Portfolio and A Ditch

Oh, what a creative title.

My image for yesterday: BW Film Photography Portfolio-- Lines. Click for full size.

I spent 8 hours printing yesterday. Can you believe that?! EIGHT HOURS! That, my friends, is why I was not up to posting by the time I got home. Eight hours left me with a plethora of prints that were not perfect but were very decent, so I'm going to sell them for different prices depending on their quality at the art show on Friday. Yay! However, the above prints turned out perfectly (the scanner wasn't doing a very great job, so just take my word for it LOL), so they shall be my eight portfolio photos. The professor himself chose all but the first and last one, so I'm hoping for an A- or so. Maybe. *nervous mode* I can't believe this is due tomorrow already. ARGH!

Alright, enough of that.

Today's challenge was to take a photo featuring water in some way, so I headed down the street. With all the rain we've had lately, there was bound to be some water, right? Here's my shot in my preferred crop:

However, Sandra liked the flowers better and suggested this crop:

I find this amusing because we had such conflicting tastes when it came to this photo. Believe it or not, I detest flowers. I don't know why, but I do. They're great to photograph sometimes, but I just don't want to look at them very often. I favored the rock and the water on the left side of the photo instead, but figured the flowers would add some contrast and interest. Sandra, on the other hand, could do without the rock and the water and is a big fan of flowers. Most people-- normal people-- probably do.

That brings me to my somewhat photographically irrelevant question for you. What would you prefer: a rock, water, or a flower?

For Sandra

The competition. AKA the result of my practicing blurred water motion. Note to self: 1/10 is not slow enough! Use the tripod.

Catch-Up

I didn't forget about you guys!!! It's been kind of a crazy few days, but I'm here now.

Remember how on Thursday (I believe) I said that I got a frame-in-frame shot that I really liked? Turns out that it wasn't as good in-camera as it was in-mind. It's still rather amusing, though. I like how it seems that these freaky little creatures are creeping out of the light.

As for yesterday, I was busy like you wouldn't believe, so my photos of the day are prints that I made during class. Sorry for that. :(

 A wildly painted set of bleachers at the main campus of my school.

Today is no better, photographically speaking. We have a shot I took just to see what using some strange filter I found in my room would do, and a snapshot.

Not quite sure what this filter was, but it made those stars.

It was a great day despite my tone and busy-ness. I got my prints in for the art conference and show I'm being featured in next Friday, and I'm extremely pleased with them. They're all set up and ready to go. Then, I got an e-mail from someone on the committee of the art conference saying that they'd like to feature a few more of my photos, so I've got to choose some ASAP!

Prints all ready to go

For now, I'm exhausted. Have a good one.

Mama's In the Kitchen

SLR shot taken this morning at school.

Can you see her? Or Do you see a Christmas tree? Or a drummer in a marching band?

Or do you just see a boring, upside-down photo?

I see me going to bed early after a long day of printing (50+ prints today! GAH) and taking photographs. Goodnight!

Recess Over

Alright, guys, I'm so sorry for being this late. I was playing! It was a cruddy day for reasons I'll explain later, and Sandra decided to let me play with some of her old photos of my beautiful best friend Khalila. It really cheered me up (thanks, Sandra!). This is a bit of what came out of it.

After regular processing, I used the same filters as my harlequin photos to give these pictures a completely different feel just for kicks.

Speaking of the harlequin photos, they show up in yesterday's shot!

Taken with the Minolta x-700

One of the first things you'll probably notice about the photo is that it's extremely contrasty. That brings me to the reason that the day was less than pleasant for me: my two rolls of 36-exposure film were damaged nearly past the point of salvation.

First, the lab ran out of fixer, then it ran out of fixer remover-- neither of which would have happened had the employee with the keys to the stock room bothered to show up for work today--, so we had to improvise when it came to chemistry.

Next, the timer in my darkroom went haywire midway through developing. Naturally, there were no more timers. Again, I had to improvise.

Then, when my film was finally done washing, I noticed that some of it was extremely gray, and other parts were almost completely clear. Come to find out there was a CRACK in my film canister. The film was getting exposed to light throughout the entire developing process.

I'm sad to say that these were not even close to the only problems I had in the darkroom today. However, I tried to make due, and now I am sure I'll be able to salvage most of my film on Thursday with any luck.

Definitely need some luck. LOL

This morning's quick attempt at filling the frame before class.

Worn

To be perfectly honest, I took this photo a few days ago, but never really got around to editing it. It wasn't until I came across this wonderful action that I knew what kind of look I wanted. Now the photograph is just how I feel today: Worn.

Class went great. I focused my attention on learning the things I needed most immediately, so I didn't get very many prints, but the few that I actually DID finish were "perfect" according to the professor. At least technically, anyway.

However, I have no photos to show for today until next week because every picture I took was with the SLRs. Lessons learned:

1.  Always wear two pairs of gloves when shooting outdoors with SLRs in the winter.

2.  Do not wear a cap in a darkroom.

3.  Always make sure that you have at least 1 frame left out of 24 GB worth of memory cards.

4.  Enjoy every minute of your learning experiences.

:D 

Prints, Edits, and Stripes

I took this photo a few days ago with my awesome new  High-Def  Panoramic Fisheye Lens (for the millionth time, THANK YOU SANDRA! *hug*) and somehow completely forgot about it. Came across it today while cleaning out a card and couldn't leave it behind. Hope it was worth it. :)

Now, today's challenge was to feature stripes somehow, so here are my photos for the day.

Wind chime from my bedroom window, using my 55-200 mm lens.

My poor, abused guitar by my other bedroom window. Today was all about daylight!

Finally, I will show you my terrible school prints, starting with the most overexposed: my dog, Ursa.

I've got a LOT of learning to do. Maybe next week will be better! *fingers crossed*

Low... Key?

Did somebody say key?

Kidding. Actually, I forgot to look at the daily challenge today until I already started posting this, so the fact that my first image was a keyboard and my next is in film noir is purely coincidental. I love coincidences!

What I was ORIGINALLY saying is that I spent today photographing my eyeball off with my Minolta, so these are just digital shots I decided to snap while I was using that. My real photo of the day won't be printed until tomorrow. ;)

I took a shot just like this next one with the Minolta for class, and since I didn't feel like having two of the same photo, I decided to play instead. Film noir interests me, so that's the style I tried to mimic. How'd I do?

I hope you enjoy it. Now bedtime!