Eyesores

FINALLY, tonight will be the last night I post a photo of my class artwork. Tomorrow I will be spending the day with a photographer friend and a few people she's bringing along, so it should be a fun day! The next day, I have orientation for Ohio State. If I don't post that day, it will only be because I am exhausted. lol

Alright, so today's photo... yeeeah, I'm not really going to explain it since the explanation's in the pic. Enjoy!

As for August 2, I was still not feeling well that day, so I took another pic in the yard. Unfortunately, I'm not as pleased with it as the one I posted yesterday. I liked it unedited, but it was freakishly vibrant and hard on the eyes for anyone who's not [insane? tasteless? blind?] me. Since it was so bright, I decided to completely go the opposite route and try a somewhat vintage look on it.

You decide. Do you hate it, love it, or feel nothing at all?

Cool and Warm

Like the weather lately, my photos for today and yesterday change temperatures.

Yesterday:
I decided to take a quick shot of a bush I was practically getting swallowed by while waiting to take my driver's exam. Guess what? GOT MY LICENSE! Whew.

Today:
Didn't really get a moment with my camera to take a decent photo, so while we waited at a stoplight on the way to class, I snapped this. One day, I'll get back into the swing of this photography thing.

Sleep tight, guys!

Wishes at Rest

Today I felt like playing with two different methods of color splashing. For this photo, I took one in color and then converted it to BW in-camera. In photoshop, I placed the rectangles over the BW version, pasted the colored version on top, and created a clipping mask. The only other editing done was to Auto Contrast the two photos and add in the tag/quote. Sharpening was done in-camera. :-)

The bottom one is the usual kind of color splash, but again both versions of the photo were made in-camera. I hope you enjoy today's photos.

Connection

Today, I made a very strange mental connection between the texture photo I snapped and a panned photo I took for my old digital photography class. The two were nothing alike, but once I tweaked their colors, the connection became a little clearer. Still, it's rather strange. Don't you think?

The Texture

Ye Olde Pan

Oddly enough, I just checked dailyshoot.com to find that today's challenge was to take a photo that emphasizes the horizon. Ha!

Spent the day editing photos rather than taking them yet again. I'd share, but I'm wiped. You'll see the best of them when I finish up this particular shoot! Goodnight. :)

Boxed In

A texture for you folks! Have fun. ;)

An Issue of Pride

First and foremost, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the best mentor I could ever ask for! I hope you had a wonderful day, Sandra!

Now, today's photos. Yaaay... *sarcasm sign*

You know, with the exception of the smoke stream photos, I haven't been proud of my work in almost 2 weeks. This is a problem I hope to fix over the weekend with my Nikon FM. Things are going great for me, but it's all with older digital photos, not recent work.

I need to step up my game, anyway. I just found out some terrifying news today: My film photography portfolio is due NEXT WEEK instead of finals week now! AAAARGH! I'm nowhere near ready. The professor chose a few of my prints that he wants in the portfolio, but otherwise, I still need like 9 more. I've decided that my portfolio theme will be Lines. He wants us to have a specific theme, and it seems that all my film prints heavily emphasize lines, so there we go. I'm spending pretty much the whole day Tuesday doing what I can. Wish me skill!

C'est Chic

P.S. Photographer's Forum has finally posted the winners of the contest I was a finalist in. You can find them all here.

Splish Splash

Today was a photographic failure. I had to cheat so badly to get this photo. My white background had distracting silver brads on it, so blanked it out except for the shadows because this photo is extremely boring otherwise. I don't know. Hope you like it more than I liked editing it. lol

I thought I'd try this out thanks to Shayne Gray's inspiring post, but I couldn't get enough light no matter what I did, and then when I finally got my flash working how I wanted it, I couldn't find an object that would create a good splash. This tiny one was created by a heavy Mexican coin. You might be wondering "Why Mexican?" Well, the answer is that it's magnetic and I could use my nifty magnet pen to get it out of the water from behind my tripod. Laziness for the win!

Other objects I tried include a 50 cent piece, a gold dollar, a golf ball, and three different sizes of rocks since I had no fruit to use. Nothing created a splash. I'm starting to think that glass was cursed (or, uh, specially made not to splash?). Any pointers on what I should have done?

On the Irish and Desirable Veggies

Oh, come on. Who doesn't talk about the Irish and desirable veggies every once in awhile?

It's a story I have to tell because I was thoroughly amused by it, and today was a hard day to amuse my unhealthy self. My Art History professor was showing us photographs from Edward Weston, and someone in the class said, "I don't get it. None of his nudes are sexy. They all look like landscapes!" The professor said to him, "Wait 'til you see what he does with vegetables. Have you ever seen a sexy pepper?" What was just as amusing was that I immediately knew exactly what photo she was talking about. How messed up is that?

You can't tell me you don't love this pepper.

On another note, my Photography class went terribly yet amazingly. I snapped 10-12 photos this morning to finish up the roll of film I wanted to develop, and one of them was quite pleasing to me. I've been trying to practice frame-in-frame shots since that's something I've never really gotten into, and I may or may not have gotten a nice one. The problem is that I forgot to print it. Here's why.

First, I should have checked my reels before I went dark. The two sides of each reel were not matching, so they didn't meet up quite right. I couldn't get my film onto those reels for the life of me. Then, I learned that my particular darkroom doorknob was backwards the hard way-- it should be locked on the outside but unlocked on the inside, yet someone opened up my door while I was in there. It was locked on my side, but whoever opened my door a little spilled light all over my roll.

Once I finally did manage to maneuver the roll onto its reel, I began the developing process. My tank, however, decided that it didn't like its light seal, and the thing fell open even though it had been sealed just fine while I was agitating. Once again, my roll of film was exposed to light prematurely. I asked the professor what he suggested, but he said I might as well trash the roll. Twice exposed is pretty much a death sentence, right?

Wrong! Somehow, that roll managed to come out perfectly fine. Talk about luck of the Irish!!! Even Professor Williams couldn't believe it. However, after all this trouble, I'd used up almost all my class time. I spent the rest of it trying to print a few photos from the beginning of the new roll. How stupid of me. They're all photos from the Photowalk post, only taken with the SLR instead. You've seen them!

Instead of posting my photo of the day TODAY, I'll give you one you haven't seen yet. It was taken last year when I was just learning what White Balance was and how to tweak it. Somehow, it's still a favorite of my friends'. I hope you like it, too!

Down in the... Ditches?

Today was a great day followed by an awful night. I am very excited that I got a box full of photography supplies   I bought last week. RC paper galore!!! And my grandmother got the car fixed, so no more annoying hum all the way to Photography class. Yay!

However, on my way to class, there was something gigantic on the expressway that none of us saw until the car was about to run over it. It not only gave us a flat tire, but also bent our rims. Needless to say, I didn't make it to class seeing as we had no spare and help didn't come for an hour.

Then, to make matters worse, we couldn't get up the steep hill to our home with that donut tire they gave us, so my frustrated grandfather backed off the hill too fast and went right into a ditch. Not just any ditch, though. No, this was a ditch filled with knee-deep water, a streetlight in front of us, and a fire hydrant within four feet of our tail end. The towtruck drivers took almost 2 hours to get there, and then they managed to hit that hydrant with our car. The poor poor car.

I almost forgot to take my photo of the day because I was so frustrated. I did manage to get a semi-interesting texture photo, though. I combined it with an in-camera image overlay from yesterday's set to get this. Hopefully you'll get some use out of it.

Time to go cuddle up in bed with my teddy and my feather pillow (yes, I still cuddle with both of those. It's been a rough night. Leave me alone!). Goodnight, loves!


OH, by the way, I finally found out what model my Nikon SLR is. It's an FM. Good to know! lol

Mundane? Nah.

Okay, so yesterday Blogger hated me. No matter what I did, it would NOT let me even attempt to make a new post. I posted the photo on my Facebook, but now I'm posting it here. Today's photo will have its own post later. :)

The challenge was to make an interesting photo of something mundane and ordinary. Well, I was in school. Nothing's more mundane than that! However, there was a gorgeous piece of wall art that reminded me of a dinosaur, so I decided to take a few photos of that on my way out the door. Here's my shot.

I cooled the tones because... that was just the mood I was in last night, I guess. The piece itself actually looks like rusted metal. Perhaps I'll be able to provide a better photo next week.