Day 310 (5 Nov 2012) Runway Nights

This weekend I was out shooting with a friend and we drove by the Groton – New London Airport and she pointed out that at night the airport runway was lit with the blue lights marking the runway paths every night.  I had never even thought about that; I was surprised to learn it was open/lit at night; it is a very small regional airport.  So tonight I headed that way to see what it was like.

I did find the runway all lit up, and pulled over and set up my tripod right up near the fence.  As I was shooting, I was a little concerned that a police officer might pass by and tell me to stop.  Not that I was breaking any rules that I know of, but in this day and age, people can be paranoid.

Since there was no real foreground interest items to focus on, I decided to play with the focus and crop/composition to try and be creative.  In Lightroom, I played with the white balance and saturation to change the colors a bit.  I found that the level, in-focus shots were boring.  So I broke rules 🙂  You can see part of the fence I shot through, but I like what it does.

Day 308 (3 Nov 2012) A Mystic Day

Mystic, CT, that is!  Today was a nice, clear, not-so-cold day, so I went with a friend to Mystic, CT with our cameras and did some street photography, in addition to some ‘regular’ photography.

SeeingSpotsPhoto is co-hosting another Collab Photography Challenge with WheretoWillie on street photography.  This first image is my first attempt, and maybe one of my submissions.  You should check out the links above and join in the fun!

 

Day 304 (30 Oct 2012) Powerless

Hurricane Sandy knocked out power to most of the state, including my home.  But having prepared, I had propane for my fireplace (not as fun as a real one, but much more convenient).  I thought it might be fun to play around with shooting it, including changing the focal length (zoom) while the shutter was open.  The first is my fav of the group because it looks like the grate is in the fire in part 🙂

Day 295 (21 Oct 2012) Wedding Bells

On Sunday I attended the wedding of a couple friends, and as I was asked to help set up a little, I arrived early enough to get some shooting in before everyone else arrived.  I was also hired to shoot the last hour or so after the pro photographer left (I’m not a pro, esp. for weddings!), especially of the bride and groom leaving the bridal suite, saying good by, and getting into the limo.  It was an honor to be asked to shoot that (and get a little $ for it, too), esp. since I wasn’t asked to develop the photos (the bride will do that on her own time).  But anyway, here are a couple of my “personal” photos from that day.

Camera Bling

Center Pieces 

Reception Hall

Day 294 (20 Oct 2012) Autumn Macro – Acorns and Tractors

I took a quick study break after lunch (yes, I’m spending most of this beautiful day inside studying for my courses 😦 ) to shoot.  I thought it would be cool to shoot some of the many acorns littering my yard before I mowed the lawn and chopped them, and the leaves, up.  I also wandered over to the backhoe in my yard that shows up in several of my images and took some macro images of it, too.

Now back to the books for me!

Empty Shell

Acorn

Acorn among leaves

Hiding Acorn

Backhoe Bucket

Tractor Treads

Day 293 (19 Oct 2012) Rainy Autumn Day

It’s been raining since before I awoke today.  So I shot a few images from my spare room’s window.  I shot a long exposer using a 4x ND filter so that I could catch the mist/rain better.  I softened them a tad and boosted the saturation a hair to bring out the colors.

Then I saw a video on Adorama TV and tried to replicate the idea.  It was pretty fun!  Try to guess what was held behind the screen 🙂

30 mm, 2 sec, f/22, ISO 100, 4x ND filter (Autumn Rain)

60 mm, 0.6 sec. f/5.0, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Rainy Screen)

60 mm, 0.6 sec. f/5.0, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Green Screen)

Day 285 (11 Oct 2012) I’m Back!!

I know that you must be going into withdrawals not having an image of mine to take in every day over the past two and a half weeks, but now your wait is over!  HaHa, J/K 🙂  I’m not ‘that’ full of myself.  But It is good to get back into this daily activity.

The past two weeks were AMAZING, to say the least.  Spending 2 weeks with my amazing girlfriend in Barcelona and the surrounding areas (France and Andorra, included) was better than I had dreamed.  Can’t wait for her to visit here in December 🙂 🙂

While there I shot just under 2000 images, and have not had a chance to do anything with them, as I had two mid-terms this week upon returning (finished last one tonight), so any spare time was in the books.  I hope to work on them slowly over the next few days/weeks, so keep your eyes peeled for make-up posts (and more images up on Flickr)

Tonight after my last mid-term of the semester, I pulled out a LED powered glow stick to see what kind of fun I could have in my dark basement.  I think I had more fun than the images portray, but that’s always ok 🙂

Day 255 (12 Sep 2012) Bubbles!!

Today’s photos were fun and simple; simply a glass bowl full of soapy water, bubbles, my macro lens, and the sun shining through the window.  Of course using the straw to blow more/larger bubbles was the highlight 🙂  I may never grow up!  I think I saw something similar at one point on h2o by Joanna’s blog (she does all sorts of great work centered on the team of water).

Enjoy!

60 mm, 1/40 sec, f/8, ISO 200, 60mm macro lens (Bubble Colors)

60 mm, 1/30 sec, f/4, ISO 200, 60mm macro lens (White Colors)

60 mm, 1/40 sec, f/8, ISO 200, 60mm macro lens (Bubble Colors II)

60 mm, 1/40 sec, f/8, ISO 200, 60mm macro lens (Bubble Bokah)

60 mm, 1/250 sec, f/8, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Soapy)

60 mm, 1/40 sec, f/8, ISO 200, 60mm macro lens (Bubble Colors III)

Note: most of the images are cropped by various amounts.

Day 253 (10 Sep 2012) Garder Lake Sunset

I know y’all have seen many, many sunset photos; I’ve shot a lot.  But I still love sunsets!  I love shooting them and sharing them, too 🙂

I’ve driven by this lake in Montville, CT more times that I can count, and last night I noticed that the sun set in such a way that I could shoot it from one of the few areas of the lake that are not private property.  I arrived just as the sun was dropping behind the trees and took some periodic photos until the few clouds started to change from white, to yellow, orange, and eventually purple.  I love the composition of the dock opposite the sun’s position 🙂

18 mm, 1/40 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 (Tranquil Lake)

18 mm, 1/60 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 (Purple Clouds)

47 mm (cropped), 1/4 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 (Spillway)

Day 251 (8 Sep 2012) Snow White, or A Child’s Tale

As you probably know, I try to participate in as many of the photo challenges SeeingSpotsPhotography hosts/co-hosts, as they are fun, and almost always push the envelope of my skills and/or creativity level.  This month’s challenge was “to bring to life an image that represents both details from your favorite childhood tale AND your feeling about that part of the tale.”

After polling friends on Facebook for ideas, I settled on something to do with Snow White.  I picked the scene where the step mother/witch gives Snow the poised apple.  That was always the saddest part of the movie; betrayal by her own family.  These day’s that part is sadly not limited to a fairy tale; thousands of children are betrayed by their own families: violence, abuse, irresponsible decisions, etc.  Even in “good” families children are often neglected by parents who put career/success before family.  I do believe that most parents’ intent is to provide the best childhood for their kids, but never learned from their parents the best methods and are perpetuating the mistakes.  One thing I’m doing, well before I get married and start a family, is reading books about family, raising kids, being a good husband/man, and talking to/observing families I know.  I know I won’t be perfect, but I hope to build upon the many good things I learned from my parents and go forth from there.

Anyway, I didn’t intend to go off on a tangent, but anyway, here are the two images I created today.  I “like” the first one the best for this challenge, but the second is good too.  Which one do you think I should submit?  I’m also open to suggestions on editing these (not gonna reshoot), if you think a different technique could help them.

 

I had a different idea, but ended up getting home too late last night after the fair to try the idea I had with my friend, so I did this all solo; tripod, infrared remote, flashlight, and a bit of thread to hold the apple.

Day 244 (1 Sep 2012) Mt. Marcy, ADKs

Back on Sept 1st, 3 friends and I climbed Mt. March, which is one of the ADK’s “46ers” and the tallest peak in the state of New York at 5,344 feet (1,629 m).  It was the second attempt for two of us, who attempted to climb it back in May, when the last several miles of trail were still covered in snow and ice.  This time the trail was dry 🙂

It was a great hike, with some spectacular views from the top, and a great time with friends!  Here are some of my favorite photos from the day:

Reflection

Spiders Web

Edge of the Path

Nestled Berries

Cloud Break over Mt. Marcy

Marsh Crossing

View From Mt. Marcy’s Summit

Carin
Rock Pile

My Accomplishment

Day 249 (6 Sep 2012) Night Silhouette

On my way home from class tonight I pulled down the driveway of a public golf course near Hebron, CT.  I saw this tree silhouetted by a distant street light, and the light fog cause it a glow around it.

There is also a pond there that I’ve shot in daylight before, but I think I’ll give it a shot at night some day after class 🙂

55 mm, 2 min, f/8.0, ISO 200 (Night Silhouette)

Day 240 (28 Aug 2012) Day Pond State Park

Do you ever have one of those days where you just don’t feel very creative?  Today was one of those days.  I wasn’t in a funk nor did I have a bad day or anything like that.  I was eager to go shoot (not my most eager ever, but eager enough to venture outside my home), but when I got to the Day Pond State Park in my town of Colchester, CT, I just didn’t “feel” it.  Not like other times, at least.  But I still put my camera on my Blackrapid strap, put my macro lens in my pocket, and just started wandering aimlessly.

My shooting felt a little forced, a little uninspired, and it probably shows.  I’m not sure how to kick myself into a more creative mood, or if this is just part of a natural cycle that tends to show itself when you are shooting (or otherwise engaged in a creative pursuit) every day.  What about you?  Have you experienced this?  Is it normal and I just have to sleep it off or is there something you do to reboot your creative side?

On a completely separate note, this weekend 3 good friends and I will be heading up to the Adirondacks for 4 days of camping including 2 extended hikes 🙂  That is exciting!  Since I’ll be on the trail for 2 days, and camping 3 nights, what kind of photos would you like to see?  I’m going to have to look at some outdoor photography to see what techniques work; I’ve not been satisfied by my trail photos as of yet.

60 mm, 1/40 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 (Frog)

18 mm, 1/30 sec, f/11, ISO 100 (Moon Over Day Pond)

Day 238 (26 Aug 2012) That Was Easy!

We’ve all seen that commercial and wished there was an actual ‘easy’ button, but we all know that it’s not reality.

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.
– Marie Curie

Have you noticed that it’s the hard and difficult times in your life that really shape who you are?  That the people we really admire, the ones with character that and wisdom have all had very difficult experiences and have persevered and strived and pushed and not given up until they were through?  I have.  I’ve have my hard times, and I can look back at them and see how they’ve shaped me into who I am today.  I would not trade who I am, and the path I’m currently on, for not having the pain and difficult times I’ve experienced in my own life.

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.
– John F. Kennedy

Thanks for letting me share a little with you 🙂

60 mm, 0.6 sec, f/10, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Staples)

60 mm, 2 sec, f/14, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (One Staple)

60 mm, 1/5 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (A Few Staples)

60 mm, 0.4 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Scorpion)

Day 235 (23 Aug 2012) Sockets

Well, I spent most of the night (from 7 till 11:30) in my garage, most of that trying to replace an alternator on a friend’s car.  After dealing with the typical rust bolts found on New England cars (due to salting of the roads in the winter), I discovered that the last person to install the alternator (body shop after an accident, maybe?), but in one of the bolts backwards.  Unfortunately this was a long bolt and there is no room to remove it w/o removing the axle.  That was more than I could do so late in the evening, so I had to reassemble everything and send them home un-fixed.  I have to admit that I’m really frustrated at whoever did the work last time.  I don’t mind giving up an evening to help a friend, but when it’s wasted because someone didn’t follow the tech manual, well, lets just say I’m not a happy camper.

I did manage, just barely, to get a few shots of some sockets that were laying on my workbench.  But the only reason I took them is so I would not miss a day on my 365 project.

60 mm, 1/30 sec f/2.8, ISO 400, 60mm macro lens (Sockets)
60 mm, 1/30 sec f/2.8, ISO 400, 60mm macro lens (14mm)

60 mm, 1/20 sec f/3.5, ISO 400, 60mm macro lens (After)

Day 232 (20 Aug 2012) Spiral Bound

Remember “back in the day” when we went to school and computers were either nonexistent or only in special classrooms?  Remember back when we took notes on paper instead of typing into our laptop or iPad?  I remember those days, even in college my computer was a desktop and I had a spiral bound notebook for each class or subject.  I especially remember being very excited when they came with perforated pages, esp. since my teachers hated the little ‘tassels’ from tearing out the pages I did my assignment on 🙂

Well, today I was standing in my office debating weather I wanted to try and shoot the night sky/`milky-way from my yard, or venture off to get some more dramatic foreground for a night shot and not really feeling up to leaving my house.  So while the internal debate raged, I was also thinking I needed to start reading my textbooks to be ready for my first day of class this semester.  Thats when I saw the corner of an old, beat up notebook in a stack of binders and other school supplies and thought that it looked rather interesting with the metal spirals and the edges of the pages all dinged up.  What do you think?  Interesting, boring, or just a reminder of days you would rather have not remembered? 🙂

60 mm, 0.6 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Spiral Bound Notebook)

60 mm, 0.6 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Spirals)

60 mm, 0.6 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Corner)

60 mm, 0.5 sec, f/11, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Spiral Bound)

Day 226 (13 Aug 2012) Sunset on the Farm

I’ve passed this farm many times, driving to hiking and riding trails.  I was on my way to ride this evening and just HAD to stop!  I would like to plan a shoot here, but for tonight, the clouds made it a great site! (though this, and other delays, gave me the experience of riding in the dark, lol).

I tried several presets in LR3 and used my own settings on the first one.  I really enjoy making an image my own, even if it’s not exactly what I saw with my eye.  I do at least a little tweaking to every image I publish.  Sometimes it’s just adjusting white-ballance or a B&W conversion, or taking a bad exposure and creating a great image from.  Or sometimes it’s just fun to go hog-wild!  What are your thoughts on image editing?

18 mm, 1/320 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 (Sunset on the Farm)

18 mm, 1/160 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 (End of the day)

18 mm, 1/60 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 (End of a Long Day)

Day 222 (9 Aug 2012) Water Drops

Today’s post is inspired by Joanna of H2O by Joanna.  She’s done this kind of shoot before.  I’ve kept the idea on the back burner for a day when I had a lot going on.  I have will be doing a “gallery” showing at a local coffee shop in September jointly with a friend who paints, so we hung out and discussed the the upcoming show and just caught up on life.

For today’s shoot, I set up my camera with my macro lens pointing straight at the water stream from my kitchen faucet.  I set the appetite wide open, and used my seedlight hand held and manually triggered.  My exposure was about 1/2 sec so I could synchronize the flash and shutter easily and not over expose the image.

60 mm, 1/2 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Dripping Faucet)

60 mm, 1/2 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (About to Fall)

60 mm, 0.4 sec, f/3.5, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Outline of a Drip)

60 mm, 1/2 sec, f/3.5, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (String of Pearls)

Day 211 (29 July 2012) Somewhere Over the Rainbows . . .

Nope not a typo, Rainbows is correct 🙂  But you say, “Hold on a minute, what about yesterday’s post?  You didn’t post anythingI  Does this mean you broke your streak??”  Nope, I actually shot a LOT yesterday, about 350 images!  I was invited to a studio party, which I’ll tell you more about when I actually post some images.  I will tell you it was a LOT of fun and I didn’t get to sleep till about 2am, so that’s why I didn’t post.

Now, back to today’s post.  Yes, I know Dorothy sang it with a singular rainbow (even though hers was monochrome, lol).  But today I shot more than one, at once!

I was trying to think about what to shoot, so I asked my gf for a suggestion, and she said, “the 5th thing your eyes land on.”  First time it was my monitor, and she clarified and said, “non-electronic.”  Well, sitting on my desk from a small movie project I did was a DVD.  I’ve seen cool photos done w/ CDs and DVDs, so I thought I would try my hand at it.

So, as I was creating rainbows using various lights, I happened to look up and out my window.  God went ahead an one-upped me!  He had made a double rainbow right out my front door!  Talk about awesome!  All I can say is that when God “shows you up”, its bound to be pretty cool 🙂

18 mm, 1/80 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100 (Double Rainbow)

60 mm, 1.3 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (DVD Rainbow)

60 mm, 1.0 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Light Traces)

60 mm, 2.0 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Crazy Colors)

Day 208 (26 July 2012) Cracked

Ever get in a creative rut?  Can’t think of something to shoot or an idea for a photo to make?  Just check the trash!  Well, if you have some old chicken or fish, you may not want to do that, LOL.  A few days ago I bought some eggs to use for some photography experimentation with light.  I saved a couple of the shells because I knew there would be a day where I needed an interesting subject to shoot.  Today was that day!

I experimented with different orientations, DoFs, number of ‘subjects’, etc.  I did a black & white conversion in Lightroom, because I like the texture and shape (and brown eggs just are not very interesting from a color standpoint).  When I was setting up, the available light I used was the lighting fixture above my dining room table.  The fixture has 3 bulbs which make for multi-shadows, so I unscrewed two of the bulbs to give a simple shadow.  I hope you enjoy these as much as I enjoyed creating them!

60 mm, 3.2 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Cracked)

 

60 mm, 0.6sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Empty Eggs)

60 mm, 3.2 sec, f/9.0, ISO 100, 60mm macro lens (Cracked Open)