October 30, 2009
“Halloween Decorations”
I’ve been meaning to photograph these decorations for the last couple of days, but I always arrived past their bedtime… when they were deflated. I headed straight for them tonight and finally got the shots I was after. They are definitely ones of the best in the neighborhood, very typical of the decorations you would find on suburban lawns around Halloween. You can’t really tell on a still but the skull is actually animated. Great job neighbors!
October 29, 2009
“Of Grain”
With the sun setting earlier and earlier, catching a glimpse of the golden hour after work has become more and more elusive. Sunday’s time change will actually kill that prospect for good. I had hoped to capture a nice view of the Bronx River Parkway Reservation today but didn’t make it happen. Jasmine had a lot of fun chasing wild geese though. Not pigeons mind you, geese! I had hoped to capture some nice Halloween decorations from our street, the inflatable kind. Well, I fell asleep with Jasmine in the process of putting her to bed. The decorations were deflated by the time I went back outside. I checked out my shots, nothing of interest. It was 11:53 PM then.
I couldn’t resolve myself to use any of those poor shots for my daily photo. I had to think fast if I wanted to create something worthier. This is when I saw a couple of Kodak films I picked up at the PhotoPlus Expo, and an idea came to me. I obviously didn’t have time to set up my tripod and get a clean shot. Instead, I was going to play on grain. I thought it was ironic to push my 5D to its maximum ISO, 3200, while shooting the allegedly World’s finest grain from Kodak, the brand new Ektar 100 film. Since it’s a color negative film, converting my photo to black and white was also in order. It’s not a great shot by any means, but I hope that you will find it at the very least interesting. If it makes you think, great. As usual, I welcome any discussion on the subject.
October 28, 2009
“Express”
Tonight was one of those busy nights where I really didn’t have much time to spare for my photography, let alone think about what subject to take. When there’s only half an hour left to midnight and no inspiration to come by, my safest bet is to take a walk around the block. Eventually, I always stumble upon fortuitous subjects, all within minutes. Tonight was no exception. I came back with a few shots, amongst them this one.
Most of us probably have this mental picture of the American kid on his bike throwing the newspaper over the fence. It’s not very far off when it comes to junk mail. That kind of package can be found pretty much anywhere. At least they put plastic sleeves to protect the paper from the rain, which is not always the case. This one was laying on the front lawn of a house. I shot it at f/1.4, ISO 1600, a setting that works quite well when I do decide to venture outside at night.
October 27, 2009
“Connections”
Short of opening up a computer or another piece of electronics, I remembered that I had this unused card which would work perfectly fine as a macro subject. I tested several angles, capturing the various components of the circuit: capacitors, resistors, etc. I wasn’t happy with any of them though. This is when I flipped the card, revealing much simpler patterns. While I had to stack my close up lenses to get as near as possible to the circuit, I also had to crop the end result in post to get the composition I liked. Those connections are small.
October 26, 2009
So as to not give any clue, I will not write about my subject tonight. I will just let you guess what it is… good luck!
