Finding glamor in the mundane...

I admire people who find glamor in the mundane... I had seen a picture of a bridge among Steven Pinker's collection of photos in and near Boston - he's a professor at Harvard and has an awesome collection! I would have seen only a bridge, but Dr. Pinker found out a way to get past the obvious and bring out the beauty in the surroundings. Here's the picture in question. How did he do that? Well, framing the sky, the bridge and the water in right amounts is where the art is. I've been to most of the places he captures, but have not been able to get past the daily routine of traveling thro' these places to be able to notice what now seems obvious!

So coming back to the point - I decided to capture the mundane in the hope of finding something interesting. Found a bunch of keys nearby - they are mundane enough, aren't they? So here's what I tried first - just a top view of the keys...Disappointing, isn't it? I thought so... But decided against giving up! So after trying a few different angles, here's what came up! Not totally glamorous, but more interesting than the first one for sure... So what did I learn today? Of course - the most obvious is to not give up! And something else - finding the best position for your camera lens is the most important thing you'd do. Getting good pictures (even with a digital camera!) is not as easy as point and click as they'd have you believe... it takes time and effort and commitment to the task. Most of us are generally satisfied with run of the mill pictures - nothing really wrong in that - but lately I've tried to be a little more involved in pictures I take and it has been wonderful!

Black and white and beautiful?

If my world wasn't so colorful, would it be beautiful still?

Disclaimer: This picture wasn't taken on a B&W film, just a quick conversion to blank & white in picasa.

I converted this picture to a black and white image to see how it would look without the color. I've heard such good feeling toward B&W photography among serious photographers - its almost a holy grail - for those who attempt B&W are in an entirely different league! We had tried our hand at one B&W film for our Canon Rebel a few years ago and nothing significant came out of it. Now of course, B&W film + developing/printing is expensive than color - so we let it go at that. But it has been at the back of my mind since then.

I've seen beautiful B&W photographs in the Central Pennsylvania Festival of Arts held each year in State College, PA. Renowned photographers converge in the happy valley (home to the Penn State Nittany Lions) each year for this festival and strut their art. While I have marveled at the B&W pictures, I've also realized that not all pictures would look good on a B&W film. So I tried converting a lot of different kind of pictures (people, flowers, buildings, sea shore etc) in my collection to B&W and most of them just looked pale and uninviting. This picture however, which I took on Cape Cod last year, became mildly more interesting than its colored counterpart. Here's the colored version - take your pick!
Do we like color or B&W? Does it convey a different emotion? As I've said before - I'm a fan of sunlight - and when we take away the color - we take away the light almost! But beauty is in the eye of the beholder... Try some on your own... Authentic B&W film if possible, but digitally converted at least...

Orchid in a flash

Here's the point - I'm a firm believer in sunlight and sunshine... so taking pictures indoors has always seemed tedious and I've never been good at getting good pictures indoors - especially people pictures! There's either too much flash or not even light. So when we arrived at the ag arena today for the Orchid show, I was immediately put off because the flowers were inside the arena & not outside as I was hoping.

Result? I took 258 pictures in about 45 minutes - and almost 75% of them are either too grainy or too flashy such that you can't even make out the detail. Call it lacking skills or whatever... but I wasn't happy. And then this brilliant fluke came along and made my day! Perfect amount of flash... Thanks to a friend (here's a shout out to you Nagesh!) who showed me how to click such pictures with examples from his brilliant collection - I can finally say - this is a keeper - and it 'll go in a frame :)

Flowers behind bars

Since I was a little kid, I have been notorious for taking up projects and quickly losing interest in them! I am happy to report that my so called "passion" for photography has survived for the past few years. "Macro" is my thing... I long for the day when I will be happy enough with a picture I take to frame it and put it up on my wall. Call it high standard or low self-esteem, until now I've always found something lacking in most pictures I take. But thankfully, that has not weaned my enthusiasm for taking pictures.

When I set out for school today, the day was cloudy & I almost left my camera home! But look what I would have missed! I call this - flowers behind bars...

Digital enhancement

I have always been a little resistant to digitally enhancing a picture (although I've tried it for my first post). For example, most of the photo editing softwares enable users to change color, contrast & tuning of pictures along with giving special effects such as Sepia or soft focus or saturation among others. Looks like a lot of people make use of these features after they take pictures. But I always feel like I'd be cheating if I did that... But then, I take pictures with a digital camera anyway, isn't that cheating too? Most serious photographers too use different kinds of filters et al on their cameras. So which side should I be on?
Here's a picture that I did some "work" on. The first one is the original copy and on the second one I enhanced some shadows and increased saturation. Which one do you think is a better picture? The original but not so good looking one or the one that saw some cosmetic
enhancements?

World view

I took this picture during our Cape Cod trip last summer. Thank god for digital cameras (!) 'cause I took so many pictures that day that I would have spent a fortune on film. Some wise man (or a woman - the feminist in me exclaimed) has aptly said "when you take 50 shots you'll probably get one that is brilliant"... I found that to be true in this trip. The total number of pictures I took that day go into 100s, but there are only a few pictures that I actually like. So, coming to the point, this is one of those pictures that I really like.

We were inside one of the lighthouses and looking out through the viewing windows. I took pictures thro' most of the available windows, but many of them were looking into parking lots or roads and the composition of the picture was not good enough. But here, I found the right amount of light and shadow and tried to make use of the inside-outside point of view.

The beauty of macro photography

Even after deciding to write every week I'm coming back to this blog after 3 weeks. I took this picture moments ago with my digital camera. I was on auto & macro settings. I tried a few times with manual setting by changing the fstop (aperture) and shutter speeds (exposure), but somehow I still don't have the hang of those! The picture keeps coming grainy - I guess that's my clue to fiddle a little more with shutter speed. I should keep trying - as my digital photography teacher keeps saying - but I haven't done that yet. Maybe this'll give me a good practice.So, coming back to my love of macro photography - even without the auto-macro setting or manual changes, I've tried to take these kind of pictures. I think I like macro photography because it shows the inner workings - its as close as you can get to your subject! With a bigger, better & meaner camera I guess this picture can be taken even without the macro setting. But I'll only know more about this if I keep clicking :) So here's to the hope of doing/learning/achieving something other than what I will call "work" in my life!