Sunday, February 26, 2012

Week 8 - Bring on the Light

I was looking for shadows and sunlight objects but to no avail.  The 11 hour work days this past week allow little time to see light artistically.  As I was leaving the market on my way home I noticed the a few homes with there porch lights on some of the surrounding homes just as night was falling.  I thought to myself, are they waiting for someone in particular or just for anyone who may show up?  What ever the reason, it seemed to me that the occupants of these homes must be the sort of people who are welcoming and friendly.  They receive friends and family readily with open arms.  This may not be the case.  The residents of these homes my just be in the habit of leaving the light on for security purposes and nothing more.  I would like to thing the believe the former.  As Week 8's theme is bring on the light, looking at these homes as welcoming and inviting, I hope that you can have some of these moments for yourself in the coming week.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Week 7 - Love or Red

Last week was a hum dinger because Valentine's Day was last week.  At elementary schools, Valentine's Day is basically a day to show each other how much you like each other with a card and something sweet.  This day allows students to be filled with the second highest level sugar consumption of the school year. Halloween being the first!  So, Valentine's Day is a day that is driven  and crashes on pure sugar and happiness.  That was Tuesday...

To add to the frenzy, my Student Council was sponsoring a President's Penny Parade fundraiser.  Student Council shares Presidential Trivia with all of the students and encourages them to bring in as many coins as possible for your classroom to win a Pizza Party.  Everyday, the Student Council Members would collect the coins from all of the rooms and count them to give the class their running daily total.  Well this, for what ever reason, excited the students as much as did Valentine's Day candy and cards.  So, this was a swirly wurly week for me.  Even now, I still don't want to see any coins.

I share all of this because I have been a little too frazzled to thing about the shot for this week, let alone shoot.  But I remember that I'm doing this to develop my creative side, photography, and it is usually pushed out by all of these things I stated above.  So I have to make the time!   I shot this red canister with the names of our Birthday Club on it.  We meet several times a year to celebrate birthdays, and Christmas.  My earliest memory of us meeting, was on my 30th birthday.  I'm 53.  That's 23 years.  We have managed to stay together that long, through, marriages, births, children, graduations, divorces and deaths.  That is love, because it shows the test of time.  The theme of love or red, I feel are captured in this canister.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Week 6 - Still Life

Sometimes seeing examples can stifle the imagination.  That's what happened to me this time when I saw the beautiful examples of this weeks theme, Still Life.  No, that's not true.  The examples were beautiful, I'm just using that as an excuse.  My imagination was more stifled by the stress of work this week.  But that is another story.

Anyway, I could not come up with a subject for my still life photographs for this week.  Then it came to me on Friday, after work during my evening ritual.  The ritual I'm referring to the one we all have.   You know, when we come home and we remove the professional self and put on the evening person self.  We all have one and they are all basically the same.  We put down our keys and cell phone.  We put away the tote bag or briefcase.  Then we clean out the lunchbag and wash the thermos, containers and utensils.  We remove the professional shoes, clothing, etc.  The ritual of putting away everything from our professional day in a place that we can retrieve it the next morning to become that person we are at work.

Part of my ritual includes removing all of my jewelry.  That's when I saw my subject for the Still Life theme.  I don't have lights to get the best lighting for a still life.  Nor do I have a camera that can show depth of field.  I have a point and shoot digital camera. I use whatever lighting that exists.  With ambient light and a macro setting I took this.  I did add some fading to the photo using iPhoto effects, but this is it.  The fact that my Goofy watch on it's side, kinda says it all for the week we've both had.  I hope you enjoy my shot for this week.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Week 5 - Cold

Southern California is not known for it's changes in the seasons.  We have basically have a cold fall-spring, a cold spring-fall, spring and summer, depending on how you look at it.  Compared to the rest of the country, we have a mild winter and our cold is cold for So Cal.

We do, on occasion, have weather other than sunshine and temperatures in the 70's.  Last winter, we was actually a wet one.  There was a lot of rain and snow, for us.  Now the snow was at the higher elevations, which is within a thirty minute drive if you just want to see and play in the snow, and as close as an hour if you want to enjoy winter snow sports.  We did have heavy winds earlier this winter, which caused power outages lasting anywhere from a few minutes to more than a week in some places.  The utility companies just couldn't handle the repair demand.

All of this unusual weather, for us, creates a disequilibrium for the urban flora and fauna, as well as the city folk.  I chose this tree to represent cold.  This tree just seemed to be hanging onto it's leaves.  There were many trees that had given up the struggle of hanging onto theirs.  This tree, on a major street, Pico Boulevard, not far from the intercession Pico and Sepulveda.

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Trivia Alert    Trivia Alert

Pico and Sepulveda was a very popular song on the Dr. Demento radio show.  This one is for all of the fans out out there.  This link will tak you to a video that uses the song as background music.


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This tree stands tall above the smaller trees that have succumb to our mild winter season.  There are tens of thousands of cars that pass by here on a daily basis not noticing this tree's determination to enter spring with some of it's leaves.  So, I thought I would take this photo and show how it is championing it battle.  If you look closely, you can see it waving at you while it continues to overcome the winter in the hope of restored spring.