Still Life

February 27, 2012

Still Life

Switzerland (2012)

Is the above photo an act of desperation? In the First-World-Problems sense, it might be. I haven't been making and taking enough time for photography lately. So I find myself doing this, setting up some fruit under the LED lamp in the kitchen. At least I used my homemade beanbag and ran the exposure up to 6 seconds to get the DOF I wanted! I think it doesn't look too bad, but it is kind of ordinary.

Part of that has been the weather or daylight hours (Excuses, excuses!), part of has been just the end of winter blues, part of it has been I-don't-know-what. Maybe I feel like I've run out of places to take pictures of. Can you believe that? I'm in Europe, how often does that happen! First world problems, indeed.

I do think that, objectively, my pictures have improved in the last year and a half since getting the ol' D40. Also, my thinking on what I want to do with my photography has grown considerably in the two months of doing this blog so far. Maybe grown isn't the right word, maybe just been thought about. With that growth and improvement, maybe just because of the winter down time, I on the one hand, feel eager to explore and make pictures, and on the other hand, feel disappointed that I don't have anything new already. I would like this blog to be something a bit different than it is, but haven't made it that yet. I want to show only my best-best work, but see that I haven't been doing that. Noticing that I have errors in some photos after they've been up on display. I don't want that. But note also that the above picture was taken less than an hour ago.

I think the only solution, for me at least, is to go out and shoot some more. The sun is staying up later, and the days are lasting longer. Sure this place can be rather colorless at times, but there are other things to shoot. That grass thats greener on the other side of the fence isn't necessarily so.

Get out there and shoot some things that work. Shoot some new things and mess around. Have fun, after all this is just a hobby.

Sunset

January 15, 2012

This picture goes back to last June. I was motivated to wade through all the pictures I took of this picture by the idea of playing around with it in LR4 beta. It was pretty fun.

Nevada Sunset

Carson City, NV (2011)

I had taken a similar photo on a different day when the sunset wasn't so dramatic, but the trees and hill still really said something to me:

Sunset over Toiyabe

Picking that second picture was much easier, the situation was pretty static, so I framed a couple of pictures, pressed the shutter and was done. That was it.

The next day there were some clouds, I headed out, stood there, and literally took over 100 pictures. I just kept shooting, and the clouds and light kept changing. It was great! When I got back to my computer, I had a ton of pictures to pic through, and they all looked good, just a little different. So which one do I pick? That would be why I haven't put up a picture of it yet. That, and the whole "don't over do the sunsets (or flowers) thing". Sunsets are great, everyone loves sunsets, but it does get a little boring when all you see is pictures of sunsets. So I try to only do a couple a year. That is, put pictures up. I make pictures of sunsets and sunrises as often as I can! But only I get to see those....

Enjoy that top picture, it'll be a while before I put up another sunset...