Week 23, Day 168, October 8, 2009, Monolith

The gray overcast skies have been encouraging me to take photos of darkness. The light was reaching around this tower on Sibley Hall at Cornell University as I waited for the bus.  The sun was shining diffusely through the clouds.
I also find it interesting how the eye picks out the notch in the right side very easily.

Lessons Learned:

• I needed more time to take photos tonight.  There was a group of students practicing a free form on dance in the Engineering quad.  A couple of the photos came out ok, but I wished I had spent more time photographing.  The dance to the drum beat looked like a lot of fun.

 Photo details: Exposure time 1/800, Aperture f/10.0, ISO 100, Focal Length 115 mm, 35 mm equivalent focal length 186mm, Lens Canon 70-200mm f2.8L USM, handheld.

Week 14, Day 96, August 4, 2009 Sunrise, Winner of Week 14 in Online Viewer Poll

The sunrise this morning was one of the most beautiful that I have seen. I had to take a few photos before I left for work at 5:45 AM this morning. I didn't have time to set up a tripod, but I think it came out fairly well anyway.

Lesson Learned:

• There are a lot of blogs that have incredible daily photos. Looking at other peoples photography is helping me to see things in new ways. I find it interesting how different people approach the same subject.

Photo details: Exposure time 1/80 sec, Aperture f/4.5, ISO 400, Focal Length 70 mm, 35 mm equivalent focal length 113 mm, Lens Canon 70-200mm f4.5L USM, hand held.

Winner of week 14 in the online viewer poll.

Week 9 - Day 59, June 28, 2009 "Clover and Barn"

This photo is in many ways an illusion. The purple clover in the foreground is actually a lot further from the barn than it appears in this photo. There is also a road inbetween the clover blossoms and the barn. The road sits fairly high in this area. I took the photo while standing in a corn field about 4 feet lower than the road. There are enough plants to obscure the road.

I was also able to use a trick of using a telephoto lens. The telephoto lens tends to bring things in the distance a lot closer than the subject around you. In this case the barn is about 250 yards away from the clover.

I've wanted to photograph this barn for a while, but it is huge. I haven't been able to figure out the angle to capture the largeness of it, while still being still being a pleasing photograph. In this photo I still haven't accomplished that, but it was nice to be able to include a small piece of it.

Lessons Learned:

• I had to think about where the sun is located. I tried to take this a few times in the evening, but the sun was in the sky beyond the barn. I had to come back for a morning shot so the sun would be at my back, and still shed enough light on the barn to have it become part of the photo.
• When I originally saw the clover, there was also a rock pile under it. I thought that I would take a photo of the rocks with the clover above it. When I began to look around at the background, I saw the barn in the distance. I knew I also wanted to include that. A photo that included the rocks, the clover, and the barn became to busy. This arrangement seemed to work better for my taste.

Photo details: Exposure time 1/60s, Aperture f/22.0, ISO 100, Focal Length 73 mm, 35 mm equivalent focal length 119mm, Lens Canon 70-200mm f2.8L USM, tripod.

Week 8 - Day 55, June 24, 2009, "A Study of Light"

I had an amazing photo shoot today by looking very closely at light. I was thinking about the sun on the way home. As I walked from my office to the bus stop, I thought about how harsh the sunlight was. Many times I don't like to take photos at this time unless it is in the shade. Instead I concentrated on shadows, and took a few photographs. I think I'm on to something, and will work on this for a future photo of the day.

Later as I was walking Tank, I was looking through our overgrown apple orchard. In the darkest parts where the myrtle is a very plush ground cover I noticed that the light was reflecting off the waxy leaves similar to the way it reflects off of water. I rushed home to get my camera, and was back in about 3 minutes. Tried as I might, I couldn't find what I had just seen a few minute before. It was then I realized that the sun moving across the dense branches were causing very rapid changes in the lighting. I spent the next 30 minutes of time photographing and observering the light. Each angle presented a different view. (Way to state the obvious, Steve.) A straight on shot, looking East to West, would create a similar effect to the light bounching off of water. A staight on shot, looking West to East, would produce a yellow color. Views from the side would give a green look. I think there is great potential in spending some time trying to optimize the light for the various effects. I'm sure I'll be back in the future.

Although very dark, I really like this shot. It almost has a black and white look to it, but there are hints of green. Click on the image for a larger view so that you can see the details. I'm not sure if Waldo is in this shot, but let me know if you see him.

I hope you're not getting sick of myrtle, but I think it has a lot of potential for some great photography.

Lessons Learned:

• See above

Photo details: Exposure time .5 sec, Aperture f/22.0, ISO 100, Focal Length 22 mm, 35 mm equivalent focal length 65mm, Lens Canon EF 17-40mm, tripod.