We just got back from a short family trip to the beach and this was one of the shots I got at the beach before the sun was brave enough to venture out. My Photoshop skills don’t do justice to what I could see, but it was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. There’s still spray on the lens from being out in this. I’m waiting to get the film I shot back.
There’s this turf field near campus where the field hockey and soccer teams practice. The gate was open the other day as I was passing by. In a perfect world, I’d get to play here, but the truth is, with a bad knee and carrying 20 pounds more than I should, those young guys’d have me for lunch.
This is the best shot at this pitch I’m likely to get.
…if you’re quiet enough, and you look closely enough, sometimes you can see them: Woodland Accordion Sprites. (chuckle)
Ran into a friend who needed a reason to get out of a prior engagement so we galumphed around near the river and did a little bit of sightseeing.
I’d been looking at this blog today and got a wild hair. I’d been lamenting to Joe that I wished I could pull off stuff like his so I figured there was no better way to get better at it than to try when the opportunity arose. This was the opportunity.
Landscapes are hard when you’re used to looking at people. I’m not sure I’m in love with this ’cause it’s kind of a grab, but as practice, it’s worth the click.
I’m giving some thought to purging my archives over at Flickr.
When I started using my digital camera, I kinda put stuff up there willy-nilly, not really caring whether it was representative of my best or even my favorite work. I’ve discovered that now, the only pieces I put up there are ones that get hosted for here and I’m at least kinda picky about what’s there. I only scan some of my film. I cull the digital stuff a lot and weed out a lot of stuff I don’t like.
I suppose that in the end, all I’ll need is some extra time and some desire. I’ll let you know how it goes.
These two are the famous Amber Gangi and her cohort, Candace Nirvana, killer models each in her own right. They were hanging around, waiting for some direction from Jim so I got ‘em to do this. The more I look at it, the more I wish (a) I’d had the fisheye then and (b) that I should crop this to a square. In either case, here’s my high art fashion photo.
So I got this new lens and I’ve been dying to get a shot with it. I was stymied over the weekend after it got here ’cause I had nothing lined up. I shot a number of images through my office window, but none of them were all that interesting. In the end, I had only to look into the eyes of the youngest member of my family to find a subject.
The problem with the brilliance of my plan is that she doesn’t stand still. Like ever. Especially when she’s awake. Go figure.
This is a grab from a quick trip to the playground. She wandered around and fell in the woodchips a couple of times. She managed to climb on nearly everything there, but she was not a fan of looking in the camera. At any rate, this is kinda the way I see her now that she’s both ambulatory and headstrong: from behind.
“Got a call from an old friend, we used to be real close…”
(with apologies to Billy Joel)
This young lady stopped by my office after having been out of the country for several months, studying in Germany, Italy, and Austria. I didn’t recognize her at first because she’s let her hair grow and, while she’s still as pretty as this photograph, she doesn’t look like this anymore.
We caught up and conspired to grab lunch sometime soon. What the entire exchange reminded me of was how much a chance to visit other countries and study abroad would have been fun to me when I was in college. Judging by her photographs — and there were many that she shared with me — it was a great time.
She kinda looks like that’s where you’d sleep ’cause clearly you’ve crossed her.
But really, what Amber was doing was looking a little angry for Jim. If the owner of that couch had returned to her house to see we’d put it outside, there’s a distinct possibility that we’d have gotten that look, too. But like I said, this one’s fabricated. Jim was making real photographs (with his film camera) and I was loitering in the wings, snapping with my then new Pentax. I didn’t know at the time that I could shoot RAW to have more information to work with in post so this only exists as a high res jpeg.
I was looking through some of the old images in my Flickr stream and found this image, so I found the original jpeg on my hard drive and had another crack at it. I cropped it to a square and changed the levels a bit. I like it better this way; it’s warmer.
Anyway, it’s a good Friday piece. Have a good weekend. Hopefully I’ll have some new stuff to share on Monday.
Yeah. Not much more to say.
One of the things I’ve lost control of in my old age is my ability to be punctual. When I was in college, “on time” was 5 minutes ahead of the scheduled time, “late” was the actual scheduled time, and after that was unacceptable. Somewhere near the time that I got a car, quick, wireless internet access, and a child (or maybe the three have nothing to do with one another), I lost it. I stopped even caring.
I routinely leave the house without one or two required items for my day. If it’s my watch, I sometimes take a pass and live without it for the day. If it’s my camera, I have to circle back and pick it up. My neighbors must think I’m nuts for going back and forth from the car as many times as I do in the morning on my way to work.
I point all this out because a couple of years ago, when I shot this, this model was late. She was half of a duo for the day so we lived without her in her absence. I was sifting through my hard drive looking for pictures of my daughter — my wife needed something — and saw this, an image I’d not “published” before. It made me smile, because I’m pretty sure I was a little behind schedule that day, but the model was later than I. To be fair, it wasn’t her fault. Her roommate had had car trouble and she was duty-bound to help out. She apologized profusely, though it didn’t matter. It was a laid back day.
