Trying To Find The Road Not Taken

Tim Gasperak’s Mystery of Iceland photo collection.

Iceland is on my wishlist of places to visit. The waters and landscapes look amazing, along with their long history of keeping the Icelandic horse breed pure.

[via Richard's Notes]

Last night via @cdevroe’s tweet, I got introduced to Flickr’s new Analog section of the website. I think this is brilliant on Flickr’s part. It doesn’t exclude all those that shoot film, have shot film and adds a new area to share those specific types of photos.

I’m also excited since in April I started taking a Photography Field Class, which then lead to an 8 week dark room class where I fell in love with printing photos. Our little group shot primarily in B&W, even though we each used different kinds of film. We’d crank out photos every week and had a blast doing it.

This Saturday I start those sessions back up. This time renting dark room time and space from our instructor and printing my black and white photos from Maine this year. I’m also eager to review the nude photos I shot, from my first model shoot. I have several from that shoot in digital but they’re not able to be released just yet.

I currently shoot with a Canon Rebel G 35mm camera, I’m hoping to acquire both a Diana F+ and a Yashica MAT 124G.

On Friday night I left my computer training session across town and headed home. I got off the exit and turned onto one of the roads before getting to our road, on the way I saw the moon. It was amazing and very large. I drove up to our place, rushed upstairs, grabbed the camera bag and tripod.

I drove back down to an empty parking lot, but I wasn’t getting the same vantage point. So I drove back to the end of the road by the exit, did a u-turn and decided to stop at the best place for safety and getting the right vantage point.

I found my spot. A medical building with a well lit empty parking lot. I pulled in and pulled back down the driveway to the end by the road. I put my lights in park mode, got out, grabbed my camera and sized up the shot. Across the street is a residential house, I noticed the living room had some lights on. No big deal.

I took some preliminary shots by hand. Then grabbed my tripod and set up the camera. While setting up and getting the shot, I noticed on my hand with a red light. I thought, “huh, is there a sensor on the camera that emits red”. I step backed away from the view finder to notice that there was a red laser light all over my hand, my chest, my arms, the camera. It was jumping all over the place. I looked to the house and out of the window was the laser.

At this point two thoughts went through my head.

1) Stupid kids with a pen laser, or paranoid old person
or
2) Gun with a scope, it is wacky city who knows!

This was a bit disturbing. Was I potentially going to get shot for taking a picture of the beautiful moon? or should I walk across the street and confront this person. A part of me really wanted to haul it across the street and pound on their door.

I opted to hope for option 1, and continue to shoot my photos. I took 2 more shots all the while with the laser bouncing all over me. The minute I stopped shooting photos, the laser stopped. I packed up my equipment. I stared straight at their house while collapsing the tripod. Got in the car, put the headlights on and then the high beams which shown right into they’re living room. I couldn’t see anyone the house was dark at that point.

Has anyone else had experiences like this?

Levels, originally uploaded by criana.

I didn’t realize it had been since July 31st that I blogged last. Here’s one of the cloud photos I took this past week. The skies have been amazing the past two months (quoting Colin).

I can get lost in clouds, ever changing in their shapes and demeanor. Some days I’d love to be up there floating weightlessly in them.

Flashback Tuesday, originally uploaded by criana.

I still sit in chairs like this and there’s usually a cat on my lap. This was my cat Smokey and my awesome pajamas.

Do you have childhood photos sitting in boxes or even on your computer? Share them on the Flashback Tuesday photo pool.

I tried to get as close as possible to the great blue heron, but it was quite late in the evening and the sun had set. The picture is quite grainy.

I did some more experiments with Photoshop CS3 and the Black and White adjustments. This is another photo that originated in color digitally. I applied a red filter to make the clouds pop more and then did some fine adjustments to the levels using layer masks to darken certain areas.

Below is the original image.

In Photoshop CS3 there is a new feature, Image > Adjustments > Black and White. In the dialog there are several presets you can choose from, one is Infrared. I’ve always admired, Dave’s infrared photography, which he does with an attachment for his camera. I haven’t broken down yet and gotten an attachment.

This experiment though has made me really want to get one though. I did a little tweaking of this photo after the basic infrared was applied. I created a slight vignetting, along with some edge blur. I’m happy with the final product.

Here is the original image.