It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I don’t shoot (or process) near as often as I would like. I guess that’s just letting life get in the way of stuff I love. Life being school, wedding planning, and just not taking the time to do anything with my camera. The 365 project was really good at keeping me in the photo mode.
But anyway, here are some photos I’ve taken in the past few weeks. Enjoy!
Looking Up
Gold Star Bridge
Tilt Shift – Bridge
Snowing
Salmon River
Comstock Bridge
Wow! What a storm! I was lucky enough to receive 3-4 feet of snow! Well, lucky in that I have a good shovel, a 4wd truck, and a back strong enough to shovel a few hundred feet of driveway.
Well, anyway, I survived, didn’t loose power, and took a break after shoveling to break out my camera and enjoy the winter wonderland 🙂 On Sunday I took a few moments to visit a small beach to see what snow on the beach was like.
Please let me know what you think of these photos!
Here are some of my images from the past week or so, I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed taking them!
There is an irrigation pond not far from my home where the ‘old timers’ like to gather and fish. Not having good ice traction, I wasn’t able to talk to this gentleman, other than to ask if I could take his photo.
I was able to borrow my friends’s wide angle lens (Tokina 11-16mm), so I brought it to Avery Point in Groton, CT to try it out a little bit. As it was my first time with the lens, I wasn’t too impressed in general w/ my images, the lens is fun, though it feels almost like a prime. I think I’ll try the Canon 10-20 next 🙂
Wednesday night, after teaching a class to kids on photography, I felt inspired to shoot some night photography. I shot these from a pedestrian bridge over Rt 32 in Waterford, CT. In the first image you can see the athletic complex for ConCollege in the foreground and the town of Groton across the river. The brightest lights lights across the river, on the left side, are SubBase New London (yes, it’s in Groton) where I was stationed before I got out.
These last two I took today. I had a green glass bowl that I had used to make banana bread that was in the drying rack over the portion cups I used to pre-measure my ingredients. It looked pretty cool as the muted sun glinted off the now-green cups.
Just some photos from this past month, I hope you enjoy 🙂
My fiancée and and I decided to shoot our own Save The Date photos, here are my favorite from our session. Maybe I have a future as photographer?
Oh, you all are invited! The date is 13 July 2013 in Brockton, MA. Let me know if you you want to come!
This post is WAY overdue, I know, but it’s here 🙂 I was a bit distracted the last few days of 2012 spending time with my fiancé 🙂 But I was reminded that I still need to wrap up this project.
It took me about 4 days for the momentum of the project to slow down enough for me to not take a photo during an entire day! It was a weird experience after spending a year taking photos every day to not pick up my camera, but it was nice to not have to worry about the project while I was spending the time w/ my new fiancé before she went back to Spain for 3 months.
I’ve not given up photography, but am spending more time learning more, reading, watching videos on photography. My focus in 2013 is to focus on improving my technique, skills, and creative eye. I might try to take up some portrait gigs for friends as practice, too 🙂
I currently am working to set up a new website, where I can showcase my best work, and still keep up a blog with a more appropriate name than “365photosbyjeremy” 🙂 Once it’s up I’ll let you all know so you can follow me at my new home 🙂 Until then I’ll keep posting some images here as I work on the new site. I hope you will content to follow my work and provide feedback.
Well, here are the last few images from 2012, I hope you enjoy them!
These past several days have been crazy, busy, and awesome! I have not had a chance to post, but I have taken photos every day (even if just with my iPhone), so I am still on track for this project!!!
Below are some of the photos, the most important/best ones of these several days. Some have not been processed yet, and others (such as the iPhone snapshots) are not worth posting here. Starting next year, I will move my blog to another WordPress address; I have a few reserved, but will let you know the new address to subscribe to. I will not be doing another 365 project, but I will still be making photos all the time, and posting. My goal is to have a site (WordPress or other) where I can post not only a blog, but also galleries to show off my best work. I will also be buying a domain name (or two) and professional hosting.
Please take a moment and view below what is my absolute favorite photo of all time!!
She said YES!!!!!
Christmas with my Fiancé
Maine Lobster Pots
FIshing Boats in Portland ME
Rain On A Window (Shot with my new Lensbaby Spark!)
Latte (Shot with my new Lensbaby Spark!)
Journaling is something that I don’t do enough of. It’s very relaxing and thereputic to just put pen to paper and let your thoughts flow. I do really need to do it more. Maybe I’ll make it a goal in 2013 to write more 🙂 I do have a journal that needs filling. . .
Ok, so there are no mirrors, just smoke, but the title sounds better like this 🙂
So tonight I lit up one of the punk sticks used several months ago after watching a youtube video on how to shoot a steaming cup of coffee and learned that a back light to steam (and smoke) will bring it out in the photo. I shot about 125 images and these 3 are my favorites. There are several more on my Flickr Photostream, so if you like these, check them out, too!
Originally I was just going to do black & white images, but then I remembered split-toning. I had a lot of fun playing with the color combinations and seeing how they played together!
So the night of the 13th ended up having an amazing meteor shower! I saw lots and lots, from really bright to dim in the two hours I was out watching. Prior to going out I planned my shoot to a T, I thought: I found an image stacker designed to make star trails from individual images (the best way to make them w/o lots of noise or being affected as much by light pollution), had my camera settings set, used a dark sky site to find the darkest area around here, located several candidate sites, make a thermos of hot coco, dressed in LOTs of layers (it was 24F / -4C), put toe warmers in my boots, packed a sleeping bag to wrap in if needed, loaded all my camera gear (inc. the wired remote) and headed out.
First lesson learned: remember to pack my camp chair! I wasn’t going to foul up my sleeping bag on the rocks/dirt. Second: don’t forget to put the extra hand warmer on my lens. I brought an extra for that reason to keep it from icing. I forgot till too late. Third: it appears most meteors are visible around the horizon (I didn’t catch any in an hour, yet saw dozens). I pointed at the Gemini constellation, as thats where I read most would start from, which was almost straight up. Also, pointing up more exposes your front lens element to space more, which will cause it to cool to colder than the air and get ice/condensation faster (leave a comment if you want the science behind this, and I’ll explain) Fourth: a scraggly tree does not provide a good foreground subject against streaks of light. Fifth: don’t knock over your glass-lined thermos on the rocks, because the glass inside will break 😦 Sixth, and maybe most important: DO NOT stop the camera sequence, unless you want to start completely over. Notice the gaps in the trails? Those each are from a 30ish second gap in shooting. I had do delete one image because a car drove by and illuminated the tree. Pulling out the aircraft light images make it look a lot worse due to a lot more gaps.
So, I count this expedition a success! Yes, my image isn’t what I hoped for, but the next one will have some more knowledge to do this better 🙂 Like not setting up near a road, being more careful w/ my thermos, setting up the camera pointing in a better position and leaving it alone!
The software I used for this is StarStax. Click on the link to get it!
I thought it would be fun to try and play around with some lights, crinkled aluminum foil and tinsel. I used my 50/1.8 and just messed around. I think some of these would make good powerpoint or card backgrounds. It was fun just to mess around for a bit! I posted a lot more photos than usual; they were all so different I couldn’t just pick one or two.
Can you guess how I did the last one?
You have to read the title in the accent of Gru from Despicable Me; If you’ve seen this movie, you know what I mean. If not, rent it today!
Anyway, I was inspired to shoot this after stumbling across a photographers website who had a few series of light bulbs, and to be honest, I wasn’t impressed with them. So I figured I would try it myself. So on my way home from class I stopped by Walmart and picked up a couple clear 40 Watt bulbs. The first one blew the moment I turned the lamp on, so I was glad that I had two. I am disappointed that the class has scuffs and other marks that I could not wipe off. When I take the bulb back to exchange it, I’ll have to actually look for one w/ good glass.
I took a lot of liberty with these images, even playing with Split Toning on a couple of them. I think it adds some interest and a unique look to a common object. What do you think? Which is your favorite? What other angles should have shot this at?
And on other news, a couple of photos I shot for a street photography collaboration have been posted to a gallery here. Check them out and let me know what you think! Also, let me know if you would be interested in contributing to another one and I’ll make sure you get the invite 🙂
How boring is a glass of water? Or how ordinary? Have you ever noticed the little bubbles of air that come out of solution as the glass sits? I noticed the way the glass and bubbles glowed when was carrying up my glass w/ my phone underneath with the screen on. It was kind of neat, neat enough to take a break from my cramming, er, I mean studying, for my finals this week to snap a few images. Nothing spectacular or exciting, unfortunately, just happy to tick off one more day closer to 366 🙂
Tonight as I was pulling into my church’s parking lot to lead the final Financial Peace University class of this series, I noticed that many of the trees in the parking lot islands had lights very close to them. From the right perspective it looked like there was a light shining from the top of the tree itself, illuminating it’s branches from the top. The rain had broken by the time class was over and left a light haze which was illuminated by the lights and gave the area around it a nice glow. So what did I do? Bust out my tripod and camera, of course! I know you are not surprised 🙂
Tonight I decided to try and get the shot I was trying to get the other night. This was much better!
I love fog! I was on my way into town to study at a coffee shop (I get too distracted at home sometimes) and it was one of those days where it’s just a light drizzle with fog and clouds and just a chill the permeates everything. I took the short way into town, which I’ve taken many times, and I noticed just enough fog on the lake to slightly obscure the trees. It was perfect to shoot! I set up the tripod, took some exposures, then it dawned on me that the gate was open, so hopped in the car and drove down the road a bit to get another angle on the lake. That’s when I saw this swimming dock just floating out in the lake. That was the shot I was looking for, the shot I’ve wanted to take for a long time!
Yesterday I had an idea for a shoot, and I had about an hour to set it up and execute before I had to leave for my evening plans. Not realizing how late I would be out (hence why this post is coming out today, lol), I did some ‘test’ shots and would finish up after returning home. Overall I’m happy with the concept and composition, but they are not quite right. I had to so some selective editing in LR to get the lighting (close to) right. I thinkI know how I need to modify the set up, so I’ll try again to get it right!
I was tempted to title this post “the hands of time” but I’m still a young 35 year-old kid 🙂 But these are macro shots of my hands, which all things considered, are not as rough as they could be. Years or working on cars and in the yard must not show as I’ve taken to wearing gloves as often as possible. That said, I’m not sure if I’m fascinated by seeing my hands like this or creeped out! What was your reaction?
On my way to class I thought I found a great thing to shoot; I saw a large electrical substation that was lit up (for security), and the way the light fell on the shapes of the components was compelling! I took a few minutes during class to look at it on Google Earth to see where I could park and get close to shoot.
So after class I drove the short distance, but after parking, I felt there was too much traffic and someone might think I looked suspicious shooting a large electrical distribution center at night, so I chickened out. But across the street was a power line cut in which several different types of power lines ran. It looked kinda neat as I was standing there in the cold wind, so I set up my tripod and made several exposures.
Between the dead weeds, mixed lighting, and busy scene, I wasn’t thrilled with the results. I did a black & white conversion with some cropping and a little cloning, but it’s not how I pictured it in my minds eye. The alternating light and dark sections of the wires (from the multiple passing cars) is distracting to me, and I did not do a good job in establishing a singular point of focus. I will chalk this up as a learning experience and choose my composition better next time 🙂
I have to admit, its a lot easier to say “I don’t like that image” about one I made than it is to actually spell out what it is exactly that I feel I didn’t do well at in creating it. I’ve never been good at proofing my own work (writing, etc), and it’s not different in photography. But from what I’ve read, and from my (minuscule) experience, it’s one of the most powerful things you can do to improve your photography (other than practice). So I challenge you to on occasion look at a final image you have created and critique it; whether it’s one you love or one you are not fond of. Figure out what it is about it that you love/hate! It’s HARD! But worth it 🙂
UPDATE (2 min later): Right as I was about to hit “publish” for this post, I recieved an email from Flickr (where this image is hosted) stating someone had marked this one as a “favorite.” I don’t know why; maybe they just randomly do that to drive traffic to their images or maybe they really like it? What do you think?
Tonight while finishing up my studies I started to wonder what I would shoot. I looked over at the empty Pepsi bottle sitting on my desk next to my binder and the shape of the threads on the top caught my eye. I thought, “I bet that might make an interesting black and white photo.” What do you think? Agree? Disagree? I’m curious to see why. 🙂
P.S. This bottle will be recycled, if you were worried 😉
365 Photos by Jeremy 