VOTE FOR ME! Please help me win a branding makeover for my business! I’ve been named as a finalist in Kitestring’s “What Was I Thinking?!?” contest; I could win $15,000 in branding services! I’m the 8th listing on the page, and the actual poll is at the bottom of the page.
http://www.kitestring.ca/contest/contest-vote/
Please spread the word!
I have unfortunately had to put this project on hold for the time being; please check out my main blog for a little more information.
*Posted two days late… image taken on Sept 14th; readings & inspiration done… since then… lol.
GETTING CREATIVE: I have been having some terrible back and hip pain lately – to the point where it’s affecting my ability to go out and shoot, which is probably at least partly why I’ve been feeling so uninspired; it’s hard to be creative when you hurt – and for whatever reason, the only thing that relieves it is this: Tylenol Arthritis. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. On the upside, since taking these for the first time on Sunday, I haven’t been in enough pain to take them since, so… maybe it helped fix it? I can only hope…
(I also find it highly amusing that they say “Tylenol ER” on them… that’s how you know they’re for serious PAIN…)
Made with help from an awesome FREE texture from NinianLif. This was my first time playing with textures in quite a while… I really need to do that more often!
GETTING EDUCATED: Pages 6 & 7: “The Viewfinder Display”. Again, there wasn’t much here that I don’t see/use every day, but once again I was reminded just how much info can be held within the display, and how many features I still haven’t used and should probably play with at some point.
GETTING INSPIRED: Today’s inspirational works were that of one Ryan Brenizer, a New York-based photographer specializing in weddings. I found his site via the f/Stop Brothers Blog; they had mentioned him as one of their own “365″ inspirations. I must say, his work is incredible – brilliant colours, and he sure knows how to get some wicked bokeh going on! (Have I mentioned I love bokeh? I lovvvveeee bokeh.) He’s got some great lighting tricks happening, that I would love to try and figure out if I had any of my own studio lighting. Oh well, one step (and piece of gear) at a time, right? I will definitely be bookmarking Mr. Brenizer’s site for future inspiration!
*Posted two days late… image taken on Sept 13th; readings & inspiration done… since then… lol.
GETTING CREATIVE: Today’s image was taken in downtown Toronto, at Yonge & Dundas Square. The Toronto International Film Festival – TIFF – is holding free movie screenings in the square for the duration of the festival; the film on the 13th was Woodstock, although I had actually come down to see the short that was supposed to precede it, Geddy Lee at Massey Hall. Unfortunately, it was not played. Fortunately, the short is up on YouTube.
GETTING EDUCATED: Today’s reading was relatively simple – Page 5: “Control Panel”. Though I look at the D200′s control panel every day, I had forgotten just how much information can end up on that tiny little screen! Not only that, but reading over the index of all that information reminded me just how much I still don’t know about this camera that I’ve owned for two years. I hope that learning how to use the functions that are still new to me will help me to create new and interesting images!
GETTING INSPIRED: Seeing as I’ve been feeling very uninspired lately (sad, since I just started the challenge), I’ve decided to start taking a look at some more of my fellow 365 participants. Today’s viewing was of the f/Stop Brothers Blog, which features the 365 projects of both of the authors: Ben365 and Kenny365.
I found Ben’s Day 2 shot really creative – I love repeating patterns like the one in the photo – although the image seems a little dark, at least on my monitor. Open up the shadows a little and the image could be amazing! I absolutely adore his Day 5 shot; he certainly knows how to make use of contrast and textures within an image!
I really enjoyed Kenny’s Day 3 shot; it’s full of brilliant colours, and I’m always a fan of the contrast between nature and urban life. His Day 7 shot features an amazing sky, which brought out some jealously in me – I’m still trying to figure out how to make my skies look that good!
MORE IMAGES: None at the moment… I will post the thumbnails of the other shots once I get them processed & posted!
Okay, the goal now is to get the last three days of the project (including today’s) up this evening. I’ll be posting them in order, in separate posts; I was originally going to make one big post, but that’d be a really long read. Stay tuned!
Sooo… the good news? I took a bunch of good shots in downtown Toronto today!
The bad news? They’re not getting posted today. Booooo!
With any luck I will do a double-content post sometime tomorrow evening. Stay tuned!
GETTING CREATIVE: Today’s photo was spurred by a lack of inspiration and an abundance of boredom. That would be alarming, considering that this is only the third day of the challenge, but have no fear – I’ll be in Toronto for the day tomorrow doing some shooting, so I’m sure to come up with something a little more interesting!
The concept for this, and the few other shots I took today (that came out somewhat tolerable, at least), were actually brought on by some recent photo posts by friends on Facebook involving multiple flashes and/or multiple exposures – those were ideas that we tinkered with in the first year of my college education, and I hadn’t played with them since, so I decided to give them a whirl. I can’t say I’m particularly in love with any of these shots – they all look kind of neat, but that’s about it. I’m not too upset about it, though, because one thing I can say about this challenge is, it has begun to inspire me to just play with my camera again. For the past two years while in school – plus these last few months since graduation – 90%+ of my shooting was for a specific purpose: a school project, an assignment for a client, a particular event that I personally wanted to document, etc. I haven’t just played around to see what I can capture – just for the hell of it – in probably 24 months or more. That’s a long time with no real casual shooting. So even though I ended up with a handful of less than stellar images today, I don’t regret it; at least I played!
GETTING EDUCATED: Today’s reading was pages 86 & 87, “Multiple Exposure”, in an effort to try and achieve a decent result with my photos today. There actually wasn’t much there that I didn’t already know, as I had to use this feature for one or two assignments in school, but I did need a refresher on where, exactly, one might find said feature in the D200′s many, many menus…
GETTING INSPIRED: I focused on the work of photographer Jasmine Star today. I came across several mentions of her yesterday, actually, via Twitter, but I ended up not having enough time to really give her work a good look until this evening.
I started at Jasmine’s blog, and her most recent entry (09/11/09), about shooting formal group photos at weddings, was quite interesting – I always like to see examples of formal shots that are almost… anti-formal. That is, they’re not all ~wild and crazy~, but at the same time, they’re not the same old boring shots of people standing together rigidly and smiling weakly. Whether she mixed up a traditional group pose a bit, or had the wedding party in an unusual environment, Jasmine’s formal group photos still manage to be fun and interesting! That’s something I’d like to keep in mind as I aim towards shooting weddings myself. Jasmine also has great shots on her main website of intimate, “blink and you’ll miss it” moments from both weddings and engagement shoots. Inspiring stuff!
MORE IMAGES:
GETTING CREATIVE: Taken in honour of today… I stood in the same spot I was standing in when I saw my first plane after Canada’s airspace was re-opened. It still gives me chills just to think about it.
While out & about with my camera, I also managed to get some nice shots of the sunset/sky… the thumbnails of those shots are at the bottom of this post.
GETTING EDUCATED: Today’s manual pages were actually read last night before heading to bed, but considering it was at about 3:00 this morning, I think that counts as today! I didn’t really want to pull out my camera to fiddle with it when I was on my way to bed, so I skipped over the pages about the viewfinder & control panel displays for now, and instead read pages 8-11: “Attaching a Lens” and “Charging and Inserting the Battery”. These sections also covered removing said lenses and batteries, plus attaching the camera strap & monitor cover, but, you know… semantics. Or something. Anyhoo… these sections really didn’t cover anything that I haven’t done a million times already, but it was good to know I haven’t been doing anything wrong! Plus there were instructions for removing the monitor cover, which reminded me that I really should take it off of my camera and clean it – it’s got a bunch of dust/fluff/who knows what trapped between it and the monitor, which can sometimes make viewing the monitor difficult under certain lighting conditions. (Although… isn’t the cover supposed to prevent crap from getting all over the monitor? Uh…?)
GETTING INSPIRED: Today I looked more into the work of one of my fellow 365′ers, Lain Eubank. 365 Originator Tasra has mentioned Lain’s blog several times on her Twitter feed, and as of today I’m officially hooked! Just reading some of the thought processes that have gone into Lain’s 365 shots has been very inspiring, and has given me some ideas for my own shots in the future. I will definitely be keeping an eye on her journey as I progress through my own.
MORE IMAGES:
And so it begins… I have taken the plunge! We’ll have to see how this goes. I’m hoping this will help me to do several things that I have so far been unable to do on my own:
- Force me to pick up my camera every day.
- Force me to open up Lightroom & Photoshop every day.
- Force me to finally read my entire camera manual (followed by my flash’s manual once I finish reading the camera’s), which I keep saying I’m going to do, but don’t.
I get very very frustrated when I intend to work on various photographic projects, but for whatever reason, don’t get around to it. I keep saying that I’m going to get into the habit of doing something photography-related every single day, but I never do it. Hopefully participating in this project will change that!
So… here we go!
GETTING CREATIVE (Today’s Photo): Today’s shot was surprisingly easy to get, considering that my dog (Charlie – he’s a cocker spaniel) haaaates it when I take his picture. This is quite frustrating, considering that my last dog, Brandy (RIP) hated it, too – I’d get out my camera, and before I’d even have it pointed at him, he’d be looking away from me, if not leaving the room outright. Charlie likes to pull the same tricks, but today I managed to snag a couple of half-decent shots while he was lying on my bed, waiting for me to take him out for his nightly walk. This one was by far my favourite shot; the other shots are thumbnailed at the end of this post.
GETTING EDUCATED (Today’s Camera Manual Page): I shoot with the Nikon D200 (with the 18-200 VR lens… ie, the only lens I currently own!), so the manual I will be reading will be, of course, for the D200. Today I went over pages 1-4; “Introduction” and “Getting to Know the Camera – Camera Body”. I’m 99% sure that I hadn’t looked at those pages since I first got the camera two years ago, so it was a nice refresher. There are several buttons on the body that I hardly, if ever, use, and so reading about them involved quite a bit of, “Ohhhhh yeah, that’s what that does…”
GETTING INSPIRED (Today’s Professional Images): Today I just happened to stop by the blog of Heather Armstrong Photography, to see that she had posted a few gorgeous images of twin baby girls. Heather’s photography always has such an intimate feel to it… It’s something I hope to achieve as I get more experience photographing people, especially children and families.
ADDITIONAL IMAGES (opens in new window):
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