best of first efforts

*Do not use images without permission. Thanks.

I woke up this morning around 7:30, peeked outside the window and was met with a gorgeous orange and pink sunrise. That was it: time for the Olympus' first official outing. I grabbed Mom's boots, Dad's gloves with fingerholes, the necessary coat and hat and ventured out, pajama pants and all. I tried to step in the footholes I'd made a couple days before, attempting to creep into the backyard with the least amount of snow slipping into my boots.

All in all, I'm pleased. Of course by the time I was actually outside, the light had shifted rather dramatically, but that didn't mean the view wasn't worth seeing. I startled two rabbits, who hustled away under a large pile of snow-covered brush. Their frenzied tracks were rather interesting, and I got a few shots of that. Sometimes there's be only a single line of rabbit tracks leading up to the base of a tree, which was rather cute (until I approached the tree later and wondered where the rabbit was possibly hoping to find shelter!).

These (below) are my favorites (click for larger). The first is me turning backwards on the hill facing the suburbs - a good title might be "Lincoln Sleeping." The next two are obviously of the sunset. I think the last one's my favorite.

My dad's subtly trying to encourage me to go backpacking this coming year with he and my sister - this morning showing me a website of the trail they want to go on and the shots a photographer/backpacker managed to get there. Dude, at this point that's only going to depress me. You need pretty solid technical knowledge, I think, to produce outstanding 'backpacking' pictures. Nevertheless the site was lovely. Such a trip might be fun to go on, but I'd probably end up spending a lot of time by myself when my sister and dad leave me to actually hit the trails (and I'm back at the start with my camera :))

Shots:

what i got for christmas

Ahh, I got so many camera-related things for Christmas! This was the main gift, followed by a camera bag, a zoom lens and a memory card. It's been some time now since my little Canon Powershot A530 needed a break.

Good thing it's used to being beat up. Yesterday I took it out while it wasn't drizzling too much and tried to grab some cool ice shots. Everything was cracking around me, including our giant Chinese elm, as if guns were going off. I noticed one big branch fell on the barbed wire this morning.

The ice was gorgeous, but my lens kept fogging up or developing a scrim of ice around the edges. Sometimes the effect was satisfyingly smoky and old-fashioned looking; other times just a pain in the butt. Here's a few shots...

latest

*please do not use my images without permission. Thanks.

More and more as I'm taking pictures, I think to myself that I could do this forever. The rush of exploring a scene, every second as fragile as me and the camera I'm holding, is heady and sweet. Light is constantly shifts; with people, the best moments flicker like fireflies before vanishing.

To say that you're "shooting" a picture is entirely accurate. In history class we watched a film in which a common Czechoslovakian woman watches Communist forces riding into her small village to take it over, causing a riot in the streets. She runs into her house and back again with her small, cherished possession, her camera, and steps right into the scene, fearlessly approaches the tanks. She is seemingly mesmerized by it all, oblivious to the explosions and screaming. The sound of the "click" her camera makes is every bit as loud and forceful as the sound of the Communists' guns firing, and increases in intensity as she focuses in on one man riding the tanks, his face filled with anger and hatred. He shouts at her as she approaches him, but the woman is not dissuaded; it only seems to make her bolder. In some sense, how could it not? She had the truth by the teeth in that moment, if only she had courage enough to take the picture.

I don't claim that anything I do is that important, though I do think the scenes I shoot are important. Yesterday was a good friend's wedding, in which I got to be a bridesmaid. The emotions a bride goes through on her wedding day are really like nothing else. This shot stood out to me:



It's blurry but I think that blurriness works. Something about the mirrored image and the vulnerability of the moment, the way she's looking at and touching herself, just sort of gets to me.

Here's another picture that technically could have been better, but to me gets the emotion I felt looking at this image. It's just a statue I found on campus on a particularly blustery day.



The little studs of frost seem to highlight, or illuminate, the quiet suffering sadness in the figure's face, the way he seems to be closing his eyes to the world and hoping to just get through. I would have liked to go back and try the shot again in different light, but shortly thereafter the heavens dumped snow all over us and the time was passed.

I can't always get what I want, but it's so, so much fun to try.

'model' thoughts

It's Wednesday, which means another episode of America's Next Top Model.

My mom can't stand it, and if you think about the content (or lack thereof) in each 45-minute episode... you could really watch the last 5 minutes and not miss a whole lot, unless you're hooked. It is true that the show treats you as if you are 15 years old and need the contestants to RE-EXPLAIN what is already happening, has happened or will happen. If someone is shown as upset or angry or happy, inevitably you switch immediately to a "confessional" of them exclaiming about how upset/angry/happy they are. The actual photo shoots go by in a blur, with fake camera clicks and flashes getting in the way of what you DO see.

But anyway.

I quite like the favorite, Nicole, whose artistic flair and quiet personality reminded me of myself. I kept wondering, though - why would someone as intelligent and downright gifted as she is in other areas (we saw footage of her paintings - WOW) be completely happy with modeling? To me it seemed a downright waste.

Until I read an interview where she outlines exactly what I find compelling about the show in general. I think she's going to be fine.


"I admire the artistry involved in the fashion industry," she said. "From designers to photographers to stylists, the industry is filled with creative, passionate people -- a world I would love to be a part of. Models get to embody an emotion and to use their bodies to convey that feeling for the camera. In doing so, you become a work of art yourself." link to interview


Elsewhere she says she'd like to be an artist/model/writer, and perhaps use modeling to finance a career as an artist. I suppose that's not a terrible day job. (Not that I would know.)

Here's hoping Nicole wins next week, because she deserves it.

the wonder of the face

by Eric Lafforgue, from here

I've been looking through a lot of portraits lately on Flickr, it seems like. So many are filled with meaning, emotion, with stories.


by Andrea Benedetti, from here

This shot of Benedetti's of the two stranded nuns is so heartwarming and hilarious. It's not as if anyone just strolling along could pick up a camera, take a shot and have it be this good. People are as bad as sports - there are dozens of little significant, potential moments, but you have very little time to anticipate and recognize them - and get the shot - when they do come.

It's also a little more personal. Of course - getting in someone's face, as my sister knows I like to do with the camera, is not at all like waiting for the right light to ripple over a rock or for that home run. It's a little embarrassing; you, the camera and your subject all have to get used to each other first, kind of. And that feeling of possibly intruding on someone is why I don't take many people shots.

Nevertheless, here are a few (about 16) that I like of mine (as always, Slide kills the quality to some extent). Be forewarned: some faces you may recognize.

While going through my files, though, I had to wonder: who are these attractive people?


Just thought I'd ask in my circle of acquaintances.

contest results

I entered 7 photos in this contest, and unfortunately didn't place in any category. 500+ photos is a lot to contend with. However a couple friends of mine made it into runners-up or honorable mention spots, like Ian Hoppe, from my family's old church (he got 2nd place in "Other Wildlife"!).

Ah well. Here were my entries, which I still think are pretty swell :) :

This is just one of over a dozen photos I have "faved" on Flickr. This one is from user aftab, published on October 11.

Click here to visit my "favorites" page, which has shots as cool or cooler than this - like super-close shots of raindrops mirroring flowers, or a swan on a lake burnished bright gold from the setting sun. Or a frozen spider web backlit by a sunset.

My own photo site is here. I've been trying to join groups, add photos and comment, and I'm having a little bit of success with kind compliments. But mostly I'm getting under 2 views per photo, which means either people just don't know it's there or don't care to see it close-up. It's a bit of a popularity contest. If you have tons of followers, you'll get like 96 comments and end up on the "Explore" page on Flickr, which is where I found most of my favorites. And usually stuff with that many comments, or on Explore, really does legitimately deserve it. Not always. But I try to remind myself that the goal is not to get on Explore, or to have over 50 comments on a photo. It's just to share what I've been doing lately. Sigh. ...if only it were as fabulous as those faved pics, though!!

husker football from my perspective

Yep, these are photos from my one and only Husker experience - and the first entire game I have actually sat through. Yes, I know it's too much. It was all Julie's doing.

We were crammed in one row from the top of the student's section. I did not know the student section STANDS... the entire time! Our bench had a tendency to wobble forward and backward, sometimes making Julie and I grab each other's arms. I found the bazillion balloons everyone let go at the first Husker point more fascinating than anything that happened on the field - as you can see in my photos. I never took pictures of anything on the field - I suppose for one because nothing was actually HAPPENING, from a fan's standpoint, and second my camera could never get anything useful from that distance anyway.

So, I have faithfully dipped my toes into the world of Husker football... and I found everything around me except the field pretty interesting :) A guy in front of us got escorted out by police for his drunken, shirtless debauchery. Good times!

-Oh, and it looks like Slide cut off the edges of a few pictures strangely... like a balloons-in-the-sky one and a shadow picture at the end. If you want the true artistic effect I guess you'll just have to go through the Slide album yourself :)

red on the trees

I took over 400 pictures last weekend. ...yikes. A lot to go through.

I'm going to throw up some shots I like and this time not worry about whether it is a comprehensive gathering of every single highlight.

So... through the magic of Slide, 14 shots:

memories...

While selecting some shots for a photo competition, I happened upon photos from an excursion in October of 2008 with Anna and her kids. I pulled out the old CD with the shots on them - and realized some were never edited and/or put online. So, here's a look back at the past - a fantastic little trip to Pioneers Park with Anna, Cami and Calvin, & her camera :)

butterfly in the sky. I can go twice as high

These are the results from one frustrated evening of chasing monarch butterflies.

I went out behind my parents' house on gorgeous evening, and I swear there were at least eight butterflies sitting in a single view of a clover patch. They, having wings, however, did not want to sit still.

At one point I discovered they were grouping together, hanging upside down like they do in nature shows, from tree branches - very far away, but I tried to zoom in. The little things were SO ANNOYING... but even at a distance, as a nicely shaped black speck, they are inspiringly beautiful.

If you want to see my best shot of the hanging group, wait for the last shot! (about 9 pictures in all)

Thank you to God and butterflies for - existing :)

*** Two of the photos wouldn't show up correctly, so here they are.

new lesson

So the last three-ish days were several shades of awful. I came home for the weekend and realized one evening that I had forgotten to refill a certain prescription of mine. Oh well, I thought.

I enjoyed a nice meal with the fam - peach pie included - and went to bed feeling slightly sick. My brain filled with flashing images of the overly-long photo shoot I did that day, I - stayed up pretty much all night, excepting 2-3 hours. I drove back to the house, and spent the rest of that afternoon nauseated and exhausted - literally staring at details in my wallpaper. It got bad enough at 1 a.m. that I had my parents come pick me up and take me home again, where I weathered another day of the same until, finally, around 3:30, Mom came home with the blessed prescription. I hadn't eaten (or kept down) much of anything for about 2 days.

I had a hunch, the night my parents came to pick me up, that I should check out Google to see if my situation was at all pill-related. Google was replete with links warning you not to "abruptly stop" taking this drug, for "nausea, vomiting and sleeplessness" will occur. Exactly my symptoms. Lesson learned.

We worried that now I that I had the drug, whether I'd be able to keep it down, but by the grace of God (or something like it) I managed to and am back to a hesitant normalcy. I actually have energy to do things mentally like read, things requiring more staring at the wall. My stomach no longer feels like it has marbles in it. Yay hooray.

***

I told myself I was too sick of taking pictures to do any editing, but... can I help myself? No, not really. This is a little baby monarch caterpillar that was doing some serious chowing when I spotted it on a milkweed plant.



The plant had several stalks chewed to the nubs - so cute. There was a second, much much fatter caterpillar (like that rhythm - fatter caterpillar) chilling on a milkweed nearby - he never really moved and seemed unfazed by my presence, unlike the little guy who would hide. He really, really seemed to want to live. (Figuring how I spotted several monarch -butterflies- in that same area, it seemed he had some ground to catch up on!!)

Speaking of chewed plants...



The work of grasshoppers along the edge of our property. The whole tree, such as it was, was like that.

Here's some stuff from the nitty gritty, when I waded in a small pond (and thankfully nothing bit me):



So many drowned sunflowers in the water - seemed beautiful in a kind of morbid way. You think of Ophelia from Hamlet, committing suicide in a river, surrounded by flowers.





The second-to-last one is of the -reflection- of a normal sunflower in the water.

It really was fun - although I luckily spotted a medium-sized spider in his web to the side, and managed to get a good macro of another, muchmuch smaller one on a leaf. Teeming with life, as they say, and all that.

My leg in the sweltering pool (I don't know why sweltering - it just seemed like a good word):

That's probably enough for pictures. Ciao.

cat vs. printer

This is what I would like to do at work sometimes. (Although my printer is much louder.)

lotsa lotsa sunflowers

Though I move on to a different post, I still expect some kind soul to offer up an answer to my question in the previous.

These shots are from going home this last weekend and crawling in around huge sunflowers. I escaped bug-bitten-less and unscraped, which is more than I can say for most photographic ventures of the sort.

How can anyone dislike sunflowers? Even the name is sun + flower. Quite agreeable. So yay for all the blooming yellow out there now.