Category: Artifacts

This assignment was a tough one – chat up a stranger and shoot their picture. Get their first name. Naturally, the assignment scared the crap out of me, so I hedged my bets and went to the bar at my usual coffee shop (shout out to Makers and Finders, Las Vegas). It took a while to crack the ice while we surfed on our respective smart phones. I found an entry to start chatting midway through his breakfast by asking about his eggs benedict.

Johnny is a Las Vegas long timer (came with his father in the Air Force) and has been working in hospitality his whole life. He currently does room service at the MGM grand so while I was starting my day, he was ending his. Once the ice was broken, we had a really good chat. As a recent transplant to this city, the ridiculousness that the service industry folks puts up with is still amusing and interesting to me.

About twenty minutes in, I got the courage to ask him let me take a couple photos of him for this “podcast I listen to with weekly assignments” and he happily agreed. As you can see, the backlit lighting conditions was pretty brutal, and the only way to make it a decent image was to just crush the blacks even though I hated losing his sleeve tattoo. I’m not super happy with it, but out of respect to the flow of the conversation I only took two shots (I included the other shot, just auto adjusted by the Mac Photos program). One takeaway with this assignment is that I still need to get better at working my iphone so I’m better prepared for another one or two shot situation like this.

The only reason I pushed through this assignment was because all the previous OTP assignments had taught or showed me something new. Even so, it took an enormous amount of faith in you to go through with this one. Happily I can say that like the other assignments it paid off – maybe not the greatest image, but definitely for the memorable conversation.

I just got a new lens! I’ve been eyeballing it for a while and when the sale came up I finally went ahead and purchased it. I think I like the manual focus lenses better. When chasing the girl around, I want the darn thing to fire when I shoot. It might not be in focus or even particularly well exposed, but I like the tactility and response over the perfection of having the camera do it for me (and yes, even this old D40 is better than I am at those two things).

I liked my trusty 28mm f/3.5 AI, but in the end, it was just a little too dark. Not so much in the final image, though a stop and a half of extra light will be quite appreciated, but in the viewfinder and with my katzeye focusing screen that goes a little black when its paired with a slightly dark lens (this is also an issue with the kit lens at 18mm f/3.5)

The really nice surprise was the fact that I got a good deal on the lense because the front filter was slightly dinged and I was warned by KEH that I might have trouble putting a lens cap or filter on the thing…but wow, those guys way undersold it. I was able to put my macro reversing ring on it no problem!

This assignment came around the time when the baby had really gotten a good grasp at using my lens cap. Its not a typical lens cap — my 28mm and my 50mm lenses both have reversing rings, which allow you to mount your lens backwards allowing you to take macro photos. As such, these lenses use rear lens caps as their front lens caps – and which are perfect for little hands for grasp and manipulate.

I also took a more standard approach to the assignment, with five little circles on a curve.

We spent last weekend making a photobook of the baby for grandma.

Along the way I found this photo. I know it’s not a self-portrait so I gotta assume my wife took it. I think it was taken that day or two a few months ago when I was playing with a flash on my camera.

Thought I’d throw it up…

This ended up becoming a series which I will eventually finish and post up at some point, but this one in specific came from waiting in line at Home Depot waiting to return an air compressor we didn’t need. It was the top of the Porter Cable Box.

My wife’s parents are drying some dates from the garden. So while I was taking photos for the “negative space” assignment I was able to get a few interesting photos with the baby and the dates. In general I think the dark grass made for stronger negative space shots, but I liked these as a series of explorations.

Unlike the previous assignment, we happened to have a moment when we went to sprouts without the baby. I realized this was most likely my one chance to just shoot away and even though I forgot my D40, the iphone did quite well in the bright environs of the supermarket.

One advantage of the iphone is that it facilitates a different shooting style and let me compose a shot without my eyeball in the viewfinder, which was quite necessary when digging into the cheese fridge. This was also one of the few items that was naturally upside down.

There was also some green peppers

And an artichoke that was invading the eggplants

And a box of mac and cheese…but I cheated on that one.

The assignment for OTP 172 was Favorite Things. It would have been a fairly natural assignment but we were caught up in putting down the wood floors in the kitchen and barely had a moment to breathe. As such it turned out to be an all iphone assignment, with shots grabbed around and about my day.

I accidentally thought Harbor Freight opened up at 7am instead of its actual opening at 8am, so I spent about 45 minutes wandering around taking shots. My favorite turned out to be this shot of the Home Depot parking lot behind Harbor Freight.

But I did find an interesting little present on the ground at Harbor Freight.

I also went to the neighboring park and found a couple nice more ephemeral item on the ground.

Made some bokeh with the iphone

And here’s a little fun with a self portrait