Please Don't Judge Me

This is what happens when you've never used Photoshop before. Powerful programs make it powerfully easy to screw things up. It took me about an hour to do the above card and contact sheets. Hooray for non-graded participation points!

My Yard is a National Park

The following photos were taken the morning of Saturday January 22, 2011. It was 16 degrees out as I left early to make use of available light. All photos were taken with a Kodak HD camcorder set to take stills. The only setting available was a switch to flip between macro and landscape. The subject is a frozen stream in the Archbold/Glover branch of Rock Creek Park. These are three of my favorites.

This photo represents my attempt to capture a detailed section of the subject rather than the entire scene. I am holding the camera about a half foot above an area I found visually appealing.

I felt this photo worked thanks to the framing provided by the rocks on either side of the stream. The smooth ice contrasts well with the varied textures of rocks on its banks. Had the rocks not been there, the photo would have been of motionless ice. With them in place, the stream seems to move in a diagonal direction across the frame. This suggests movement in an otherwise still scene.

The varied opacities of the ice appealed to me as well. The white sections contrast nicely with nearly clear areas with leaves, trapped for the season, visible underneath. The top third of the ice also has a visually interesting texture in comparison to the smooth ice in the lower third.

I especially liked the smooth curved lines of the weathered river stones. I hoped the ovoid shaped rock in the lower left would anchor the corner of the frame.

I took this photo by standing on rocks in the middle of the stream. The creek bends at this point which gave me a good vantage point of the rock and log. I tried to capture the log head-on to foreshorten it and distort its shape.

This photo is the result of experimentation in subordinating the subject (frozen stream) to surrounding elements. I kept the stream in the lower left third of the frame. The photo is dominated by a large section of exposed bedrock with a long fallen tree teetered on top. The major boulder is framed well by the dead log and a single long branch that encircles the rock perfectly. The fallen tree not only provides a line from top to bottom, but provides an effective sense of depth as well.

Smaller loose rocks lend a strong texture to the left third of the photo. The contrast of shaded to well lit areas serve to highlight the facets of the large boulder. I also felt that the darker left half contrasted well with the brighter right.

This photo was captured by placing the camera on the log and shooting down its length. I was trying to achieve a large dominant presence without overwhelming the subject. 

This is easily my favorite of the three photos (probably because it turned out exactly as I’d hoped). The picture is dominated by a single, moss-covered, fallen log that takes up nearly two thirds of the shot. The log provides two defined lines. One is nearly vertical and meets the other that slopes diagonally from the top of the frame. The thick bed of moss lends a welcome dose of color to an otherwise muted winter scene.

The focus remains on the stream as the main subject and can still be seen across the top third of the frame. The white opaque ice seems to suggest rolling water. The log, small trees, and distant rocks frame the stream well. I especially liked that the log is out of focus while the stream is sharp. This was quite difficult using a camera with absolutely no controls.

NASA's Ear

This is a photo of a 70 meter NASA deep space tracking antenna. Its mission is to track manmade objects moving at thousands of miles an hour billions of miles away. How does one take a photograph of an object performing an action that cannot be seen?

The photo succeeds in this presentation in a number of ways. Had the photographer placed the antenna in the center of the photo and captured it head on, the resulting image would have been a symmetrical assembly of geometric shapes lost in a desert background. It may have been a compelling image, but it would have lacked the sense of purpose contained in this photo.

Capturing the dish at an off center angle creates several lines for the viewer’s eye to follow. There is the line along the oval shape of the dish running from the upper left corner to the lower right. This line frames the large area of negative space filled with thin clouds, deep blue sky, and the night’s first stars. The other, possibly more important, line leads from the base of the tower and follows the direction of the antenna’s aim directly into the sky. The off-center presentation of the dish in the left third of the frame not only enhances the antenna’s position as the primary focus, but serves to open the image to the expansive background. This effect is also complemented by the horizon’s placement well below the center of the photo.

The brightly lit antenna contrasts strongly with the black of the desert landscape, again drawing attention to the dish as the primary subject matter. Another pleasing contrast is the dark hills on the horizon against the last of the light in the sky.

The rotating base of the tower is a visually engaging collection of repeating geometric shapes and straight and curved lines. The repeating shapes provide a small area of intense texture juxtaposed against the softness of the sky and the emptiness of the black featureless desert.

The elements of the photo work together to convey the message that this enormous overtly artificial object is aimed at a point in the blackness of space that we can’t see and communicating with crafts at distances we can barely comprehend.

Photo found at:

http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/antennas/70m.html

Test. Test. 1. 2. 3.

I like when they (whoever "they" are) test the smoke doors in the Pentagon. It blares the same "red alert" siren used on every ship in every movie where a siren is going off. Along with the alarm is an oddly slow calm recording of a woman saying "touch the illuminated sign to open the door and evacuate the building." It's very creepy.