Week 12 - The Project

As I said last week I'm attempting to give a little direction to the photographs I'm taking by giving myself assignments.  So this week I took on the project of photographing some of the old houses in Nelson.  Of course taking pictures of old houses in Nelson is about as challenging as taking pictures of animals at the zoo but you've got to learn to walk before you can run right?

To emphasize the character in the homes I have been editing the photos in Lightroom.  In doing so I have altered reality and brightened or muted or even removed the colours as suited the architecture and lighting at the time.  It makes me wonder if there is, or should be, a distinction between a photographer and an artist who just happens to use a camera as their medium.

Canon 20D, Canon 17-85mm Lens,
ISO 100, f/8.0, 1/100s

Canon 20D, Canon 17-85mm Lens,
ISO 400, f/8.0, 1/100s

A few more examples can be found in my Project 365 set on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/glinnphoto/)

Week 11 - Inspiration

I've been creating a list of photo ideas for those days when I'm just not inspired to take pictures and so far, I haven't used it.  I've been finding inspiration in all sorts of things.  For example, the other morning, I looked out the window and saw that although the sun was shining it was also raining.  I grabbed my camera and tripod, convinced my wife to come out and hold the umbrella ("no... over the camera, you'll dry"), and took pictures of drops of water with the sun shining through them.

Canon 20D, Sigma 150mm lens,
ISO 400, f/16, 1/200s

Last week, I found a photo contest to enter with the theme being "The Colour Green".  The cover came off the pool table, the strobes came out and I started taking pictures.  This wasn't the one submitted (not green enough) but it's one of my favourites from the set.

Canon 20D, Sigma 150mm lens,
ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/200s

It turns out, there is inspiration everywhere and I have a list of photo ideas that aren't getting used.  I know that a professional photographer can't get distracted and just run around taking pictures of the next bright shiny thing he sees because that wouldn't add up to a cohesive body of work.  So clearly I need to learn how to embrace a plan.  This shouldn't be hard should it?  Ooh!  Look... bright shiny thing!

Week 10 - Project 52

After reading other Blogs of peoples' New Years resolutions, it turns out that this weekly Blog I started 10 weeks ago should probably have been titled Project 52.  The challenge of doing something every week for a whole year.  I wasn't really thinking that when I started, and posting on Saturdays just seemed like a good idea.  I also didn't consider an end date, the idea was to keep some pressure on myself to get out there with my camera and to start making the effort to do something with my pictures other than filling my hard drives.  So far, it's working like a charm, I was even inspired enough to expand the challenge to also do a Project 365 (http://www.flickr.com/glinnphoto).

I thought that writing the Blog would be hard part.  Turns out it's a close second... choosing photographs to post is the hard part.  

Canon 20D, Sigma 150mm lens,

ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/80s



Canon 20D, Canon 17-85 lens,
ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/100s



Canon 20D, Sigma 150mm lens,
ISO 400, f/8, 1/200s



Canon 20D, Sigma 150mm lens,
ISO 400, f/16, 1/4s



Week 9 - Project 365

I have decided for the year 2011 to challenge myself to do what other Blogs I am reading call "Project 365".  The idea is to take a photograph every single day of the year no matter what's happening, no matter how crappy the weather, how sick, how tired or how cranky I am.  So far, so good but it is still very early in the year.  I am trying to post every day to Flickr and again, so far so good but I expect there to be stretches where posting might have to wait a few days.  (http://www.flickr.com/photos/glinnphoto/)

As a side benefit, I'm also learning how to post to Flickr and by the end of the year I'll get to learn more fun things like whether or not Flickr will support a photo set with 365 images in it!

So what is it about the new year that causes us to embark on crazy, ambitious and usually grueling projects?  At least by taking photographs I don't have to buy a gym membership or stop drinking coffee!

Anyway, here is the best of the first week of my Project 365.

Canon 20D, Sigma 150mm lens,
ISO 400, f 2.8, 1/60s

If you are wondering... it's an old adding machine.

Week 8 - Orton Effect (And Happy New Year)

In my quest to grow as a photographer I have been doing a fair bit of reading and learning about all sorts of tools and tricks that I had never heard of before.  This week I decided to explore one of them, the Orton Effect.  I'm not going to try to explain the while history or even a how-to but suffice it to say Micheal Orton was a photographer that would take two images of a scene, one in focus and slightly overexposed and another out of focus and overexposed.  He would then sandwich the two slides in the same holder.  The result of which is an image that sort of glows.  In any event, I wanted to play with this process which is much easier in the digital world that it was for Mr. Orton, so I found this picture I took a while ago of a Gerber Daisy and applied the Orton Effect.  Here is the original image:


Canon Rebel XTi, Sigma 150mm lens,
ISO 100, F 16, 0.8 s

And here is the image with the Orton Effect applied:

Orton Effect

After playing with that I wondered what would happen if I changed the original image to Black and White and then added the colour layer back in.  The result looks to me like those old colourized black and white images (which I suppose it is although it was done in photoshop rather than being hand-painted).

Modified Orton Effect