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.