Category: Artifacts

Its been brutally hot out here.

When the OTP guys first assigned “favorite movie” I was at a complete loss, partly because I was thinking about Spirited Away which is my favorite movie. But on Thursday night I had sudden flash of inspiration. Partly because one of the hosts dislikes the movie, but also because I really love Bladerunner. And somehow the connection between that movie, video culture, the ipad, and a baby playing with it all kind of made “sense” to me.

Due to the low light, I had to push my camera to ISO 3200 which was really, really noisy, so I ended up going black and white. I liked the up close and amorphous nature of the baby’s body in the dark, so I selected this photo.

With my recent return into photography, I’ve started listening to a lot of podcasts. Aside from the On Taking Pictures podcast that I gush about all the time, the other one that has caught my attention is Street Focus by Valerie Jardin on the TWiP network.

I really enjoyed her enthusiasm for this genre so this past Father’s Day we went out to the Bellagio to check out the conservatory and the water show and I snuck in some shots of strangers. I suspect this is about as ideal a condition for trying something like this out the first time. After all, the place was crawling with other tourists with cameras and I also had a wife and daughter for cover.

I have to say it was exhilarating. The search for a great photograph was primal, it was a hunt with my fear of strangers to spice up the adrenaline. I prefer to take candids with my daughter so I am already familiar with the shooting style and techniques that I like to use. But it is a totally different mindset shooting strangers, so supposing that I decide to develop the courage, I wouldn’t be surprised if this became the primary non-family aspect of my photography hobby. We’ll see where I take this.

I think in the future I will be a bit more circumspect with the photos I will post from such a session, but what the hell this is a first time so here’s six to check out.

In retrospect I think this was the weakest of the photos, even though I am including it here because this is what I posted on the Street Focus google+ community. It captures a cute moment with the couple taking the selfie, but it sits in a middle distance from the lens and the energy seems dissipated. That said, it did capture the moment and the mood of the day, and it was compelling enough this morning for me to pick this image for upload.

Talking about shooting fish in a barrel. Like in the Conservatory, it was really non-awkward to photograph strangers photographing something else. I’m certain the idea of people experiencing stuff mediated by a piece of electronics is an overplayed trope, but this is all new to me and having the subject totally engrossed on something else really made me more comfortable shooting them.

What I’m realizing in my own shooting is that I tend to like the photos I get when I am up close and personal to the subject. In this case, what kept it from being a great shot is the softness of the woman in the foreground. I may have to break down and go to the HI iso setting on my photo. I think I would have happily traded some noise for that extra stop and DOF.

This was upclose and personal only be happenstance. I was actually shooting the two young Subway employees having a conversation, but the timing was just perfect with the woman throwing me a glance just as the two men were giving each other some sort of hand shake. To be honest this might be the strongest stranger photo that I took.

And then on the opposite end of up close, there is the photo of the person within the environment. I had a nice shot of a man sitting on the couch, but it had a blurry vase of flowers in the foreground so the composition didn’t pan out. However this one worked out really nicely with my wife’s red shirt contrasted against the grey black background.

In all, a fruitful expedition on Father’s Day!

This week’s assignment for On Taking Pictures was windshield.

I’ve decided to start submitting only one image per assignment on the google+ community, but I’ll throw any outtakes on here.

As I’ve been working my way through the OTP podcast archives, it seems that a lot of the Photographers of the Week are admired for being willing to let things get blown out / drop all the way into black. Because my commute heads East in the mornings to work and West back to home, this week’s assignment became an exercise in playing with sun blowouts while stopped at a redlight. I’m pretty this shot is a direct result of those studies.

When I first heard the assignment on Wednesday morning, I was like “hmm, Tuesday had the dramatic clouds and the weather forecast is hot and sunny for the rest of the week.”

But it turned out I just wasn’t looking carefully enough. The best thing that happened was that I realized how fucking beautiful the Vegas strip can be during dusk, with the skyscrapers reflecting the setting sun during my commute home on I-15. Unfortunately, 65mph is not particularly conducive safe shooting.

What was safe however is going super slow shutter speeds in the back yard. It was dusk so I had to pull out the tripod and on a couple different nights I shot some long exposures.

When the sky shots seemed a little barren, I decided to insert something into it…well myself. I didn’t take a ton of these, but I got really lucky with this one. We live near an airport, so several shots include trails of airplanes, but the luck came in how everything ended up right, the focus, my location on the photo, the fact I chose to stare into the camera for once….I guess sometimes you just need to show up for something cool to happen, because I really don’t think intentionality had much to do with this final outcome, but I’ll take it.

From episode 160, the assignment was Horizon

Visually I actually kind of prefer the black and white version because it is so visually striking, but I think the color photo both captures the “horizon” of the assignment and is much more mundane, which is was the point of the shot.