In a world of so many great photographers and writers, I am venturing into some unknown territories, leaving comfort zones, finally very willing to practice the art of seeing. By maintaining the practice of posting daily photos, I hope to continue learning about the possibilities that I trust are out there for the taking.
Connie in the back of Ray’s car, making a call and leaving me a message on my home phone, while I’m in the front seat. Connie made a commitment to call in every day for 30 days and she wanted credit for the call yesterday. If you can’t tell, we laughed a lot on the 3 hour drive back home from our meeting in Sherman Oaks.
On the drive home last night we had to slow to a crawl two different times for roadwork on the I-10 freeway. It was getting late – 11pm – and I got antsy. Out came the camera.
Just as I was walking over to El Rancho, Ray called me over to the blackboard he'd just moved out of our meeting room and said, "Come here. I'll show you on this circle where the golf club face is supposed to go and where your club path goes."
I've always wanted a resident Pro and now I have one.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
The following is an excerpt from Scott Kelby’s Wednesday Guest Blogger featuring David J. Nightingale (aka Chromasa)!
“In early 2004, when I’d been blogging for a little over six months, and posting a handful of images each month, I came across Sam Javanrouh’s blog: Daily Dose of Imagery. One of the things that impressed me the most about Sam’s blog, other than the consistently high quality of his work, was that he was posting a new image each day, and I can clearly remember thinking two things. First, what a great idea, and second, it can’t be that hard to post 365 shots a year, can it? Well, for the remainder of 2004, 2005, and most of 2006, I attempted to do the same, and discovered that it was harder than I could possibly have imagined.
Now, if I’d had nothing else to do – like eating, sleeping, working as a full-time lecturer in a UK university, helping to bring up my young family, and everything else that goes along with being a human being – it would have been a piece of cake… Surely almost anyone can take one reasonable shot every 24 hours? But, in and amongst everything else, there were many days when I really didn’t have anything even halfway decent to blog, nor any time to shoot any new material. On those days I would sit at my computer and decide which was the least useless shot from a fairly bad bunch, drag it into Photoshop, and attempt to turn it into something more interesting.”
Because I haven’t gone out to shoot in the last two days, I didn’t have a photo for my blog. I went looking at my old photos for a photo I could maybe clean up and post. I found NOTHING I liked even remotely. None of the zillions of photos I have is worth saving. I even took a peek at some of last year’s photo class and workshop photos. Nada. I can’t even stand to look at my stuff.
This is a wakeup call. I need to pick up my camera and stop reading about photography and start shooting. I also need to start shooting in the EARLY morning light (which means I need to get up earlier than I’ve wanted to get up.)
Well, today, after 10am when the light isn’t so great outside, I picked up my camera fitted with the 50mm 1.8 lens. I got my diffuser out of the closet, stood by a window in the dining room that had some good light coming in through the glass doors, and shot half of my face. Why half of my face? Because my second photo assignment is “Halves”.
Here is the photo I shot.
I just need to be patient with myself, stop comparing my photos to the great photographers’ work, and just schedule in time with my camera.
While reading David duChemin’s new photography book titled, “Within the Frame”, I came across this sentence on page 156, “One of the most helpful parts of my process is an AAR, or After-Action Review. It consists of spending time at the end of the day, usually while looking at the day’s selects, and asking myself what went well, what did not go well, and what I shot today that I could shoot better tomorrow……………………Don’t let the knowledge you gained on today’s shoot go to waste if you can redeem it tomorrow for the images you really wanted.”
Interesting, this concept of AAR can be applied to life too. I even gave someone feedback who was asking for help to do the same thing by looking at the top of p. 86 in the B. B. “When evening comes……………”
I should listen to my own advice.
This quote below was also in David’s Wednesday Guest Blogger post on Scott Kelby’s blog.
“For me, though he was a psychologist rather than a photographer, Jean Piaget summed this up quite nicely when he said “What we see changes what we know. What we know changes what we see”.
It’s the season, we have crickets galore and the Black Widows know it. Where they are crickets there are Black Widows.
Three days in a row now I have shot photos of Black Widows. The first night I shot a photo was when I pulled in the my garage after the Baby Meeting last Tuesday night and saw a huge BW in it’s web just outside the garage. Then Our local newspaper, the Desert Sun, came out with a front section photo and article on Black Widows the day after I shot my first Black Widow. My competitive juices started flowing and now I am trying to see what kind of interesting shots I can capture of these Black Widows. The spiders aren’t quite so skittish anymore. I guess they’re getting used to me.
We have another two Black Widows living near the front gate too. They’ve been living there for a couple of years now. They live inside the drainage pipe that runs down the side of the condo during the heat of the day.
Photo taken with a Canon 40D, 100mm 2.8 macro lens, hand held in early morning shade.
This morning Ray went out the back door again (to fill the bird bath with water (water evaporates daily in these 114 degree days). He came back in letting me know my spider was back and moving about in his web. I thought this can’t be the same spider. The spider I saw yesterday was barely moving as it lay in a ball on the concrete. But Ray thinks it is the same spider. It was in the exact same area but I don’t know if they are one and the same.
Photo taken with my small Canon Powershot A650, zoomed in only a tiny bit, set to manual macro, and shot in early morning shade.
These are the photos from the first of six assignments. This assignment is “Blue”.
Carol Leigh is my teacher. Unfortunately she will no longer be offering these online photo classes I’ve been taking since January 2008.
Carol will be offering workshops and teaching where she no longer has to sit long hours at the computer typing. Check out her daily blog where you’ll also find her other web sites.
CRITIQUE: Linda Jeffers
BLUE
The first impression I get from your
picture, Linda, is ZOOM! Why? Because
of all the diagonal lines you’ve got going
on. The white line on the highway, the
angle of the truck, and the electric lines
above the truck combine to create a
strong feeling of movement. In addition,
your truck is big, and it begins close to us
there on the right and then diagonates
boldly inward, giving your picture depth
as well as movement.
Just as an aside, for future reference:
Look at how the diagonal line of the truck creates three (three!)
triangles. You’ve got a triangle in the sky, a triangle in the shape
of the truck, and a third triangle in the road lower left. We’ve
got a lesson coming up in triangles and once again you’re ahead
of the pack!
I like your blue colors — the darker blue of the truck and the
blue of the sky. More than two-thirds of your photo consists of
blue. What makes the blue look even better are the little bits of
red along the length of the truck as well as at the back end. Blue and red are primary colors and
work very well together to create impact and boldness.
You chopped off part of the back end of the truck. Usually I point that out as being a
compositional no-no, but in this case it works. Instead of us wondering what’s become of part of
the truck, wondering why it’s been amputated, the gist of your photo is “forward movement,”
and so we get the feeling of the truck entering the frame. We also get a feeling of movement.
Those two concepts make us feel more comfortable with having part of the truck lopped off —
it hasn’t finished entering the frame. We don’t necessarily expect to see all of it.
There’s a certain softness and glow to this picture that I’m not sure works. I sometimes will use
the Orton Effect in Photoshop to tweak a picture. That involves applying a heavy Gaussian Blur
to a duplicate layer in Photoshop and then choosing a
blending mode of Overlay or Soft Light. I tend to use the
effect for photos that have a feeling of nostalgia to them or
on flowers or sometimes on nighttime scenes. I use it to
create a sort of ethereal blur or glow. I wouldn’t think of
using it on a truck. Why? Because trucks are hard, gritty,
tough, dirty, metal, MANLY things! That’s why we see so
many subjects like this done in HDR — high dynamic range
— that emphasizes dirt and texture.
I’m rambling. What’s my point? I’m thinking that if you added a glow or something similar to
this shot, maybe it wasn’t quite appropriate. And if you did NOT do anything to this shot in
post-processing, then what the heck do I know! Disregard everything I just said!
Bottom line? This is a strong, bold image that conveys the color blue and the concept of motion
very well.
You indicated that your husband named this picture. Ahem.
Well. The first thing I’d do is rotate the image 90 degrees to
the left. Look at what you have now! Instead of a mildly
pornographic image, we’ve got a southwestern, Monument
Valley-ish mildly pornographic image!
What I like about your shot is the combination of dusty
terracotta colors and dusty blue and grey colors. There’s a
definite southwestern feel to it. And then when you add the
strong vertical element and the shadows and the mesa-like
shape behind it, to me the composition screams to be a
horizontal rather than a vertical. But why?
I believe our brains are programmed to try to make sense
of what we’re seeing. We look at your strong vertical
segments in the photo and wonder what this is. The picture
is so abstract that we’re confused. And so our (my)
inclination is to wonder if maybe it’s hung on
the wall wrong! Maybe this is a landscape. I
mentally tweak it, then physically tweak it,
and aha! There we are.
Your composition, whether vertical or
horizontal, is strong in that there are welldefined
shapes and colors and look at where
you placed the focal point — perfectly in line
with the Rule of Thirds, which encourages us to
put the center of interest NOT in the center but
rather up or down or right or left as you can see
here.
I like your shot a lot. It might be too spare and
sparse and plain for some people, but I’m drawn to
it — definitely more as a horizontal, however, than
as a vertical. As a horizontal it all makes sense to
me. As a vertical, well, go discuss it with your
husband!
Hmmmmm . . . It’s quite coincidental that you
would take this shot because I’m putting together
a lesson for my photomotivation series called
“Art From Art” and was trying to create a little
piece of art from an overall mural on Thursday. I
wasn’t successful. You did better with this
picture than I did with my mural.
I really like this color combination of blues and
oranges (which are complementary colors) as
well as the texture. What’s not working for me is
that I’m not seeing a focal point, a particular spot
of interest, something to tell me what I’m supposed to be seeing first.
So okay, there’s no focal point. Sometimes we don’t need one. In which case, we need some
strong lines or some strong shapes to lead our eye around. And I’m not seeing them here.
If you were to tell me this is a shot of a galaxy in outer space, I’d be impressed because those
shots are hard to take and who would imagine a galaxy could look like this? You could get
away with not having a focal point nor a strong design. But as a photograph or a painting, I
think a center of interest or some direction is necessary for the image to be interesting, to hold
our attention for an extended amount of time.
Overall? You did a good job. You were out there looking for blue, exercising your vision, using
your camera, practicing, practicing, practicing. That’s what this is all about. Some photos will
work, some won’t. And it will be this way the rest of your photographic life. Will you ever
arrive? Nope. In the words of Gertrude Stein (in reference to Oakland, California), “There’s no
there, there.” It’s just one long destination-less journey.
Carol Leigh
July 11, 2009
Lamont (ie LR), and Keagan.
Photo by unknown photographer 
Sometimes you meet someone and wonder how you ever existed without them. For me that person is Lamont or I as I call him, LR.
Lamont and I met on September 6, 1997, in Sacramento, in the restaurant of a hotel where he and I and 8 other backpackers met up with 2 instructors to go on an 8 day High Sierra Wilderness Outward Bound trip the next day.
Since that first meeting, when I joined LR while he finished dinner that night in the hotel, I knew we had a special bond and connection. We stayed in contact following our Outward trip and have become the best of friends. Not only is he a wonderful friend, he is my ROCK. My life has changed enormously as the result of that fortuitous meeting.
Thank you my friend. Thank you for everything.
I love this photo of you and your family.
The sunset tonight got me out the door with my camera. But this was the shot I took.
I decreased the clarity slider in Adobe Lightroom 2 to create more motion with the water from the sprinklers.
Canon 70 – 200 at 200. 8pm on a tripod with self timer.
Ralph, Ray, Johnnie, Jay, and John.
Ralph has been asking me for the photo I took of him at the SFVAA Convention last January. Since then I’ve had two computer crashes and all my photos are no longer organized.
Today and tonight, while alone, I spent time searching, organizing and trying to make sense of the photo mess I have.
Enjoy Ralph. Sorry, the photo didn’t turn out better. I must have been previously shooting in a very low light situation as I obviously forgot to change the ISO back down lower.
I’d written an entire blog that disappeared.
So here are just the photos. I have to turn in 3 “Blue” photos for my online photo class. I have no perspective on what is interesting and what is not. So I’m looking for some help from you. Do you my friends like one photo more than the other two?
Shot while driving on the freeway. At least I wasn’t filing my nails at the same time!
The windshield of my car was filthy.
Blue Truck 
Blue Penetration
Planet Blue
Got back home from the meeting tonight to find Mrs. Spider in her web; probably fast asleep as she did not move when I approached her with my camera from a foot away. I wonder if Black Widows jump?
Anyway, I got a much better photo of her and her trademark red-spot-on-the-belly than I did the other night. (click photo to enlarge)