January 31st: Dormant vines on parking garage
31st January 2008
These vines fascinate me and they are on several areas of the parking garages around the building where I work. I think it’s the contrast of the organic shapes with the lines of the concrete, and yet the vines themselves are just lines this time of year as though they were drawn onto the scene rather than being real. I took another photo today of bushes that draw my eye any time I see them around work in the winter (they seem to be planted all over) but it’s devilishly hard to get a photo of them that shows what I see in that first instant. There’s this surprise of the red and it stands forward from everything around it, so clear and obvious–but the camera sees so much more than I do with my eyes and so the scenes look messy. Dawn said this picture reminded her of colored fountains and she’s right. It’s a good observation and lends order to something that (even now) still looks chaotic to me.
Administrivia
This is the last day of January and I have taken and posted pictures (to Flickr, anyway, I’m catching up here on the blog, so you’ll see a number of older posts come through over the next few days) every day this month. Once I have caught up with the backlog here, I will write up a retrospective of the month and note what I have learned. For February, I am setting myself a bit of a challenge: not only will I make photographs each day, but I will take at least 29 frames (this is a leap year and there are 29 days in February) each day. That doesn’t mean I will have 29 frames to post. It does imply a bigger commitment of time for shooting. Today, for example, I took only 16 frames.
Shooting and processing notes
Shot with the 17-40 F4.0 L at 38mm (guess I didn’t quite make it all the way to the end of the range), 1/100 at f8 and ISO 400. Again processed (slowly) through LightZone. I do like the controls in LightZone and the nature of the pictures after I tweak them there. I tried a variety of different things with each of the photos I selected of this vine-covered wall, so not sure quite what I did with this one, but I think I used the "Hard" preset and reduced the opacity a bit, then sharpened the mid-tones.
Photo a Day 2008 Links
Photo a Day 2008
Photo a Day 2008: January
Flickr: Collection: Photo a Day 2008
Flickr: January 2008 Photoset
Flickr: January 2008 Extras Photoset
February 1st, 2008 at 2:56
The vines next to the slanted overhang are a super contrast. Try cropping that left corner into a long column and tell me what you think.
Those red bushes are funky. Ellen’s neighbor in CH planted them in their garden and they shine spotlights on the branches at night - it brings out the red lines in a way that daylight just can’t.
February 1st, 2008 at 23:27
[...] left a comment about yesterday’s picture, suggesting that I focus on the slanting lines and the vines. [...]