365.305 1976 called, it wants its postcard back.

Well, it took me a few thousand tries, but I think I captured the forest, maybe.

And I had plenty of battery power… just popped in the spare today, and still have ~75% charge after over 600 pictures.

And given the volume of shots this trip, it’ll be a bit before I get everything processed. If I find anything worth sharing, don’t worry: I’ll share it.

D7000. Sigma 30mm f/1.4, breath-fogged. ISO100, 1/2000th (AP mode), f/1.6 (finger slip). About 4 minutes of slider play in Aperture.

I’d probably have more to say, but I’m exhausted, and I need to get the last of the packing done so I can rock back home early tomorrow. Woo.

365.304 pretty lazy

So here I am, vacationing in the mountains of NW Arkansas, surrounded by colorful fall foliage, wide varieties of wildlife, and virtually limitless scenery, and I’m submitting a macro flower shot that could’ve been taken pretty much anywhere for the 365 picture?

Yep.

It’s not that I didn’t take any landscape pictures—rather, it’s not that I didn’t tryto make some landscape pictures—in fact, I shot 350+ pictures today, not including the roughly 50 that I deleted before importing, plus another 40 or 50 on the iPhone.

It’s just that I was in no way satisfied with any of the pictures I made, despite Mom walking by and proclaiming the sunrise captures ‘beautiful.’

And this picture is pretty. I like it. I think it would look ok printed fairly large and hanging above a sofa, so it goes up, and the landscape pictures—many of them HDR or pano and not yet manipulated—are nowhere near the sofa-worthy test. 😀

D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron), in Macro mode. ISO200, 1/80th (APmode), f/3.5, -1 EV. About 8 minutes of slider play in Aperture to really pour some candy on it, if you know what I mean.

365.303 forest for the trees

You know that saying “can’t see the forest for the trees?”

It’s true.

Shooting the forest—or wooded areas in general—is rather difficult: there are all those trees in the way.

There are a few options: shoot overview-type shots, which can be rather uninspiring; capture single elements that transmit the idea of the forest (as in this one), which really doesn’t quite get there either; keep practicing that ‘winding path through the spooky/moody/pretty trees’ picture until you nail it; and there are likely many many more that I’m too sleepy to contemplate just now…

I had this trouble when I was here last year, too, and I have another couple of days to work on it.

In other news, I spent most of the day worrying about my battery charger situation—to recap: I left the battery charger back home, but have a fully charged battery and a mostly charged battery; A full battery will last me about 10 days of general usage, 5 or 6 days if one of those is a 400-shot photowalk; I will be here for two full days, and will likely need to shoot the Monday picture before I get access to the charger again; therefore, I likely have plenty of juice, especially since the iPhone 4 is perfectly suitable…

Good thing about worrying about a battery charger all day: I didn’t shoot much, and so I still have plenty of power…

D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron) @210mm. ISO200, 1/60th, f/3.5. About 6 minutes of post work in Aperture.

365.302 some (mediocre) fall color

Well, the drive up was safe and beautiful (once the sun came up). I left super early, and so I arrived super early, and also got to miss the rather dull parts of southern Oklahoma that make the trip so endless.

I’m not entirely satisfied with this picture. I couldn’t really crop it in a way that I liked, and I couldn’t spend the time needed to really bring out the pretty yellow glow in the older leaves, as my dear aunt and uncle have just arrived, and are now circling around wondering at the silly city boy playing on his computer instead of enjoying a beer and chitchatting.

(FYI: I don’t drink, and if I had known they were coming, I would’ve waited awhile to process and post this… if I was a better person, I would go ahead and put all this on hold and wait until later. Alas.)

However, given that flowers are still blooming in Dallas, and the temperature dropped 40 degrees between there and here, and it rained here today, so it’s really a treat to be able to shoot the color, and I’m looking forward to 3 or 4 days of hiking around and shooting, as long as the batteries hold out. (I drove off without the charger this morning… tsk tsk.)

D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron). ISO800, 1/400th (AP mode), f/3.5. About 10 minutes of wildly interrupted slider play in Aperture.

Note: the title refers to the photo, and not the color…

365.301 Abstraktes Bild

I’m leaving for vacation tomorrow, and have loads of stuff to do before then, so I’m tossing in an easy abstract picture today. I feel no shame about this whatsoever, as even this tossed off one is rather pretty, methinks.

I’d like to give this a title having to do with Sheeana or the Ghola Teg or Murbella or the transformation of Chapterhouse or something like that, but nothing really comes to mind, so…

I’m not sure what my interwebs access will be like over the next few days: if I can post, I will; if not, trust that I’ll be shooting away in the mountains of northwestern Arkansas, and trying to relax some.

Good times.

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8, reversed. ISO100, 1/60th (AP mode), f/1.8. About 2 minutes of processing in Aperture, mostly tuning the Sepia toning to get this almost platinum effect.

365.300 for RC Concepcion

Several weeks ago, RC Concepcion compared looking at people’s 365 projects to “watching a fat man do jumping jacks.”
I took some offense to this, and (despite claims to the contrary) I believe it was meant to offend and discourage amateurs like myself. I’m sure this is all in my imagination: why would RC alienate his audience like this? But at the very least, it showed an utter contempt for anyone taking part in a 365 project.
That said, should I be out riding that bicycle instead of shooting? Probably. Should I at least have on those running shoes and be out for a walk? Definitely. Should I smash that guitar over my gear, and then sell all my gear? Not if I want to get the best price, but perhaps.
The thing is, I enjoy making pictures, I enjoy sharing them, I enjoy having a reason to be creative every day, whether I want to or not, and this 365 project has done a great deal for me.
I’ve looked at, studied, practiced, and gotten better at making pictures that I want to look at; I’ve learned the ins and outs of the D7000 (the parts I use anyway), and I’ve used a broken lens to make pictures that people seem to actually enjoy; I’ve experimented, discovered, attempted, failed, and succeeded; and I’ve (mostly) enjoyed it.
And more than that, I’ve met some wonderful people thanks to this project, including the fabulous curators here at the 365 project, who have given me more encouragement and support than I even hoped for.
And even more than that, I’ve discovered things about myself; I’ve pushed up against my limits; fallen down and gotten back up; faced some of my fears; seen possibilities in myself, and found new things to focus on.
The 365 project has, so far, been (mostly) a joy, so why would I care what some professional photographer thinks about my project? RC has never seen any of my work, and I sincerely doubt he’ll read any of this or see this picture.
And I can understand how a professional photographer might get a bit tired of looking at bad amateur pictures over and over again: I definitely empathize with my painting professor, who must be exhausted by the continuous crop of 1st semester painters by now.
But Mike the painting professor does’t walk into class and talk complete smack about the paintings on display, no matter how bad they are.
So I understand the sentiment, but it’s the delivery that bothers me. Yes, I’m thin-skinned. And, yes, I should grow up (and get myself fitter, if this picture is any indication).
There are much friendlier ways to express disgust and disdain. It may not be completely honest, but you don’t risk alienating ever more of your audience.
And one other thing: RC, when was the last time you shot, purely for pleasure, for 300 consecutive days?
Ok. That’s enough.
I’m not entirely pleased with this picture, but it has a few things going for it, not the least of which: I can cross of one of the things on my shooting list. 😀
D7000. Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5 @10mm. ISO100, 1/15th, f/16. Three flashes: the key, an SB700, SU-4’d, with its diffusion panel in place, and at full power, near camera right; the fill, a Vivitar auto 200, mounted on the camera with a Cactus v5 trigger sandwiched in between; the rim, a Toshiba 312 behind the fatty. About 15 minutes of slider play in Aperture, mostly in an attempt to convince myself to actually post this, instead of wimping out and making some pretty macro.
Also, I wrote a much better version of this post, and then hit some strange combination of buttons and lost the whole post. The first version took about 20 minutes; this version took over 2 hours.

365.299 Monday

Mondays are strange phenomena for the working stiff. On the one hand, another week of drudgery begins, 5 more days of toil, another 40 or 50 hours before even a chance of relaxation.

But on the other hand—a hand that is, incidentally, overlooked much of the time—Mondays signify a new beginning, a chance to start again, an opportunity, even.

I tend to view Mondays in the second sense. After all, I spend most of my time alone, and so Mondays provide some socialization; they get me out of the house, and I can feel productive, useful, and (on ideal Mondays) appreciated.

I started today much like every other Monday, but with the addition of some unresolved work stresses that remained unresolved at the end of the day.

I start a short vacation on Thursday, and there will be some resolution before then, and if I can help it, I will not have another day where I leave the job angry and wholly unsatisfied.

Not this week, anyway.

And this feeling bled into my shooting time, and wouldn’t let me go. I tried and succeeded in making a macropano, but the subject, framing, color, etc., was not near up to my standards.

This is image is the best frame from that failed pano, and it too is not up to my standards.

299 days in, 69 days to go.

On second thought, this image almost perfectly captures how I feel about this particular Monday: full of promise and color, and containing a warm glow, but ultimately black at its core and in deep need of a full reset.

So its not a total fail after all. `/~

And given that I’m gainfully employed at all, I’ve highly fortunate, so it’s a win all the way around, almost.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai, reversed, ISO100, 1/15th, f/2.8. 3 minutes worth of slider play in Aperture to bring out some of the color.