Weekly Photography Challenge

This week I did a lot of photography. I had a few class assignments one of which was to photograph a path leading somewhere in the photograph. I thought on this assignment a bunch trying to think how I wanted to put it together. I decided I wanted to have a long straight path or road leading off into the distance and nothingness. The next challenge was finding a place that would be able to depict that feeling of nothingness. Fortunately I happened to find this section of large four lane road with no cars on it. Supposedly it was built by a developer but then the development was never completed so it just dead-ends. It was perfect for what I wanted so I set up my tripod and photographed it. I tried a few different variations but ended up liking this symmetrical panorama most. I like how all the lines lead into the center distance.  I also got to play around with a few lenses I borrowed from my college one of which was a macro which was so much nicer to use than the extension tu

This week I spent some time exploring the local Arboretum. It was fun and photographic although I did realize its limits since I was able to hike the majority of the trails in one session within a couple hours. I did enjoy the hike and especially liked the flower gardens. I really like the photograph above even though there are aspects of it that seem to be objectionable. I really liked the setting with the flower clumps with the green bed of leaves and the small waterfall in the background. I made a nice simple composition without the flower up close in the left of this photograph but for some reason I really like this one and the depth gained from that blurry flower. What do you think, does it work like this?

This week was a great week for photography. I have started college and am doing an AAS photography program. One morning as I was driving to class I saw this crop duster plane flying around right next to school. I have seen crop dusters working before but never from this close. It was amazing watching the plane swoop down low that it looked like it was riding directly on the ground then when the end of the field arrived it would pull up hard at the absolute last minute barely lifting above the tree line. I decided it was worth being a few minutes late to class so I stopped and made some photographs and I like how these three turned out. Earlier this week I also did some photography down at the Mississippi River just a block away from my apartment and got some nice portraits of Laura and myself. Finally the last photograph is from right outside my door where there is some construction and they had a big pile of signs all with those flashing lights and I thought it was so neet seeing t

This week I got enlisted to help bucket cement from the cement truck to all the footing holes for the new hoophouse at Wolf Ridge ELC(Environmental Learning Center). The truck was so late we were starting to wonder if it was coming at all. But it finally did arrive and we all hustled to work filling wheelbarrows then scooping it out of the wheelbarrows with buckets and in teams pouring/scooping with hands the cement into the fairly narrow holes. They were however deep so it took a lot of cement. Fortunately we had lots of hands so the work went fast. I like the photograph above because of the composition. How the truck frames the right side and the cement shoot creates a nice diagonal line that draws you through the image to the wheelbarrow being filled. I was also utilized to make a group photograph while we were waiting for the truck to arrive. As has often been to case recently I was working at the worst time of day with no shade where I needed it. I used my flash to fill the sha

This week I photographed a pair of baby Robins in a nest at Split Rock Lighthouse. They had been in there making noise and distracting our tour groups for weeks. The mom would hop around with food waiting impatiently for us to move farther away so she could feed her babies. I was fortunate to have photographed them when I did because they were very close to fledging and the next day they one by one flew from the nest and disappeared. It was very difficult to get a good view of them because they were high over head and mostly hidden by leaves and branches. I managed to find one decent vantage points but there was this annoying stick that you can see cutting directly across the babies in the above photograph. I also for some reason link the photograph at the bottom because they are both looking away from the camera and apear to be peering together off after mommy. Lots of fun and they were so much cuter when they weren't distracting my tour group. 

This week I sold a bunch of my photographs at a local arts and crafts fair and finn fest the Tori. I recently Made a large batch of note cards in my upgraded design. They are high quality 4x6 prints on recycled paper folding note cardstock, with recycled paper envelops, all neatly protected and displayed in clear biodegradable plastic, and they are a standard 5x7 size for framing or mailing. Moving on from my sales pitch, I am very proud of my new design resulting from extensive research to find the right products. It was a fun event, I met lots of people, sold a good number of note cards, ate some good food, listened to some good music and started thinking that maybe I would enjoy doing this type of thing more often. I also helped harvest and photograph this weeks CSA cooler, it was nice and colorful!

This week I had some fun. I went swimming in a big deep pool under a waterfall. O and I photographed it too. Which was difficult because it was evening and the best view of the fall was from the east. I would like to go back their in the morning if I can manage to get myself out of bed early enough. I did however like the way the sun backlight the cedar tree making it glow and if I blocked the sun with the tree trunk the glare went away. I also had the delightful experience of watching my parents jar up the almost five gallons of fresh honey our bees managed to make. We have tried having bees many times over many years but they always dies over our long cold winter. This time we worked harder and fed them pounds and pounds of sugar water in the fall to help them get settled and it worked. They made it through the winter intact and were even able to produce surplus honey for our consumption. And let me tell you how good that honey tasted freshly extracted from the cones it was spec

This week we got next years load of firewood. For those of you that have not been up my driveway it is small and steep. Since we know from past experiences that a full semi log hauler doesn't fit very well up the hill and even worse with turning around we were trying to find someone with a smaller truck to bring the wood up with. As it turned out there was an area that was being logged just a mile down the road from my place. So we somehow convinced the logger to driving the loading truck all the way. Now I had been told the truck might be showing up while everyone was gone so I was listening for it and would not have been able to miss it even had I not been paying attention. It crawled loud and slow up the hill with the massive wheels hanging off the sides of the driveway. Finally it managed to make it up the hill and carefully backed between the house and barn to the woodshed. Now let me tell you it dwarfed all of the multiple floor buildings. The tires were almost as tall a

This week I went to the circus that was in Silver Bay MN for the day. It was the usual of them trying to get your money at every turn but the big show was pretty cool. The lighting was very poor coming solely from four hot tungsten lights spread evenly around the arena in such a way that you could hardly every not have one in your photograph. Fortunately I was allowed to use my flash and after intermission I put it on my tripod as an off camera remote flash and that helped even more. There were lots of great acts my favorite being all the acrobatics. The photograph above is I think my favorite from the event. I really like the composition and how she is swinging out of the frame but is stretched and looking back which holds your eye in the photograph. What you can't tell very well in the photograph is that all this is happening 20 feet in the air on a high swing.  And that was not even the most photographic event this week. There was also a big thunder storm which is not t