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16 July 2010
Photo Friday: Your Best Shots! (And tell us why you like them!)
This was purely serendipitous. I was shooting outside the State museum alongside the canal, when some formal gathering inside broke up or took a break. This woman walked out with this beautiful gown, and I sweet-talked her into posing by the bollard to backlight the skirt a bit. Since I was getting 4 and 5 second exposure times, I used a 6v lantern to light this side of her a bit. The wind and natural movement of her skirt produced the ghostly effect.
This is a favorite due to the sheer weirdness of it- I was randomly panning the rides at the Porter Country Fair in Valparaiso, IN one evening, and found this shot when I went through them later. The placid, composed expression on the woman's face just kills me.
My daughter reading a book patiently. I love all the motion blur because it was totally accidental and me learning my new camera. That and she never is still, but she was that day.
It's not very spectacular, but I just like the soft sunset light, the contrast in shapes between the blocky building and the twisting wire, and the contrast in colours between the warm sunset-pastel building and the cold steel of the railings.
This is probably my favourite photograph ever. I'd walked past this lot and seen the old car in there several times, and this one night decided to get a shot of it. It came out blurred, but I think that makes it even better.
This is probably the cutest picture I've ever taken. I'd not had my camera very long and was still getting used to it, and I spotted these two youngsters playing around the tree, in and out of the hole which, I assume, led to their den inside the trunk.
Seeing these pictures, I realise they were all taken with my FZ7, my first 'real' camera (probably akin to a Kodak Instamatic to a real photographer, but complicated enough for me). I have a small pocket camera which I use most of the time now, but seeing these photos made me realise I should use my FZ7 more often.
This is not a good photograph technically speaking (better cropping here?), but I love the lighting, the subject, and the look on his face. This is the schist sarcophagus of Sasobek, c. 630 BC. I can't get over how old this is despite its nearly flawless appearance. Weirdly enough, I just remembered I had a dream last night with this in it.
I noticed this reflection while waiting for a sushi order and was inordinately pleased with the results. I'm not crazy about the background, but I like vibrancy and clarity of the neon.
This was taken in the 80's. . .a slide then printed via Cibachrome then scanned into digital. The Church of Guadalupe in San Crisbobal de las Casas in Chiapas, MX. Just a lucky shot, plus to get the angle right I leaned WAY sideways through a wrought iron fence.
Cloud forest above Kailua Kona on the Big Island. Kona is usually hot and parched, being on the dry side of the island, but at this elevation there is a band of clouds that hangs around a lot, creating a wet micro climate. Love the delicate flowers next to the barbed wire.
Early morning mist over a valley in northern California. I'm just amazed that I got up early enough to capture a dawn shot, it was probably the jet lag.
I love this because I love abstract photos in general, and I love the contrast between the dramatic sky and the clean, angular rectangle. Even the power lines running across the bottom add to the composition.
This is really an un-typical photo for me- I usually don't get good candid pics of people. This is a crop from a much larger pic- the feet belong to a woman in a pirate-themed gymnastics/diving show at a state fair (she was on a trampoline here). I love this one for the wacky composition, and that couple's expressions.
I like this one because of the Holga graininess, the modernist architecture, the fact that it's a place I used to go to a lot as a very young child, and the fact that a friend commented on this pic, "It looks like the waiting area in a spaceport on an alien planet."
This is my Coya, about six months after I adopted her. She had a rather advanced bout of heartworms and it took me close to four months to get her a clear bill of health, so this is shortly after that. She's maybe 15 or so months old here, still has a lot of puppy exuberance in her. I love how bright her eyes are here and it captures her personality exceptionally well.
There's nothing terribly exceptional about this shot, I just love the sign. It's from an old, practically empty shopping center in East Dallas that has my favorite Mexican breakfast diner in the world. I lived for a period right down Oates renting a room at a house a buddy of mine owned.
This is easily the cutest picture I've ever taken. It was at the petting-zoo area of the Texas State Fair. The lighting inside this building was awful, but holy shit, baby goat! (and oddly, Specklet, I just now remembered there were goats one of my dreams last night! Spooky)
A couple of years ago I bought a fancy perfume-bottle for my wife; a couple of months ago it occurred to me that it would probably look really good brightly back-lit...
This one has been the background for my phone for a few years now. I like it because it's just after the fog rolled onto the coast, and everything disappearing into the fog, along with the stone wall, makes me happy.
This picture is of the first time I brought my partner to Oregon. It would have been awkward if he hadn't liked Oregon; I didn't tell him that. He loved it so much, he wanted to stay there and leave all his stuff back in Madison. I love how the color fades in on the coast, and how this camera was able to capture that well. I also love the stripes of blues and orange (I should make a sweater with these exact colors):
This was on a whale watching boat in Puget Sound. People were complaining about what a grey day it was; I think it was completely beautiful. I like that this looks like a black-and-white, but it's in color.
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I still have no idea how I managed this shot. The background whited itself out - there was no photoshopping involved whatsoever. Even though sometimes I think it is a little cliched I still just love it totally.
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Fair shots are always awesome. I like the emptiness of this photo a lot.
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This is my newest favorite; I took it about a month ago. I love low light photography anyway and something about the color and the sort of bleakness and emptiness of the scene really appeals to me.
And here's my set of favorites as well, in case anybody is severely bored.
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I took this in Bannack State Park, Montana three years ago. Bannack is an old gold mining town that slowly died and was finally abandoned in the 1970s. The town was turned into a state park that maintains the structures as they stand. This was shot inside a house that had old newspapers covering the walls.
I passed through Bannack as my then-boyfriend-now-husband, I, and two friends rode motorcycles offroad from Canada to Mexico down the Continental Divide.
I'm not very good at using light. I hope to get better, but for now my best ones are outdoors.
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This was on the roof of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC. I had somehow managed to tag along with a school group led by a Parsons instructor who had done this 44 times and was allowed in all of the secret places. It was a gorgeous day, but I also love the way the steeple just stops, as if someone was doing a blocky Photoshop edit on that pure blue background and forgot to put it back in.
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My dad invited me along when he was invited to be on the sidelines during opening day of the university's football season. It was pretty incredible.
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Just north of Pinedale, WY on the same trip. I love the golden road disappearing into menace.
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My dog Kenda on a hiking trip near Tellico Lake, TN. I like the recurring white (snow, Border Collie paintjob, reflective pipe on her jacket) and her calm, evaluating expression.
This is the first time I ever caught a single snowflake on camera, and it's my favorite kind of snow: light and airy and cold and dry. I have this printed large and hanging in my living room above the fireplace.
A self portrait in the middle of a sunny afternoon. The gun I'm holding is real and triple-checked unloaded. My brother is holding the flash off camera left. If I had done this in Alaska I would have had a small crowd watching, but this wasn't even close to out of the ordinary for San Francisco.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
