Day 4 - Danger Cat!

Today we just hung out at home, so here are two shots of Mouse, and one I took through the louvered glass windows in the kitchen to create the light and dark stripes. Tomorrow I'll be more creative, I promise.

Day 3 - Revisiting the Garden

Went out into the garden today again. Managed to catch a snap of a butterfly and another picture of those red bushy flowers.

Day 2 - The Garden

I went shooting in my garden today, and I came up with a shot of my plumeria and this other flower that I have no idea what it is, but the tree out front is suddenly bursting with them.

The plumeria is overexposed, but I think that adds a delicateness. I shot both of these with my Canon 50 mm f/1.8.

I know I'm breaking the rule that says no white parts of the image should touch the edge (and I'm breaking it a lot), but that's what art is about, right? Breaking rules.

My New Lens, Baby

Evan, after two years of missing Christmas and birthdays, finally gave in, and bought me this lens. We had it shipped to my mother's house in California, and she brought it with her when she came most recently (thanks mom!).

Unlike most lenses, the Lensbaby doesn't focus on a plane, but rather on a spot. You can move the in-focus spot (the 'sweet spot') by tilting the lens, and then you have to focus manually on your subject. And to change the aperture you switch in and out little metal discs. The wider the aperture, the smaller the sweet spot, and the more blur you have in your photo.

I also sprung for the creative aperture kit, which has a couple blank aperture discs and one heart and one star. This makes all the out of focus light spots in your photo turn into hearts or stars, respectively.

This lens is difficult to focus, so it's hard to shoot moving subjects with, and a lot of times I settled for less than optimal focus while using it, but when you get a great shot, it's so worth it. It makes photography feel so creative. And Evan really likes to take the camera from me and shoot with it when I put this lens on.

Here are a few shots of downtown Siem Reap with the star aperture. I haven't edited them at all, and I don't think I would, except for maybe straightening the second one a little.

Day 1 - Cheaters Never Prosper

I spent all day thinking about this blog post, planning how to make my first honest day work. I didn't bring my camera to school, because I didn't think there would be shooting opportunities there, and I figured I would have plenty of time while the light lasted after school was over.

But, after school was over, we went grocery shopping and then we had a flat tire on the motorbike . . . so it was dark by the time we got home.

And since I haven't sprung for an off-camera flash yet, all that remained as a possible light source to pin down my remaining subject, aka Mouse, was (gasp!) the dreaded on-camera flash. According to Lumiquest this is "perhaps the most unflattering light source in photography."

So, I decided to change the photos to black and white. It helps a little. Tomorrow, onward and upward!

Day 0 - Cheating

It's the first day, and already I'm not playing by the rules. I did not take this photo today, it's from the most recent trip. My excuse? I didn't see anything worth shooting today. I've spent the day trying to catalog the 5700 photos I took in the last two weeks, and didn't really spend much time away from the computer.

So we'll call it Day 0. It doesn't count. From tomorrow on, I'm on the straight and narrow. I swear it.

Thanks for understanding, guys.

Editing: I cropped this, because I was shooting with a 50 mm lens, and I wasn't really as close as this looks. Because the lens is manual focus only, getting the focus just right was really hard. Fortunately this guy was just sitting there chillin' or I would have been stuck with one of the 15 shots I took before I got this one. It was a little overexposed, so I darkened it a touch, added some sharpening and a little bit of clarity, and that's pretty much it. Here's the original for comparison: