Week 4

Wow, week 4 already.  This week went much better in the volume of picture taking.  Leaving it until the weekend right before the deadline raises my stress level.  Come to think of it, my Mom tried to tell me the same thing about school.  I am thinking more about what may make nice photos and I am making myself go out and shoot.  My wife is also encouraging me to take more pictures.  The weather this week co-operated and provided some foggy days and some hoar frost.

The first picture is taken at the local car wash.  I was waiting in line for about 20 minutes along with everyone else after 10 days of Chinook in Calgary.  I tried various different pictures (time delay of cars being sprayed by the automatic wahser)  they all turned out boring.  I then took this picture of the car in front of me sitting in the wash shooting through the plastic door.  The camera was moved during the exposure.

Picture #2 was taken about 10pm at night in the fog.  The sodium vapor lamp gives everything a yellow/orange color.

Picture #3 is taken in a park near our house.  You can see the leaves still on the branches of this tree.  Calgary had a bizarre fall, where is was +30 C in late September, and then it froze hard in early October.  Many leaves never did turn their fall colors.  The went from green to dead on the trees and many have still not fallen off.

I have been looking at the internet for inspiration and ideas on different things to photograph.  One of the blog sites that I have come across is called The Family Photo Journalist.  They have an interesting approach of taking black and white pictures of their family doing every day things, not looking at the camera.  They also process their pictures in black and white to lessen distractions and focus your eyes on the action taking place.   I thought I would give their concept a try and see how things turned out.  If you want to check out the blog site it is  http://www.thefamilyphotojournalist.blogspot.com/ (FPJ)

Picture #4 - (FPJ) is of Cyndy and Carolyn making a butter tart pie.  Carolyn loves to help her Mom in the kitchen and who better to run the mixer than the 2.5 year old.  (Just kidding the mixer was off).  There is some blur in the photo but I liked the moment that it shows.

Picture #5 - (FPJ) is Carolyn at the breakfast table doing Cinderella stickers while wearing her Cinderella dress.

Everything up to now has been with no added flashes or studio lights.  My father in law was over for dinner on Saturday and had requested that I take some pictures for him.  He has been involved with the Masons and the Shriners for many years and needed a picture to put up in his Mason hall. 

Picture #6 - A picture of Jim taken with a single softbox mounted camera right.

Picture #7 - Jim brought along his Mason outfit, complete with hammer.  I have various shots with him holding the hammer in front of him, but this action shot stands out.  This was taken with an octabox camera left, a parabolic umbrella for fill camera right and a gridded light pointing at the back ground.

A better week for me, than week 3.  I managed to always have a memory card in the camera when I left the house.  I'm going to try and do 1 or 2 Family Photojournalist (FPJ) shots per week for awhile.

If any friends/family have any photography requests drop me a line or give me a call and I will try and accomodate you.