Taunton River

Did a canoe trip today down the Taunton River. I'm heading out again now tho so this'll be a short post.

Mutant Orange Clouds

I just had to run outside when I saw this sunset! The right kind of clouds can take an otherwise nice sunset and make it something special.
Tomorrow: canoe trip and fireworks :-)
stay tuned!

Quiet Photo

Here's another late night/early morning photo. I thought this photo would convey a sense of stillness. I'm not sure that it does as much as being there. I could try this again tonight with a tripod. I had braced against a stool.

Happy Tripod

Here's an accidentally anthropomorphized tripod. I've had this compact, lightweight tripod for so many years now. It's so banged up it can barely hold a flash. But it's still happy. Just deconstructing photography a bit. I, and probably many photographers and photo enthusiasts, seem to crave better quality, technically better images. I find myself drooling over high end cameras and expensive glass. I seriously consider buying them. But one doesn't need that high end stuff to make excellent images. Does it bother anyone that they can't see into the Mona Lisa's pores? No. Art rarely takes place at the pixel level. It's more important to capture a moment, an emotion, a feeling, a mood. Still with a new $4k camera, I could capture 10 moods per second ;-)

Bear With Me

Took this photo today part of the Strobist Lighting 102 training. I find this exercise a little obvious, but it's fundamental and even though I knew about these principles, it's another thing to use them. Having actually gone through an exercise—having actually done it, now makes it more likely that I'll use it in the future. It becomes another tool at the ready, in my photo toolbox.

Poor Thing

Here's my first camera phone post. The shadow to the right is the phone and me holding it. Saw this little bird on the ground during my lunch break at work. I'm not sure what kinda bird it is. Someone told me before... goldfinch perhaps? I've seen them around, they're fast. Sad to see this one go though.

Invasion!!

No, that's not sensor dust. We had a bunch of tiny flies sneak into the house this night. They all went up to the ceiling. There's usually one night during the summer that a whole bunch of tiny bugs manage to get into the kitchen. Sometimes they all hang out on the ceiling, other times they chill out on the table.

Sea Glass

Sea glass on paper. Pretty, eh? I don't think you really get a sense of the texture in this photo, but the color is very strong, and I didn't even do anything to it color-wise, except WB correction.

Firestarter

So I was watching the game. It was on late. I noticed the room seemed to get dim. Then I heard a buzz/crackling noise. I looked up and saw some smoke comming out of one of the CFLs in the ceiling fan. It stopped after I turned it off, but the room smelled for a while after. Here's the smoke-stained socket.
Ya gotta wonder what might have happened if no one was in the room.

The Summer Cottage

Ah, so nice to retire to the summer cottage! It's got a great view of the ocean. In fact it overlooks it. You can sorta see the reflection of it in the windows I think. Ok, so it's not my summer home. Any guesses who's it is? Ok I'll tell you. It was the Vanderbuilts' (I think that's how ya spell it). This quaint little cottage is in Newport, RI. It's called The Breakers. The family—and a skeleton staff of about 40—only lived in the house for 6 weeks out of the year! The whole thing took only 19 months to build. Now it's a museum, open to the public, pretty much year round. One more interesting fact: those fancy chimneys go to 17 fireplaces. The house was built with central heat. These fireplaces were only used in the summer. Any guesses why? I'll put the answer in a later post, unless someone can answer in the comments... :-)

Hairy Elephant?!?

Toe-taly! Ha, couldn't help it. This is my big toe—or one of my toes. I think it's the big one. So I've been doing quite a few macro shots lately. I think it's a way of seeing things differently. I've been taking most of my photos at home lately. By looking closely, I figure I can get a lot more photo opportunities in a smaller space. Or maybe I'm just in a macro mood right now, give me a break ;-)

Skeeter Killah

I "took care of" 2 more mosquitoes today, bringing my season total up to about 6. This time I had the macro lens and flash handy from my last post. Thereby giving a much better look than my earlier ex-mosquito shot.
Like the toothbrush, I shot this hand held with off camera flash. Check out the larger version by clicking on the image. In the preview, it loses the iridescence on the lower wing.

I'll Tell You Where to Stick It!

I actually put a little effort into this one for a change. It's a macro, taken at or very close to 1:1 (meaning the size of the image on the sensor was the actual size of the image). This was a little tricky as I was hand holding the camera and flash separately (that is cam in one hand, flash in the other).
Oh if you haven't guessed, it's a toothbrush.

Dead Weight

I went mountain biking today. It was the first time I took the new bike out off the pavement, onto some actual dirt trails. It was a blast, the bike handled very well. I'm no expert, but I've done a few local trails. The handling and braking felt crisp. The bike and I both just wanted to devour trail.
Though I brought my camera, I realized before I set out on the trail, that I may have left the memory card at home. Sure enough, I checked and had no memory card. The camera was just dead weight. I'm glad I didn't take it on the trails, it would have been a drag. Sometimes it's better to just enjoy one thing at a time.

Fancy Food

Went to a wedding today, technically yesterday. Actually just a few hours ago. Anyway, here's the dessert I didn't eat :-\

Place Photo Here

Ok, so I backdate. I'm not sure if that's some kind of felony in the blogging world, but it keeps me organized... kinda. Sometimes I dont' have time, or don't feel like uploading my photos right away. Other times I don't actually shoot my photo of the day until very early the next morning. Ugh, fading fast. I gotta work tomorrow too... yay. Oh, I thought of something new to do with this blog. Still photos every day, but since I feel like I've kinda been mailing it in lately, I thought maybe I'd try just doing daily self portraits (and I use the term portrait loosely). I might not do that every day, but maybe on days when I haven't shot anything good. Or maybe when I've shot something good, but I just don't feel like sharing it here :-) I know the whole point of doing a photo every day is to improve my photography and to see the world differently, but some days I'm just busy or forgetful or just lazy. Although, that's probably the point—to get myself through that, to just suck it up and do it anyway. But I find when I just do it anyway, I'm not crazy about it, I feel like I do a half-assed job. And I don't want to disappoint my loyal readers—both of them ;-)

So we'll see. Maybe I'll just get my act together and start taking full-assed photos, instead of half-assed. Maybe I'll actually get my thesis done. That's been weighing on me lately. Oh well, g'nite for now!

Play it as it Lies

My shorts.

Mosquitoes:3 Joe:3

I've evened the score at three, as of the time I took this photo, but since posting this (actually I'm back dating this post, serving only to further confuse myself at this late hour). Today I just added another to my tally, but just now I saw, but (I think) failed to kill another one in my room. So she might even the score at 4... but not if I can help it.

Should have shot this with a macro lens, but it wasn't handy and it was way past my bedtime. So there.

Walk Towards the Light

Here's a late night photo for ya. It's actually not as late as some.

My, Isn't That Just Dandy!

Here are some dandelions, or dandelion-like flowers. There are a few things technically I'd like to have done better, but oh well, that's the way it goes.

Come on Baby Light my Lamp!

Note the fairly smooth transition from the highlight area of the lamp, to the non highlight area. I can't remember the exact terms for this, but the larger the apparent light source, the smoother this transition will be. I just used a nearby computer display for this shot.

Eye Nose What's Going On!

It's always tricky to take a photo of your own eye. Uh, that's about all I have to say about this one.

Small, Wet and Purple

I quickly shot these flowers yesterday at a graduation party; in between group family photos. It was raining on and off that day and these flowers still had some beads of water on them.

Oh Bugger!

This bug was sitting around in the house. So I grabbed my stuff and set up a quick little off camera flash setup for it. As soon as I finished setting up, it flew away. So I stuck a flash on the camera, and chased it around the house. I'm not exactly thrilled with the result. It was a really cool lookin bug though.

Happy Trails!

Here's a quick snapshot of the new bike I just got today. The color is "gang green." I also got a bike rack that actually fits over the car's spoiler!

Triangle Coffee Chemical Cream, Ride Ride Ride on my Stailion of Green!

midnight shower sleep in the flowers and dream, hurricane, breakneck speed, rapid fire, dreams!
—Dicky Barrett/Joe Gittleman of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones

I'm still using my create your own bokeh triangle bokeh filter thingy. I saw some other neat examples of what you can do here (in french [just look at the pictures, you get the idea]). That guy should have used smaller openings IMHO, some of the shapes got cut off by the camera's diaphragm.

UFOs?!?

Is this a blurry photo of UFOs?? Ah, no. But it's almost as cool (in a geeky, photo kinda way). I made my own bokeh. Bokeh is just the the blurry, usually background, area of a photo. I believe it's Japanese for background. They type of lens can influence the appearance of bokeh. Sometimes it looks like little circles, other times hexagons, pentagons, or whatever. depending lens characteristics that I won't get into here. Some people are snobs about bokeh; generally "smooth" is preferable to "chunky." Anyway, I had no idea that you could make your own bokeh shapes! It's so easy too! The hardest thing is finding a good, brightly speckled subject to shoot, out of focus.

This Stuff Grows Like a Weed!

So here's another grass post. I know the first photo bears a striking resemblance to an earlier post, at least conceptually, but It's quite different. Just because something has already been done, doesn't mean you shouldn't also give it a shot. How many times do people take photos of the front of someone's face filling up most of the frame? Lots of times, and each one of them is different—like a bright, wonderful, shining snowflake! Right, anyway… I currently work in a business park, in which there are a few other business. One of the business next to my work went out of business, or closed. As a result, the landscapers stopped coming by to mow the lawn. The grass is now over a foot tall. It looks so strange to me. I used to walk by there and there'd almost always be people outside chatting it up on a smoke break. Now there's just tall grass taking over.

A Ruff Day!

This is an Old English Sheepdog believe it or not. He just got a close haircut for summer. Here he's playing with a bag from Chinese takeout.

Late Night Sofa

I call it a couch myself, but sometimes I just like the sound of sofa better. I took this photo pretty late at night. I like the way the light caresses the surface of the couch.

It's All Rubbish!

I've fallen a bit behind on updating this blog. I'm still taking daily photos, but haven't gotten around to posting them in a timely manner. This is a conceptual photo about consumerism and waste… Ok, it's the only photo I took, just so I could add something to this blog.