29 posts tagged “photography”

With all my photo organising and playing around in photoshop, I plan to eventually make a post comparing versions of my edits so you can see what I've been up to, and the changes that are coming through in my style. But for now I wanted to share a fun thing I made tonight. I had a bunch of half-decent pictures from a self shoot I did a month or so ago (trying to get a new headshot, but it just won't happen without decent lighting, which I can't afford). I ended up playing and making faces. Tonight I decided to use some to make a mock photo booth strip. And since photo booths aren't very common anymore, I had to make the pics look like I had them a while, complete with dirt and tears.  Whaddaya think?

love-love. Lindsay

I have had my camera for a little over two years now. In that time, despite going through periods of neglecting it, I have still managed to amass over 7,000 photos. This does not include pictures of family or anything. These are just my photographic dabblings. Many are attributable to my trial and error style of shooting (Take a picture, see that it didn't come out just right, adjust something, take another). And if I don't delete something right away, I don't delete it. Needless to say that my hard drive is already pretty full. So I have been working on the task of sorting, tagging and deleting (or rather setting aside to be deleted after I burn them to disk - just in case I change my mind) all 7,000 said photos. ...I'll be at this a while.

What is intriguing me while I go through this process is that it is very easy for me to see how my skills have improved. Especially when going through the photos from the first month or so after getting the camera. Of course the images were bound to improve as I got better at handling the camera's controls, but I also found that the pictures I liked and was proud of at the time, I now think are quite dull. I can't figure out why I liked some of them so much. Then there are others I didn't care about, but now, due to the fact that I am also getting better at photoshop, I can see potential in them that I didn't catch before. So I guess my biggest improvement is not so much technically (or not at all technically, truth be told) but rather in my artistic vision. And that makes me happy, because the primary reason I always liked photography was that I wanted to create art, but can't draw. It's nice to find that there is way, albeit entirely subjective, to measure my progress to this end. ...Now which of my current photos will I think are dull two years from now?... ~__^

I had asked my sister for her opinion on the last shot for my calendar, mentioned in my previous post. I didn't go with her suggestion, but her insistence on a preference for a more whimsical fare inspired me to make a second calendar. I had been going back through all my photos (I've taken over 6,000 in the past two years) to find the right shot for the first calendar, and in doing so I found quite a few that I'd totally forgotten about. Some really cool ones. I don't know how they ever slipped my mind. Anyway, my second calendar is lindsay's whimsy and can be found here:
http://www.zazzle.com/lindsays_whimsy_2009_calendar-158099007970092448

And these are two of my favourite shots featured in it. I may upload a few others to my flickr later, but for now you can't go wrong with a couple strings of rubber chickens!

Just arrived! Newly created! Buy my calendar!
Just follow this link:
http://www.zazzle.com/seattle_up_close_2009_calendar-1589638542059888

You know you have to keep track of the days somehow, why not do it with some of my best shots from around Seattle?

I've also got two new Christmas cards, featuring Pike Place Market.
So visit my zazzle store now!

These are just a few of the photos you'll find inside:

Proceeds go to someone hit by the economy's stupidity.

...Otherwise she'd just buy copies for her family for Christmas and surprise them. Sorry. The gift will have to be the work itself.

love-love. Lindsay

Pike Place Market, like most public spaces, is now decked out for the holidays. I swung by tonight real quick and got a couple shots in. It was rainy, though, so I didn't stay long. I will probably go back and try to re-take the second shot without a person in it so I can make it into a card or something. But, with the first shot, I think I now have my December photo for the 2009 Seattle calendar I am going to sell on zazzle. I still have to make the final selection for the other eleven, but I hope to get it done this week. So stay tuned!

And I think you will, too. But even though it's been favourited 5 times on Flickr, it's been sitting on 41 views for a week or two. Which is a lot more than my other photos get, but I still think it should get more! I had hoped FILE magazine would like this one (they liked my avatar photo, and you can see it here), but nothing yet.

At any rate it's been too long since I've posted photos, and I need an excuse to post one. This one is also evidence of my improving skills in editing. Well, it would be if I showed you the original. I think sometimes I overprocess, but I feel this one is just right. ~__^

love-love. Lindsay

I don't know where you live, but I live in Seattle. And I don't know how crappy your weather may be lately, but here it has been gorgeous! So on Saturday I got done working, dropped my coat off at home, picked up my camera (first time I've taken it out of the house in months, except for a day in Portland), and wandered down to the waterfront park off Pier 70. One of my favourite places. Photographed some sailboats, some people, some water. Except for a semi decent picture of a kid flying a kite, I was starting to worry I'd already photographed everything the waterfront park had to offer.

Until I finally spotted an otter. I'd been wanting to catch one since before I had my camera when I saw a pair playing in the marina. This little guy was popping up and down on the other end of the beach when I first saw him. I thought it would be just my luck that if I tried to get closer he'd skedaddle, especially with the constant rocks being thrown in the water. (Skipping and tossing stones is a favourite pastime of this beach's visitors.) But he stayed.

He was hunting. He'd stay under water for long periods and I'd think he'd gone. But he came up every time, sometimes close enough for me to snap a clear shot of his back, or his head off in the distance.

Then we both struck the jackpot. While I was sitting on a big rock closest to the water, he started swimming right to me with a huge fish in his mouth. He looked like a puppy fetching a stick from the water and bringing it to master. Indeed, he came at me too fast. I didn't have time to make any adjustments to my camera, and I had to refocus for every shot. So some are blurry and some overexposed on one side. But still, he was cute and I caught him.
He got pretty close and then went under. I, watching through my viewfinder, had no peripheral vision and figured he just went away, having been scared off by coming so close to me. But fortunately I was not the only one watching him. I had my headphones on and couldn't hear much, but someone tapped me on the shoulder. I stopped my Shuffle and a man a couple rocks over told me he had gone underneath the rock I was sitting on.

Then we heard him. Otter. Crunch crunch. I clambered over and turned upside down. I spy with my little eye... a tail! After moving carefully again I got a pretty sweet view. Of course it was dark under there, and I still didn't have much time for adjusting my camera, so again with the blurry pictures! But not all of them. ^__^

I tell ya, he was just going to town on that tasty, crunchy fish. And I was snapping away, trying to make the right adjustments, then suddenly a wave came in. He climbed further into the rocks and we could see him no more.

But we could hear him. Crunch crunching on those crunchy fish bones. A few minutes later he popped out 15 feet away. I snapped one more blurry shot of his back, and he was gone.

Well, it's still a bit messy and unorganised, but I'm moved in.

I'm not showing you much yet because I had to avoid the big pile of junk in the corner, which is there because I now have no desk drawers in which to toss it all (all my furniture is hopelessly stuck in Kansas City until I have some sort of windfall), and the mountain in the closet which I am too lazy to sort through since, though I managed to get a dresser of sorts from my sister, it doesn't hold it all. But on the bright side I have a kitchen!

On the left, Oliver is modeling for you the "living room" corner with my new cheap chair in faux suede and my trunk full of books (until I can get a new bookshelf) which serves as a very chic side table. On the right he poses on the Murphy bed with the kitchen, complete with brand spankin' new fridge and classic studio range visible in the background.

Here below we get a better view of the kitchen as Pippin models for us. As you can see, it has roomy cupboards and a shelf above the counter from which my mugs now hang. And there is a lovely dividing counter which, while narrow, provides the perfect spot from which to survey the surround, as well as get a glimpse out of one of the two windows. And, of course, get a better look at that fridge. I have been eating cooked food like a real person. I can't believe that I went nearly a year without a stove or a real refrigerator and freezer. I knew I felt crappy, but now I realise how un-human I felt.

And speaking of the windows, what of the view? It is an ever changing work of audio and visual art.

Of course the audio part is extremely true. It took some adjusting for Pippin. She is accustomed to a nice quiet life, and would typically hide under the bed if I so much as ran the coffee grinder. But here, I do think street noises are slightly amplified by the fact that we are in the ground. I don't mind for the most part, but I am listening to the television at a much higher level than I probably would otherwise, and sometimes I lose sentences if a truck or bus goes by. But Pippin! Poor Pippin. In the first few days she was a sight! For you see, the noises were as bad as the coffee grinder to her, and alas! The Murphy bed sits directly on the floor and she couldn't get under it. On the very first day she tried many times to bury her forehead in the framework to get under. Bump. Bump. 'Why can't I get in!' Bump. Bump. Finally she settled for getting under the covers. But now she hardly notices except for those extra-loud buses, or the street sweepers which are especially heinous. She didn't even open her eyes when I ground up some coffee.

I will post more photos later if I ever get it cleaned up enough. But first, I must find some furniture. Cheap furniture. And I have to figure out how to do it without a car. Craigslist had some very nice multiple drawered desks, perfect for tossing tons of random junk, but I don't think they'll deliver. And even if they will, I gotta work the timing. Target often has nice cheap bookshelves, but again, how do I get them home. It takes me nearly an hour just to get there by bus. *sigh* I suppose that's enough of talking about that. I've gone from intentionally-over-the-top-eloquent to rambling within mere sentences! So I'll say good night. After all, my models are already sleeping.

It seems I'm not the only one reading lately. I caught Oliver with one of my library books.

The Other Professor was seated at a table, with a large book open before him, on which his forehead was resting: he had clasped his arms round the book, and was snoring heavily. "He usually reads like that," the Professor remarked, "when the book's very interesting: and then sometimes it's very difficult to get him to attend!"
          ~ Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno

He was trying to catch up on The Chronicles of Narnia. He probably wanted to know what happened to all of the Talking Cats. Perhaps when he finds them he'll finally talk to me, for I always knew he had something to say by the look in his eyes.

I don't usually draw much attention to my birthdays... and they don't usually draw much attention to me. I have a history of very non-stellar birthdays. They come and go like any other day. Sometimes I will treat myself to a movie or dinner, but still they are pretty quiet. But I don't know if that's what I want, or if I just feel too weird shouting out to everyone, "hey, it's my birthday!" compelling them to respond superficially, so things don't really change much from year to year. (I tell people at other times of the year, but I don't typically announce it on the day.)

Either way, this year I break with tradition by actually announcing to the general public that it's my freakin' birthday! Why? Perhaps because it's my first birthday celebrated in my new favourite city, perhaps because I've only got a couple left before I hit the start of my fourth decade on planet earth, or perhaps because I've got some pictures to post. Of course that last one could be working the other way around.

About a month or so ago I decided to start collecting twenty-eight pictures of the number 28 so I could make a nice little collage to celebrate my birthday. Whether it was an excuse to mention my birthday, or a mnemonic to remember how old I am, or simply a project for a photo scavenger hunt (I look for hearts, too) I couldn't honestly say. Though I do tend to forget how old I am sometimes. When asked you will often see me falter for a moment, then reply, "old enough to forget." Nevertheless, here it is. Can you guess what all the 28s are? Some are pretty easy, some you'll never be able to tell, but it might be fun to try, and you'll never forget how old I am either. ~__^  Answers are on the photo caption.