a high contrast shot is that the JPG it creates is not as workable as a raw file would be. So I had to go a little beyond my usual post processing.

To me (and to my wife, who first mentioned it) it lloks like an alien landscape. The conduit, spigot, and rust stain on the lower wall looks like a person (to me, a shepherd with staff; to my wife, something from Star Wars). Wish I could say that I saw the potential when I took the image...but it took a lot of post processing to get to this point. I did like the simplicity and strength of the composition and it's component parts...and in the end, was rewarded with a happy accident.

Strobist: Natural light. LR, CS4, OnOne Phototools 2

Day Ten: The Intrepids

I was driving home late morning along the golf course near my house and saw this group of golfers hit their balls off the tee. The thermometer in my car said it was 33 degrees. I parked and waited for them at the top of the hill and struck up a conversation with them while I was photographing. They, like many of us here, were just plain tired of being holed up inside through 2 plus weeks of temperatures 20 degrees below our winter norm. So they dressed warm and went out to play a round.

The weather forecast is looking much more pleasant for the days ahead with temps back in the 50s by midweek. It's about time. Maybe I'll play some golf myself.

Day Nine: The patio is closed for dining.

Day nine was another cold one but I managed to get out (and even get out of the car) for a little while this afternoon. I was looking to take some street photos of people looking cold (to emphasize the point) but it was cold enough by Durham standards for very few people to be out at all this afternoon. So, I thought this photo of the closed up patio umbrellas and empty tables at a local eatery managed to tell the story in more subtle way.

Strobist: Natural light.

Inside the house, later in the afternoon, Molly took some pictures of me playing with my son, Isaac. We call this game superbaby. Molly (age 7 1/2) got the better photo of the day.



Actually, Molly has taken a good number of excellent photos in the last year. I am working on a post of Molly's stuff on my BMC Portraits blog:


I'll post a link here when I do.