Starving Artistry

Photo a Week #4

// December 28th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Photo

This week’s theme “Alone.”

Took this at Taylor’s house. All the bulbs were burned out except for two so I unscrewed the last one and took the shot. Actually, I took many, many shots.

This was after spending 15 minutes outside taking a picture of a chair on a mound of snow. But none of them turned out THAT great (by that, I mean Taylor and her roommate both poo-pooed the shots I took). It was hard coming up with a picture to match the theme though.

This week’s theme: “Abandoned Places.” Where in NoVA is abandoned anyway?? Oh yeah, that Chicken Out place in the Giant shopping center. I just have to sneak inside…

So Close…

// December 23rd, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Photo

… to Christmas! Despite the snow on the ground, it doesn’t really feel like it! I guess that’s because for the last, oh… 8 years or so I’ve always had to travel somewhere to go visit my family. Since we’re doing it at home this year, it kinda feels like your typical day and whatnot.

Anyway, this afternoon I helped my mom make some Christmas sugar cookies. It comes from a family recipie, and I have to be honest, I’ve never actually had Christmas cookies that were quite this good. We rolled the dough today in preparation of making the cookies tomorrow.

This is a shot of the recipie as my mom had it on the counter. Then my fingers got all dirty and I had to stop taking pictures.

Harry was watching attentively as we worked, hoping to eat some buttery cookie dough I’m sure (4 sticks of butter! Ugh!)

Anyway, after that was all done, we hit the grocery store, but not before I did some quick research on HDR photography. So as soon as I got home, I wanted to try it out. Here are a couple of shots… I think it’d work better outside with better light and stuff, but you can kind of see that hyper-realistic look.

Shot of my living room from where I was sitting and conducting my research.

My mom workin.

Anyway, the whole family’s here now, so I suppose I should go spend QT with them. Merry Christmas…!

Photo A Week

// December 22nd, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Photo

Just a quick little update. Here was my submission for the week’s theme of “lights.”

Snowpocalypse

// December 19th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Photo

Here are my pics from Friday and Saturday.

So I’m dogsitting a little miniature poodle for a couple of weeks. His name is Sunny. Luckily I got him right before it started snowing.

Here is a shot outside my front door around 9 PM. You can see it was just starting to snow, but it was already sticking.

Meanwhile, Gretch was chillin with the doggies on the couch. They were uncharacteristically calm in this pic.

This is a shot out my back door at around 1 AM.

So I decided to try to pose the doggies. Harry likes to sit and look outside the window when the door is open, so I figure he’d do it again. But the lighting was sooo tricky because it was so bright outside. So i brought out my light, but you can see the reflection in the glass. =( Also, the dogs didn’t want to stay still.

So Gretch got some bacon grease on her fingers and was able to get the dogs to stay and climb at the window.

I was not quite as successful.

I eventually got them to look out the window though. Darn that stupid reflection and my oversight!

And then Sunny left and Harry just was staring out the window like he normally does. No coaxing involved this time.

Of course Harry had to do his business eventually. I wish I had gotten pics of him jumping through the main part of our back yard because it went up to his neck. He understandably stuck to the edges where the snow wasn’t so deep.

Anyway, it’s 6:10 now and it’s still snowing strong! More pics tomorrow I’m sure, including my photo-a-week submission.

National Tree & Stuff

// December 18th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Photo

So Taylor and I took a trip out to the mall so I could snap some pics of the National Tree. Every pic took so long to set up, ’cause i had to use a tripod since it was so dark… out of the 30 – 40 shots I took, I only had maybe 4 or 5 useable ones. But, c’est l’avie.

So here’s the national tree. I kept the exposure high so that it seemed like it was glowing. Stupid me, I accidentally had the ISO set to 6400, so it’s kinda grainy, but you can’t tell on Flickr. One benefit of them resizing it I guess.

They had these little trains set up going around the tree, with little towns on 4 sides of it. This was one of them. Again, kept the exposure high so that the lights sparkle like that. Also gets some motion blur from the trains making it seem like they were whizzing by, whereas in fact they were veeeery slow.

Here’s another shot, same village but you get some of the national tree in it. I like the light trails from the trolley going around the track.

They had a place set up where you could meet Santa. He was on break. Taylor was sad. Sad, sad, sad. =(

So, later on that evening I went home and was wrapping presents. Rather, Taylor was wrapping my presents for me, while I was taking pictures of the inside of a Tiffanie’s lamp. Interesting perspective, fun colors I think.

Then it was time to take Taylor home, but not before stopping by a nearby neighborhood to take some last minute photos. Each one of these shots were at a 30 sec exposure, so Taylor got really bored…

I like this shot, but I wish i had the house on the left centered. I like how many stars came out.

Incidentally, if you zoom in, you can see the stars are actually a little blurry. Apparently 30 seconds is long enough to see the stars move due to the Earth’s rotation. That’s pretty crazy! I really want to set my camera up and do a time lapse some time. Next time you notice the sky clear at night, let me know! It sure as heck won’t be this weekend. Anywhere from 5 – 20 inches of snow. Crazy!