Category: photography

Project 365: a few of my favorite photos (part 1)

I wrapped up Project 365 a few days ago, and have a really long, rambling summary post in the works. (I bet you can’t wait!) However, seeing as it was a photography project, I thought I should post “a few” of my favorite photos from the year. And seeing as I had trouble picking, “a few” apparently means “a number so large that I should probably not try to squeeze them all into one post.” So, I’ve split them. Here are some from the first 6 months, listed by month. I’ve even listed my monthly themes, which I haven’t really shared before.¹

Month 1: reflections

011:365 New York City building reflections


019:365 Inside and outside, at my in-laws’


028:365 Rain drops on the train window

Month 2: shadows

043:365 Shadow of a lightbulb


045:365 Floating bike rack


062:365 Menacing bunny slipper

Month 3: Text

072:365 Up


090:365 Wood, stone


091:365 No trespassing

Month 4: motion blur

107:365 flashing light ring in motion


110:365 My Docs


111:365 Comparing apples to oranges

Month 5: light(s)

126:365 Silhouette


132:365 Compact fluorescent


138:365 tail lights through rainy windshield


139:365 Burnt out

Month 6: patterns

154:365 Milk crates in snow


170:335 Orange cones at the SFO airport Bart station

—
¹I wondered if people would be able to guess…

364 down, 1 to go


364:365 A ridiculous still life, with everything but the kitchen sink.

Unbelievably, I have just about made it through Project 365. 364 days in, I have managed to take (at least) a photo a day to share online. Admittedly, there were 2 or 3 times when I didn’t quite manage to take a photo before midnight, plus some other times when time zone mismatches made it look like I’d missed a day, but I always remembered to take some sort of photo by the time I went to bed. In this year of chaos and of feeling stuck, this project has felt like an accomplishment.

For my penultimate shot of the project, I decided to get all wacky and revisit some props and repeat subjects from my year of photos. (It’s sort of a pictographic summary.) In this photo can be found at least 20 things that have either been the subjects of my photos more than once, or that represent things (or categories of things) that have recurred in my project photos. (I’m sorry to say that even though it appeared in at least 4 of my photos, the kitchen sink is not included in this still life.)

How many can you find?

If you are curious, but haven’t looked at many of my photos, you can peek the thumbnails in batches on my flickr account:

And here’s another game for you, if you want to play. Each month, I chose a theme (or some sort of visual motif) to work with. Can you identify them? (Okay, it was not actually all 12 months.)

If you want to play, leave a comment with:

    1) one thing from the still life photo above that has either appeared in some of my Project 365 photos, or that might represent things from those photos
                    ~ or ~
    2) a theme identified from one of my monthly sets
                    ~ or ~
    3) the number of things from the photo you have been able to identify
                    ~ or ~
    4) any months for which you have been unable to identify a theme

If you don’t want to play, leave a comment telling me:

    1) how cool I am for doing this project and for achieving awesome levels of awesomeness
                    ~ or ~
    2) what a dork I am for making up this game and for achieving dorky levels of dorkiness
                    ~ or ~
    3) the number of times you rolled your eyes while reading this post
                    ~ or ~
    4) any moths for which you have been unable to identify a thorax

If you don’t want to play or leave a comment, click here.

sharing a chair

One of my regular pursuits is to try to get a good picture with both Phoebe and Theo. They are often like bouncing atoms, rarely at rest at the same place at the same time. Today at lunch, they were fighting over a particular chair at the kitchen table. I have no idea why that chair. But then they finally agreed that they could sit in the chair together. Oh, the cuteness! I had to get a picture! Of course, my hands were full as I headed towards the table. I turned around to set aside the plates of food I’d been about to serve and pulled my iPod out of my pocket. As soon as I had the camera pointed in the right direction, though, Phoebe decided she was over the moment. She ran off. However, we were able to talk her back to the table, and amazingly, both of them stayed put (without glue or other restraining devices!) while I aimed the iPod camera at them. Rejoice! There was much cuteness to be had. (Not shown, though, are the shots of the kids with food hanging out of their mouths.)

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(I do find myself wishing I’d grabbed for my real camera, since the iPod photos are so grainy. Instagram filters are fun and all, but I’m pretty sure I’ll grow tired of them…)

of spoons and spools

We are down at my in-laws’ again this weekend. I realized that I typically take a lot of pictures when we are here. Here are some reasons why:

  • When we come down here, I go into travel mode. Because we don’t have childcare when we visit, I don’t typically expect to do much work. This seems to lead to a bit of a sense of vacation, even though I am usually still busy all day with the kids and helping out my in-laws with meals and such. But I keep my camera handy!
  • The yard here is more amenable to playing outside. (We live in the woods at home, and if there is no breeze, our yard can be ridiculously buggy.) It’s nice to take pictures of the kids out with natural light. (For that matter, the light inside is also better. Living in the woods as we do, our house is often pretty shady.)
  • The inside of the house is much less chaotic than our own home. I can take pictures of the kids without being annoyed that the background is dominated by gigantic piles of papers or toys or whatnots. (It’s the whatnots at home that bug me especially, with their annoying whatnottishness.)
  • There are lots of different odds and ends here than are at our house. (I feel like, especially with project 365, I have pretty well tapped our house for subject matter.)

Case in point: there is a rack of spools of thread in the basement, right by a very classic looking sewing machine. I’ve also frequently found myself taking pictures of utensils and housewares. Not that we don’t have housewares at home, but they are different ones. Our spoons have different shapes. So, yes, I took a photo of the spoons in the silverware drawer.

So I posted my spools on Instagram, with the caption “Spools.” Then I posted my spoons, with the caption “Spoons.” And it pleased me well to notice at that point that they were only one letter off. Naturally, I tried to think of other things that started with “spoo,” but there were no spooks or spoofs readily available to photograph. I did, however, take a photo of this juice glass, which I think I will have to dub a spoob. Or maybe spoop. Spoot? You be the judge.

Spools.

Spoons.

A spoo_.

playing with Instagram

First with the Tumblr, and now with the Instagram. It would appear that I’m all about jumping on the social media bandwagons. (Or maybe on the trailers that follow the bandwagons, since the bandwagons passed me by ages ago. I’m a late wagon jumper.) (Not that I’m about to start a MySpace page. That wagon is long departed.)

Having been without an iPhone, or other mobile device with a decent camera, I had only looked on to the Instagram posts of others with interest and some envy. The cool filters! The hipness of it all! But for my birthday, John got me an iPod touch, which comes with not one, but two cameras. Woo-hoo! I rushed to load the Instragram app. (Well, maybe not exactly rushed. It was probably over a week. I was busy.) First I played around a bit with some very lackluster photos taken with the iPod, with disappointingly lackluster results. But then I figured out that I could use photos I’d taken previously, with my real camera, and futz with them in Instagram. I have to say, I find the filters a lot of fun.

Here are a few photos I’ve played with. For most of them, I failed to make note of which of the many available filters I used, so I tried my best to reconstruct. However, if anyone can tell that I’ve got the filter wrong, please speak up.


This was a photo I took on my commute during my first week or so of Project 365, in August 2010. (I think this filter might be the one called X-Pro II. You can see the unmanipulated one on flickr.)


This one I took on my trip to Japan in 2004. It is (I believe) an old cemetery in the hills just outside of Kyoto. I love the photo, but the highlights were blown in such a way that I’ve had trouble adjusting it. Putting it though an Instagram filter gave it new life. (I think this might be with the filter called Walden. Here is the original.)

Here’s one where I tried applying the tilt shift doohicky, as well as a filter. (I think this filter might be the one called Sutro.) I like the composition of the original, but I really think that changing the focus and the palette adds to the nostalgic feel.)


I joked that this one was a composite photo of John’s and my 1977 school portraits, with the filter called 1977. Although I realized since posting that the school portraits were probably actually from 1979. (How I could I have been so far off?) Actually, in this case the filter didn’t add much, but it amused me so. Here is the “original,” which John made a few years back from photoshopping our two scanned school portraits together. (We didn’t know each other in the 70s, and lived on opposite sides of the country.)

So there. Instagram is fun. (If you are on Instagram, you can find me there as alejna99. Yes, the username alejna was taken. Again. I haven’t yet dared look to see who is using my name.)

more with the bellows

(I had more fun playing with the bellows the day after I took those dandelion photos. The top photo shows the bellows with a lens, but not attached to a camera. The bottom photo was taken without the bellows. (For that matter, the top photo was taken without the bellows, too, seeing as the bellows is in the photo. But you probably figured that part out…))

dandy

I tried out some macro photography using a bellows for the first time. (John set me up with his bellows and a lens, and an adapter so that I could use them with my camera.) While the shots didn’t turn out quite how I envisioned (I have a lot to learn), I did have fun, and was pleased with the results. I was trying to get in closer to the little shadows I could see in this shot, taken with my own lens.

That is a crop of this one, which was as about close as I could get with my 20 mm lens. (The bellows that John has doesn’t work with my lens.)

The bellows got me in much closer than I expected! It was very tricky to get things in focus, as evidenced by my first attempts.