Day 165 (August 23) - Green

I went out into our garden today on a mission. I was going to shoot into the light! Lens flare isn't really something I've gone after much, but it seems to currently be all the rage, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I didn't fall in love with any of my more flared shots, but I did get a few keepers. They might class more as contrejour than as flare shots. (Contrejour just is a fancy way of saying shooting towards the light.) And I'm determined to keep at it. I want to try it with a few different lenses, at different times of day; these were shot with my 50mm lens around 4:30 pm, which is still a pretty bright time of day here but at least the sun is low enough in the sky that it's easy to point your camera in its general direction.

Anyway, if you're interested in flare, here are a couple of great flare tutorials:

http://digital-photography-school.com/5-tips-for-achieving-artistic-lens-flare-how-to

http://thepioneerwoman.com/photography/2009/06/sun-flare-for-beginners/

Here and here are tutorials that show how to create that cool 'sun star' effect. Haven't tried it out myself, yet.

Day 162 (August 20) - More Black and White

Some more black and whites of the scene at school just before class. You can see that the kids have to line up before they come inside (one line of girls and one line of boys), but even so it can get a little chaotic.

Day 161 (August 19) - Rain

A view of the rainstorm at school yesterday. I had never realized the difficulty of capturing rain in a way where the camera can see it as well as the human eye until I was crouching under the eaves of a building with students looking at me like I was crazy, trying to find a good subject and protect my camera from wayward drops all at the same time.

I feel like this one at least gives you some idea of how hard it was raining, though.

Day 160 (August 18) - Candles

We had a massive thunderstorm at the end of the school day today. Lights flickered, the heavens opened and it dumped.

When we got home there was no power. As soon as it started to get dark outside I went and got our store of candles, lit some, took some pictures, and then the power came back on. Which was faster than I was going to give Thailand credit for, to be honest.

Day 159 (August 17) - The Black Dog

Most dogs in Thailand live on the border between stray and pet. Theravada Buddhism forbids the killing of any living thing, so euthanasia is not practiced and populations go unchecked except by hunger and misadventure. It's common to keep a dog in the street that you feed sometimes to protect your house, but not common to keep a dog indoors.

And the dogs fight with each other, and sometimes attack people as well.

I thought this dog was beautiful as I approached to take a picture, and I still do. It's a difficult, heartbreaking sight, but it's not possible to help all the dogs.

Still, this one has lovely eyes. I hope she's doing okay.

One Year

I've had my DSLR (Canon xsi) for almost exactly a year now. In some ways, it's gone really fast. In other ways, I can't believe that a whole year has passed. I certainly don't feel older, or even all that different.

But some things certainly have changed. Last August I was in California, I had just finished teaching at a really intense ESL summer camp and I was gearing up for my imminent move to Thailand. Plus, I had a bunch of new fun photo equipment to play with that I still didn't really know how to use.

Now I live in Thailand, I teach children, I'm coming to understand basic Thai, and I've seen and photographed some of the most beautiful places in the world. Plus I've been attempting to post a photo a day for almost six months. And I've learned a lot in so doing. Not all necessarily photo related.

This photo was shot in Alameda, close to sunset I believe. It was a beautiful, clear evening, warmer than average with the feel of summer still in the air. We were walking along the beach with one of Evan's friends.

There were tons of pelicans out in the water and I was doing my best to capture them with my new 55-250 lens racked all the way out to 250mm. I sort of knew about shutter speed and aperture and ISO, but not enough to know that my shutter speed wasn't quite fast enough for a sharp image, and that I should really have gotten closer to the birds instead of zooming in. So the image isn't quite sharp and it's backlit to boot.

But I love that sailboat in the top corner, and the way the light is turning it yellow. And this photo makes me nostalgic for the Bay Area, and the crisp evening air, the ability to walk along the shore in the evening. Like Mexican food, good pizza, the ability to communicate with strangers, and public transportation that gets you pretty close to where you want to go, I miss California sea air, and the moderate range of temperatures.

I may post a few more photos from a year ago in the next couple of months. I'm enjoying the contrast, and the memories.



I can't wait until we're back in a couple months and I can go scouting for pelicans again. I'd love to shoot them properly.