Butterfly house.

I went to the Butterfly House last Saturday, for the second time so this is a compilation of both visits. Talk about needing a fast shutter. Somebody needs to teach those suckers how to land! There are plenty of flowers for food in the arboritum, but 95% of the butterflies this time around just wanted to zoom around like they were on crack. I didn't really have fun because of this, not like last time, when they were way more calm.

Also, I don't like that choosing a specific mode on my camera disables certain features. I obviously didn't have time to sit around manipulating the shutter speed, so I moved the dial to Sports mode. Which meant I couldn't change the white balance, or the exposure compensation. That's whack.

Oh! And a paper kite (the first type of butterfly pictured) LANDED ON ME. On my camera strap, to be exact. I made sure not to put on any perfume or lotion that day because they're attracted to strong, sweet scents. But this thing AMBUSHED ME. I freaked out, obviously. You're forbidden to touch the butterflies or swat at them, so I was positive it was just gonna sit there and stare at me with its bulbous, expressionless eyes until I was forced to break the rules. Thank God it was on my strap, because I pulled at it in my crazed state and the paper kite promptly flitted away. Two ladies saw me, but they pretended not to.

So yeah, now you know. I don't like bugs. At all. Wild butterflies hate people; the crazy ones in places like this will eat you.

Winter storm.

(My roof today)

We have a winter storm gathering strength here that's not supposed to let up till sometime Wednesday afternoon. Lots of ice followed by lots of snow and wind. I've got food, heat, blankets, candles, and a fully-charged laptop, so I'm ready. =)

Album art.

Fun challenge for you!

I created the above "album cover" following a pretty simple step-by-step method. My friends have done it and every last one of their results is amazing and so fun. So here is what you do:

1. Go to Wikipedia and click the link "Random Article." The title of the first article that comes up is the name of your "band."

2. Go to Quotationspage.com and click the link "Random Quotes." The last four or five words of the last quote on the page is the name of your band's "album."

3. Go to Flickr and click on the link near the bottom of the page that says "last 7 days." You'll have to look for the same link again on the new page that opens. The third photo - no matter what it is! - is your album art.

Note: because I am leary of posting photos that belong to someone else without their permission - because I would hate for someone to do that to me! - I chose a photo from my own personal stash for the example above.

4. Use Photoshop, Photobucket, Picnik, whatever image editor you like, to put it all together.

And there you go! Have fun! I'm off to score tickets for Big Quilcene River's upcoming tour... ;-)

Snow.

It snowed about ten or eleven inches Wednesday night into Thursday. I happily walked out of the back door to this view:



And Friday morning I traipsed out to Sioux Passage Park, in the six degrees, trying to remember the facts on frostbite, and clicked the shutter till my heart was content. Enjoy.

We shall overcome.

Last weekend an event was held at the Old Courthouse in downtown St. Louis. First, let's get the architectural photos out of the way:





The Courthouse, no longer in use as a part of the justice system, is now a museum open seven days a week where you can get your history and stirred feelings of patriotism for free.

But last Saturday, the National Black Tourism Network hosted a reenactment of the last slave auction. The last slave auction in America is believed to have been held right on the front steps of our esteemed Old Courthouse, and in fact, the reenactment was abruptly ended by a mandate forcing the auctioneers to end all activity and the costumed actors making up the nineteenth century crowd to scatter. Before that, however, lives were ripped apart in the retelling.









A lone protester cried out to the gathering crowd before the event began. He was angry that slavery in any form was being depicted here and now. He shouted to the African-Americans that we are still divided as a nation, that blacks are not really free. Without offering any thoughts on how to fix this alleged problem, he instead focused on how happy whites must surely be to see blacks in chains once more, where surely they feel we belong.

His notions are interesting, but tired. Do you have a job? No matter; you're still a slave. Own a house? Still a slave. Drive a car, spend hard-earned money, take vacations? Yup, still a slave. See, no matter what you do or how you live, fear not - you will always be a slave. The perfect mindset, really, to ensure that the old wounds of hundreds of years ago never heal. One would think the person spouting such nonsense would not be black himself.

Yes, there were slaves on the courthouse steps that day. And one of them got away.

Evidence.

A plant.

There's a plant that I pass almost every day in the course of my work - a type of bush, actually, and there are several lined up all pretty in a row on a median leading to a stoplight. As I usually pass them when the sun is setting and golden light is thrown all around, their fluffy, fuzzy cream tips glow fantastically. And since the stoplight is red for far, far too long, I get to stare at them and wish I could photograph them.

But, I don't want to create another unfortunate, awkward, or embarassing moment, so I haven't planned a way to somehow park the car on the side of the road, sprint to the median, and expose my craft to the average person's glass-eyed curiosity and inevitable honking. So I've never gotten a picture.

And then, one day, I drove to a place I've been dozens of times on the other side of town - and there they were. Along a sidewalk I've traveled dozens of times. Now, how do you like that?

Duotone.

Interestingly, I've been thinking lately that I need to use the duotone options on my camera more, and then I saw this article at Light Stalking with a list of excellent examples. Duotone has an official definition, but it's easy to think of it as black and white photography with an extra color added in. Typically this extra color is blue, red, yellow, or green.

When it snowed on Christmas Eve (yay!) I traipsed outside to do a little snow photography. A regular B&W photo is first, so you can see the difference duotone makes:





In my camera's menu there's a Picture Control subfolder, inside of which I can choose Monochrome and then tap into a variety of options, including toning. What's nice is that besides having seven or eight hues to choose from (including purple!), I can choose how saturated I want them to be, from the barest hint to um-that's-not-really-what-you'd-call-professional.

I'm ready for bleak days and misty mornings, snowfalls and post-rain showers so I can practice duotone some more. :)

My favorite photo of the year.

I thought about showing all of my favorite photos from the year, then realized it would either be an annoyingly long list or I'd be anxious leaving out certain shots in the interests of brevity. So, just showing the one. :)

I am so glad to have had the experiences I've had this year, and that I was able to get a new and much-improved camera in the nick of time. North Carolina was an Eden of opportunity, and during my unfortunate out-of-work stint, I found a lot of wonderful places in my hometown, and learned to look harder (and work harder) for the capture.

This photo continues to stand out amongst them all:



(Nikon D3000, f/3.5, ISO-800, 1/2 sec.)

I never cease to be amazed at how symmetrical the photograph is - when I wasn't even trying. In addition, the feet of Jesus on the cross are ridiculously close to the edge of the picture - I have no idea how this happened. Hmm. Maybe it was a miracle. ;-)

Going back to work has meant much less time for photography. I can hardly put into words the sorrow I feel every time I see an opportunity, and have to let it go. There is so much beauty around us and yet the world demands that we keep moving, keep going faster, don't deviate from the routine. It is a sorrow on my heart, and no less.

The sunsets are much improved (though I only see them through the glass of the office front door); yet they have also prompted me to notice how much of the city skyline, even into the suburbs, obstructs an open, wide-angle view of the sky. There's always a cluster of trees, or a building, or a store, or houses - always something, sprung up to aide the progress of civilization. It's hard to have it both ways, I see.

Maybe one day I'll live in a place like those you see in winning photographs, where there's always a quaint ship in the harbor, always horses trotting in the pasture, always a farmhouse or one-room church nestled in the snow. Maybe one day I'll have time.

Happy New Year. :)

Bokeh part two.

And it's a bokeh tutorial!

As discussed earlier this year, bokeh is the out-of-focus regions of a photograph. When light is out-of-focus, it can make some pretty cool effects. But what if you don't want to wait around to stumble upon it? Here's the easy way to bokeh.

Start with a subject.



Then, hold your hand in front of the camera and press the shutter halfway to focus. Keeping the button pressed, remove your hand and take the picture. BAM.



This was done with my hand held pretty far away from the camera. Bringing it in about halfway achieved this size of bokeh:



And bringing my hand as close as I could to the lens without making it impossible to focus:



It's a simple but pretty awesome technique. I think if the lights had been on, the bokeh would have been more translucent, but that's an experiment for another day.

Have fun!

O Christmas Tree.

Ponderances in duochrome.

(Actual ponderances after the pictures. Promise.)













There is so, so much to be said for how the world and life are viewed through black-and-white or sepia. Sadly, this is not that kind of blog post.

I wanted to mention briefly how relatively easy it is to make a "just okay" picture more interesting by converting it to a form of black-and-white. The first photo, for example, is just okay in color. I really only took it as a reminder later of where the batch of photos was taken along the Parkway.

By de-saturing it and then upping the contrast (a lot), however, to me it now has a certain gravity, even in its bleakness.

The Brinegar cabin, the cemetery, and the tree were taken in sepia mode in the camera, so here I just upped the contrast (to a lesser extent with the tree). The pipe and butterfly pictures were originally in color.

What's neat about the butterfly picture is that he was so bright, even with the photo almost completely de-saturated, his color survives somewhat. I didn't do much with the contrast in order to maintain this effect.

Most professional photographers agree, it seems, that the best way to create black-and-white photography is to take your photos in color, and then manipulate them in post-processing. Photo editors now give you tons of options and flexibility when converting to B&W, and there are of course many different shades and tones and presets to choose from. The argument is, if you start out with a B&W picture, there's really no place left to go - you're stuck with what the camera gave you, and there isn't much on-board choice.

I only used the rinky-dink Windows photo editor, because I haven't had the time to fully devote to learning how to use the B&W options in Adobe or GIMP. I still like the results, and God-willing, there'll be plenty of time in the future to devote to learning. =)

Born is the King.

Baby, it's cold outside.

So I'm thinking warm thoughts. :)

(It's supposed to snow this weekend. You know what that means...)

It's the holiday season.

It snowed just a bit on Thanksgiving day. What a nice, holiday-cheer sight to see. :)



We congregated at my aunt's house. Remember the angel?



We ate. A lot. And I (mostly) made the dressing. :)

Happy holidays.