Week 7: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

An eye sore to some, magnificent to others. This is Boston's City Hall, about a block away from where I work. It's not always that pretty to look at, but if you find the right angles it can be pretty eye catching.

Canon 17-40mm f/4 @40mm on the 30D
1/100sec exposure at f/7.1, ISO 640

It's rumored that when the design was first unveiled someone said, "What the hell is that?" while others gasped. It's the product of a trio of Columbia University professors: Gerhard Kallmann, Noel McKinnell, and Edward Knowles.

Columbia, as almost everyone knows, is a university in New York City which begs the question - was this a legit design, or was it the product of the longstanding Yankees/Red Sox rivalry?

The 4am project - round 2

Last April 4th I woke up a few minutes before 4am and took this picture:




You might be wondering why I woke up at that hour. Why would I get up at 4am just to take a picture? It wasn't necessarily for the shot, it was to take part in a 'round the world event called the 4am project.


You can read more about my experience last year at this older post: It's 4am, do you know where your camera is? As I mentioned last year this project was started by Karen Strunks to "gather a collection of photos from around the world at the magical time of 4am."


My first photo for the 4am project was a setup shot taken out of my window at a nearby streetlight. This year my goal is to scout out a spot ahead of time and head out away from my house to capture the image. It's not gonna be easy. 4am is a tough our to get up at.


Anyway, I have a month and a half to figure out what I'll capture, so if you have any ideas leave them in the comments. Until then, let the countdown begin:

Week 6: 24 hr. Parking

One of those scenes that you catch out of the corner of your eye. Just kinda stopped me in my tracks as I was on the way to my favorite set of fire escapes in Boston. This parking garage is on Devonshire between Water and State streets, right near the Old State House - on the west side of the street.

The set of fire escapes is just north east of here, and while that was really what I was out to capture I keep going back to this image when I look at the collection of pictures I took today. Something about the descending ramp and the signs above suck me into the frame.

Anywho, here is week #6:

Canon 17-40mm f/4 @40mm on the 30D

1/80sec exposure at f/5.6, ISO 400

Week 5: The late assignment

A little over a year ago I started a photo group at work. I was involved in one at my previous job and liked it so much I thought it would be fun to do where I work now. We've got a core group of about 10 or so people who participate.

On a monthly basis we have a shooting assignment - a theme to take pictures for. The theme for this past month was Holiday, and like everyone else in the group I put off taking the photo for a while. I ended up running out of time and the week before the meeting I had to create a shot for the theme. Since all my lights were taken down from Xmas about a month ago I ended up taking some out of the decoration box and stringing them up in the basement.

In my head I had envisioned putting the lights up downstairs and playing around with a glowstick drawing a christmas tree in the foreground. It was a bit trickier than I thought. Not so much on the exposure side, but on the positioning side.

I took probably 20 different shots, and this one is the best of the bunch. I wanted the tree centered, but it just did not happen. Something about a dark basement lit only by the soft glow of christmas lights and a green glow stick makes it tough to line things up just right.

Canon 50mm f/1.4 on the 30D

30sec exposure at f/4.5, ISO 100

Week 4: Silvertone

Cold doesn't even begin to describe what today felt like. At one point while I was walking around I was convinced that my cheek was going to jump off my face and run away in objection to me having brought it outside to snap a few frames.

In spite of the cold there were a few interesting things to shoot, and I found myself standing across the street from the Silvertone restaurant in the Financial district of Boston, just off Tremont street, near the Park Street T stop. If you like mac&cheese you should stop in here one day, I hear it's dynamite.

I had hoped that the dude inside would eventually pop out because I didn't like him in the shot, but then when I saw dude #2 walking past the front door I figured I could get them both and make an interesting (at least visually) composition. I like the way my eye keeps getting dragged from right to left across the frame, starting with warm dude inside and leaving with cold dude outside.

Week #4, here it is:



I even make a cameo appearance in this one, but I am dressed up like a ninja so you can't really see me. I'm the space ghost looking reflection just above the menus and to the right of the 'e' in Silvertone.

Week 3: American Spirit (or: I ash on you)

Brought the camera with me in to work today, ended up wandering only a few blocks away from my building since it was pretty cold. I have a fascination with alleys, and during this past summer I took a few shots of some of the doors within the alleys. I liked the few I got and planned on expanding my collection of door shots, but never got around to it.

I was walking over toward one of my favorite doors when I spied a guy smoking in a doorway. Every so often he'd extend his hand out from the shelter to ash his cigarette. I waited patiently and captured some frames with just his arm outstretched not noticing the guy in the background coming up the sidewalk.

I like the way it turned out.

Week 2: Vacation Photos

Spent all of this past week down at Walt Disney World with my wife and kids and my parents. We got there a week ago so that I could run the WDW Half Marathon on Saturday. Did you know that it snows in Florida? Apparently it only snows there once every 25 years or so and guess what? It snowed. It actually rained ice and sleet, but that's close enough.

The week finally warmed up and I was able to snag one shot that I liked enough to post for this weekly project, so here it is. Extra points to anyone who can guess where this shot was taken from.

Week 1: My most neglected lens

I feel bad for my macro lens. She never gets out much - a bit of a homebody. One of these days I will take her out on the town and show her the time of her life, but for now she'll have to get by with nights in at home, taking pics of old cameras.

Here is week 1 - the first of hopefully 52 total pics I will take this year for the sole purpose of taking pictures.

'Tis the season... for a photo project

This blog is seriously collecting dust, so I figure what better way to keep me posting on here than to establish some sort of picture per day/week/month project?

I played the whole goldilocks game with the time period, and here's what I came up with:

A picture per month: too long between updates
A picture per day: way too frequent to be sure I'd stick with it
A picture per week: juuuuuuust right.

So from here on out until the end of December, 2010 I will be posting a new photo every week. Here is my plan:

1. Pictures have to be taken during that week, they can't be pulled from the archives
2. The new photo can be taken with any camera I have handy, from the holga to the iPhone to the Canon.
3. They don't have to be good (that way you, the reader, can't complain when the inevitable picture from 11:59pm on the last day of the week gets posted since I've run out of time.
4. Pictures will be posted on Sunday, the week will start on Mondays and end with posting on the following Sunday.

I tried last year to stick with the plan of taking my camera with me wherever I went, but that never really happened. I figure if I have a plan and a deadline to produce images it'll force me to bring my camera with me.

So, here's to a 2010 filled with the slap of the shutter and the freshly exposed image being more present in my life. After all you can't call yourself a photographer if you don't take pictures.

New works up on Etsy

I've slowly been adding new images to my Etsy shop, and there are 4 new listings that I am particularly proud of. They feature some architectural details of London that caught my eye when I visited earlier this spring.

Take a look, and while you're at it visit my etsy shop to see some of the other new photos that have been posted.