Day 151 (August 9) - Motorcycles

Not much of a post today, just some motorbikes parked at the supermarket and a view of one of the windows in our house. See you tomorrow!

Day 150 (August 8) - Fragile

Inspired by this photo I found on a blog linked to Flickr, I decided to try out some photos of eggshells, sans concept. So I wasted an egg (sorry, I know, I should have eaten it, or saved it, but I wasn't hungry and I'm lazy), set up the shell next to my large windows in the afternoon light on my blue tile floor and took some photos.

Here are two of them, the second one processed two different ways. I was just mousing over presets in Lightroom, and I liked this one that turned the eggshell white. Honestly, I'm not even sure what settings the preset changed, but I liked the effect. Think I like the original better, but it's always fun to try different options out.

Day 149 (August 8) - More Plumeria, Plus Some News

So, I almost skipped posting today, because I didn't really take any photos, but then I read this (click the link) and it made me smile.

I (sort of, kind of) won a contest! Yay! I was named one of two runners up in Jason D Moore's Big Photo Contest. Which is awesome, and not what I was expecting. Basically I just enter contests because I feel it's good practice in case my photography ever really gets good enough.

If you want to see all the entries, the Flickr group is here. There were some really great photographs submitted, and it's always really interesting to see other people's interpretation of a theme, as opposed to mine. This contest was a 5 photo contest, one photo for each of:

- Aged, Worn, or Old
- Travel or a Journey
- Part of a Whole
- Geometric
- Your Best Shot Ever

Anyway, I hope you have a great Friday. Fridays are always better than average, so enjoy yours to the utmost.

PS The photo is totally unrelated. I was just experimenting with square crops on some plumeria shots.

Day 147 (August 6) - Footwear

You may not think that the subject of this photo is footwear. You would be excused for thinking that the subject is, indeed, Evan, striding toward me, or perhaps the boys monkeying around next to him, or maybe (if you are philosophically inclined) you might think the subject was something larger, something grander. Education, maybe. Or the meeting point of two cultures.

On an average day, you'd be right. But this photo is about footwear. Check out what the boys are wearing on their feet. They wear socks and sandals (often tennis shoes with the backs folded down for easier in and outing as well). Why? Because every time they go into a classroom, they take their shoes off. Their footwear is practical.

In contrast, look at Evan's shoes. Laces, tied tight, no easy in and outing here. He wears these to school every day. And takes them off at least six times a day, to go into classrooms and teach (no shoes in the classroom).

Have I spoken to him about the wisdom of other, easier, more flexible shoes? A thousand times, yes. Does he listen? No.

PS I know the photo above looks grainy and weird, and I don't know why. If you click on it, the larger version looks better, but I tried uploading a version the same size as the container, and it still didn't help. I promise, it looked much nicer before I uploaded it. And the file on my computer still looks nice.

Day 147 (August 5) - Self Portrait

Self portraits are tough. And I've been avoiding doing one for ages now, so I decided that today I was going to bite the bullet. But my vanity didn't really want a face shot.

So I decided to photograph my feet again. But this just reminded me that I should really cut my toenails. And then . . . I decided that I wanted a picture of my hair. Just the way it was, sort of disheveled, falling out of its braid at the end of the workday. After all, today one of my smartest students in the highest level class I teach, told me 'teacher, beautiful hair. color . . . beautiful.'

I know she can make a sentence in English. She just . . . doesn't, unless I make her.

Anyway, back to the picture.

Simple, right?

Well, actually, no. I held the camera behind my head. Too close! said the autofocus. I tried holding it further away. Not enough contrast! said my lens, and searched wildly for something to focus on. After about five minutes of fruitlessly holding the camera up and behind my head, my arms were complaining loudly, and I still had no pictures. Not even any bad pictures, just no pictures.

So I went into the bathroom to use the mirror to get my shot (word to the wise, if you want to take a self portrait, don't choose the back of your head). It still was ridiculously hard, but I did get a few I liked by resting the camera on top of my head and angling it down to the mirror. A bit of a crapshoot, but I guess I learned something:

If you want a picture of your hair, ask someone else. And, self portraits may be for other photographers. I think I may have reached my self portrait peak in 8th grade.

As a thank you for reading all of my mumblings, here are some kitten pictures.


Don't you wish you could fall asleep like that?

Day 146 (August 4) - Mothers

Mothers everywhere are the same: concerned for the safety of their children.

This is a shot of the mother cat glaring balefully at us after we (once again! the nerve) snuck a peek at her kittens.

The bottom image is straight out of camera (well, raw converted to jpeg, don't think I can upload raw files to blogger). The top image I did my basic edits: color, contrast, sharpness, then I wasn't really happy with the position of the cat, so I took the image into Photoshop and stretched the background a little. I also darkened the background to put the focus on the cat. Too much? What do you think? Is that red in the background distracting? I kind of like it, but it does pull the eye away.