Here is an interesting article on the future of photography.

The game is changing so fast that nobody can see the moves before they're three moves behind.

It's all good, though. No matter what happens, I'll be there framing the world.

And, a photograph!

50mm . 400ISO . 1/400 @f1.8
It was nice and soft, but there was a patch too focused.
I softened that up in Photoshop. Otherwise it's as-is from the card.

Nothing quite like a mad scramble to get your final project done. My last batch of antibiotics worked for a few days, but mid-shoot on Weds after class I found myself flush with fever again. I spent until Friday in bed, then went off to try something new. A longer round of medication. Wee.

However! Today I was feeling well enough to shoot, and I did spend my time in bed at least planning. I've gotten the first part of my project done. It's not quite how I pictured it in my head, but there's always something lost in the translation for me.



There are 19 separate images in this composite. Three are scans (per the assignment), and one is appropriated from someone good enough to list it under creative commons (also per the assignment). I spent a little over an hour on the fish selection, which is ironic given the fact that it is small, and that the tail - the most troublesome part- has been cut off by the windowsill. I'm not too happy with the bottom left, so I suspect I will reshoot it over the weekend. Overall, though, I'm very pleased with how it came out. I can't wait to start on the second part.

I have been incredibly, dreadfully ill. I do not know what is going on, but it needs to stop.

That lingering illness took a drastic turn for the worst, and after three days of barely controlled fever, shaking, and coughs, I gave up and went to the doctor. Turns out I had pneumonia and an ear infection. Yay!

I had to drop my art history class. I missed my midterm and way too much lecture to hope to ever catch up. Luckily I can make up a great deal of my photography coursework from home.

Alas, I missed Halloween. It's my favorite holiday, but more than that there are so many funky photographs that need to be taken on Halloween! I took a few between coughing fits, braving the cold and the wet against the rocks in my chest.

I was too weak to set up my tripod, and couldn't hold my camera straight. I gave up after the first few attempts. This one doesn't look too bad so long as it's small...



At one point when I went to answer the door to the kids coming around, I discovered that the snails had come out in the dark and the rain. They really, really like squash. They were gorging themselves on the jack-o-lanterns. This one had the least of it, but the larger ones had snails stuffed into every hole and nomming on the ridges of the cuts. I'm just glad they didn't cook themselves on the candles. It was quite the sight. Remarkably, none of the children were squeamish about it, and none of them attempted to kill the things.




Trying to get life back in order again. I jump every time the wife or kids cough. The wee one has a snotty fever. I'm hoping it's just colds...

I don't use facebook, but

here is an interesting article on Facebook & Your Photographs for those of you who do.

ISO <3

It's amazing what having a proper ISO will do for you.

I wish I'd dropped the shutter speed on this and allowed a tiny bit more DOF, but I still love it.

Light!

In the office/library/craft room there is this ugly, ugly, ugly textured yellow glass window alongside the fireplace. It is long and narrow, and lets in highly directional light that does little to actually illuminate anything but a handful of bricks.

In the interests of snatching it before it went away, I snagged the children out of the backyard for light experimentation. I ignored the ragamuffin tangles and the lunch smeared all over their faces. My lens is not fast enough for quite this low light, so I had to crank up my ISO (ironic, neh?) to get anything workable. I knew that I'd be clipping into the blacks, but I was hoping to get something fairly tenebristic and so went that way rather than clipping into the whites. I think that in the future I can drop my ISO a bit and sacrifice the shutter speed in order to do so. They weren't moving overly much. If I can cram an adult into this little corner, I might have even more success with it.



Things start innocently enough.

It's easy to be patient with your mother when you're busy hamming it up.

The patience is wearing thin.

After ten minutes, the process has melted down entirely.
Imala looks like a bored thug, and Lore has set himself to a fine display of dramatics.
I let them go, made note of my settings, and left it at that.

I am sick again. I have midterms this week. YARG. I blame this:



Damn kids. Get off my lawn.

Taken on the front porch. Yes that's me in his eyes. I've decided to leave myself there.
Evening light. 50mm . f8@1/400
1600 ISO (hence the noisy bits)

On a more positive note, I've learned that much of my frustration with my photographs is due to some default setting in my camera. I keep setting my ISO to 400, and it keeps switching it around. It took me a while to notice, but I was suffering from a great deal of frustration with the noise in my images (such as the one above). Apparently, in addition to setting the ISO, I have to turn off the auto ISO feature. Now whose bright idea was that??

Hopefully I'll feel well enough to shoot something I like and get it printed in time for my QoL assignment. I have not been terribly happy with any of the ones I've taken specifically for this assignment.