The sun was in and out for much of the day today. It was out when I left my office but by the time I got outside the clouds were back and they stayed around until well after I had finished making photographs. This post is one of many that form a fence linked up with chains. This particular post, though, had no chain and only this little slender bit of string with a knot in the middle.

There was some variety in the 42 frames I made today. I particularly like the picture of the bus stop, with the newspaper and magazine stands in a line like they’re waiting for the bus themselves. And the one of the new tree along 156th Ave NE. I don’t know what it is about pylons, but the bright orange color always draws me.

And today is a sad one for those few of you who are fans of the pictures of the red bushes. The landscaping crew has started trimming them back in preparation for spring growth.

Shooting and processing notes
17-40 F4.0 L, 27mm, f5.6, 1/200, ISO 200. Converted to black-and-white in Lightroom, a bit of tonemapping in LightZone to spread out the tones, and local contrast.

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I didn’t have nearly as much trouble getting out to take pictures today. The sun certainly helped me capture today’s 39 frames.

Nothing too compelling to me today, though. I felt like I was just standing around marveling at the shadows and hoping that the clouds wouldn’t come back too soon.

This view of a picnic table next to a basketball court has some promise and I did like the view of this street although something is missing (and, no, it isn’t the cars).

Shooting and processing notes
17-40 F4.0 L, 17mm, f8, 1/250, ISO 400. A few tweaks with a relight tool in LightZone and that’s it.

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I had to force myself to go out and take pictures today. I did not feel like it but I have Ignacy Paderewski’s words in my head (I doubt he said them in English, though): "If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it." I managed to squeeze out 37 frames today.

And though my expectations were low for the day’s results, I ended up choosing 9 photos from the set to post to Flickr.

I had my usual pictures of cracked and moldy concrete structures, but this arrangement of trees and utility pole struck me. This is probably my favorite of the concrete forms from yesterday.

I also had a glimmer of a realization yesterday that will take more exploration to work out, but I looked at these trees and saw them like a figure group (or, rather two figure groups–one lone tree and the other two together). The photo I took isn’t great but I think it’s a big step forward in the way I frame things. Keep watching and see what happens.

Shooting and processing notes
Canon 17-40 F4.0 L, 33mm, f7.1, 1/30, ISO 400. Converted to black-and-white in Lightroom where I turned up the green a bit to separate the tones of the grass from the trees. Used a tonemapper in LightZone to stretch out the tones a bit, then added local contrast and midtone sharpening.

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40 frames today although nothing particularly stands out. There’s this one where the idea of the picture is much stronger than the result. Dawn likes this picture of the gravel extending deep into the distance.

Shooting and processing notes
The 17-40 F4.0 L was back on the camera today. 40mm, f6.3, 1/125, ISO 400. It rained most of the day but I got outside during a break in the rain and loved how dark and glossy the rocks in this retaining wall were. This might be more compelling in the fall when it would seem like a paean to the harvest.

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The sun peeked through the clouds a bit this morning and, playing with the dark bark from the rain, made interesting shapes. I took 35 pictures this morning but expected I would take many more in the afternoon. But I didn’t, so those from the brief spurt this morning stand for the whole day.

This picture of Maya might very well be one that I forget about after a few days but there is a little spark of something in it that says it will hold my attention longer. We’ll see.

Shooting and processing notes
Took this with the 17-40 F4.0 L at 40mm, f4, 1/15, ISO 800. By some mysterious ability, Maya has learned to freeze in position when she hears the beep of the focus lock and hold that position until she hears the shutter click. I have no idea how she learned it but she’s like a model when I have the camera out, freezing long enough for me to take a picture, then moving to another pose for the next shot. I converted this to black-and-white in LightZone rather than Lightroom. I slid the color balance over towards blue (to simulate a blue filter) and dialed up the strength a bit to darken the overall tone. Added a bit of sharpening and that’s it.

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I attended a caucus today for the very first time. I had always thought before that you had to register ahead of time and meet special requirements in order to attend a caucus. There were a lot of people there crowded in shoulder-to-shoulder. It seems like this was common throughout the state of Washington today.

Though this was my favorite single picture of the day, I got two pictures that, together, beat it: one of the women in our precinct speaks in favor of Senator Clinton and a man speaks for Senator Obama. These would go well together in a book on facing pages. But then it’s too early for Solo Photo Book Month.

BTW, I made 37 frames today and not all of them were at the caucus.

Shooting and processing notes
Took this, and several others today, with the Sigma 20mm F1.8 EX. 1/15, f3.2, ISO 400. There was a mix of fluorescent and a bit of daylight in this cafeteria but Lightroom handled the white balance nicely. It was pretty flat coming out of Lightroom so I used either the "Wow" or one of the "Soft Wow" styles in LightZone, then some local contrast adjustment to make the sign pop.

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It seems like I spent the whole day in meetings at work yesterday and I was not able to get outside and spend time photographing. I still managed 31 frames, though. And something else happened, too. I made a few pictures in my office but I was still a long way off from my 29 minimum by the time I got home. After a nice sushi meal from Tokyo Japanese Restaurant, I knew I needed to take photos of something, and soon. Rather than locking me up, that imperative freed me up to see things more clearly around the house and take some photos that I like. I will have to explore the implications of this more.

Shooting and processing notes
I kept the EF 35mm F2.0 on the camera today. I took this at f2.2 (1/160, ISO 800) so I had a narrow depth of field. But it worked out well in this case since I focused on the candle in the front and let the vase and the lamp go just a little bit soft. The contrast between the sharp edges of the glass candle holder (it holds a tea light) and the other large, smooth forms is very satisfying. Converted to black-and-white in Lightroom where I simulated the effect of a red filter to darken the reddish vase. In LightZone, I used a tonemapper to spread the tones out for dark and light, and then sharpened the midtones to bring out the sharp-edged clarity of the glass candleholder.

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I had a hard time choosing between this photo of the stairs and this other one.

Not a great day for photography for me. There was a lot going on at work so I stayed close to my office. Not a great move since I was stopped three times by people with questions about all the things we’re doing right now. Made it hard to get in any kind of flow.

Shooting and processing notes
Bet you think you know what lens I used, huh? Guess again. I brought a nice little prime lens today that, with the 1.6x crop factor of the 20D works out to about 56mm–a nice normal lens. The EF 35mm F2.0 has nice optical performance even if it still has that ancient buzzy autofocus motor. But it doesn’t usually bother me. Shot this at f7.1, 1/40, ISO 400. Converted to black-and-white in Lightroom where I turned down the orange to emphasize the texture of the concrete. Darkened it a bit and emphasized texture with the relight tool in LightZone and then brought back a full tonal range with a tonemapper. Sharpened with midtone sharpening.

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This was the first thing I saw at the Overlake Transit Center today and my favorite picture of the bunch. I rode my bike over since I didn’t have time to walk. I knew there would be a good place to lock my bike while I wandered around but I should probably have brought a pair of shoes to walk in. I have Speedplay Frog pedals and a recessed cleat on my shoes but they’re still not great for walking around a bunch, or for squatting down low, as with this picture.

I decided to go to the OTC for the cranes that are in service on the other side of 520. I counted 9 of them but I was never able to get all of them in a single picture. I considered this picture of trees on a hill as the photo of the day, but it just missed the cut. I might change my mind tomorrow.

I finally noticed something else today as well: the effect of continuous car noise (in this case, from 520) on my ability to photograph. I have a great ability when reading or working at the computer to tune out all kinds of distractions around me. It’s something I have been able to do since I was a child. In environments where other people can barely think, I’m happy as a clam. But when I am taking photographs, I guess I try to open myself up and sense everything around me. At that point, the noise from the cars distracts me terribly. I had a hard time in an area that, for me, and compared to where I have been shooting each day at work, should be full of opportunities.

Shooting and processing notes
I had a hard time balancing on my cycling shoes while trying to squat down to take this one. Shot with the 17-40 F4.0 L at 40mm, f6.3, 1/80 at ISO 200. The 20D metered this pretty bright (it didn’t blow any highlights by any means, but it was bright) and that worked well in LightZone where I used the Hard style, then a bit of local contrast enhancement. Maybe I used a touch of midtone sharpening, or maybe I turned that off. I have already forgotten and I am too lazy to fire up LightZone and check.

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I just can’t seem to get enough of these yellow rectangles in the stairwell of the parking garage.It rained most of the day today so I wasn’t able to spend much time outside. In spite of that, I still managed to get 34 frames and cover a range of subjects. Doug Plummer has just posted the one thousandth photo in his daily photo blog. "It’s changed how I see," he writes. I believe him. I have only been at this officially for over a month (I have only 36 photos: a mere 3.6% of Doug’s achievement) but already there is a difference in what I see and how I shoot. LightZone has changed the way I process my photos in the past few days so, superficially, there is more texture and the photos are often darker (thank goodness I am free of the unable-to-resist reflex of Shift-Ctrl-Alt-L in Photoshop) but the structure of the photos is different. The easy answer is that I am simply more careful now, paying closer attention to the selection of what is in the frame and what isn’t, but there’s something else going on.

And this is happening with very little feedback from the outside: there’s something about the cycle of taking photos, selecting them, and processing them that is changing what I am producing. I don’t know how that is happening but so far I like it so I’m not going to mess with it by trying to analyze it.

Shooting and processing notes
I saw this on the way down the stairs to go look for a picture and something about the way the light came in from the opening just floored me. I had to stop, look, back up a couple of steps, and take this picture. I just love the quality of the light, the wetness from the rain, and that bright, graphic, yellow rectangle. Shot with the ever-present 17-40 F4.0 L at 27mm, f5, 1/20 @ ISO 800. Set the white balance to daylight in Lightroom and then tweaked a bit in LightZone: put a region around the yellow rectangle, inverted the mask, and applied the Hard relight style, then some midtone sharpening (I dropped the opacity of the tool to about half or maybe a bit less), and then the Clarity relight style, but very, very slight, with the opacity slider at maybe 10% or less.

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This picture loses a lot in the conversion to sRGB for the Web and certainly doesn’t look as good on non-calibrated monitors. I deliberately emphasized the green of the moss to the point that it seems to fluoresce. I downplayed the browns and ended up with a photo that almost looks like a painting: it reminds me for some strange reason of the painted covers of the Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs that I loved when I was a child, even though this is nothing like any of them. The more I look at this photo, the more I like it. I’m sure it wouldn’t print worth a flip and I imagine most people who see this will wonder what I’m going on about.

On my initial sweep through today’s 33 frames, I thought I hadn’t found anything at all. But I kept looking and poking and suddenly I started to see some things that I liked. This picture of daffodils beside a cable TV junction box was an idea (contrast the daffodils with the word "television") and every time I base a picture on an idea rather than on what I see, it’s terrible. This time, though, it’s not so bad.

And lately I have started to take photos where there are just little rhythmic grace notes of thin tree trunks or the legs of a bus stop in the upper corner of the frame. I have no idea what that’s about but I’m going to keep watching and see if I can figure anything out.

Shooting and processing notes
When I looked at these trees, the moss everywhere just seemed to glow at me and even though I did some exaggerated work on the picture, it does represent what it looked like to me. Shot with the 17-40 F4.0 L at 32mm, f8, 1/60 at ISO 400. I don’t think I even changed the white balance in Lightroom (going to Daylight or Cloudy looked far too warm). I cropped just a bit off the bottom so the tree trunk filled the left side of the frame from top to bottom. I then applied the Hard style in LightZone, and then added some Hue/Saturation layers where I limited the effect to the greenish-yellow of the moss (using the eyedropper) and bumped up saturation and luminosity, then chose the brown of the leaves and darkened those.

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I think the hydrangea blossoms are almost as pretty in the winter as they are in the summer and they might make an even more interesting photograph. I spent about an hour walking around my neighborhood, hoping for the sunshine the weathermen promised. The clouds did make some interesting patterns on the lake, though. I shot 47 frames today, so there’s one more day beyond the requirement of 29.

I have been turning more and more of my photos into black-and-white. I’m quite surprised since it seems like colors draw me to make a picture more than anything else but then I find myself in Lightroom or LightZone thinking that the color is distracting. Even the picture I chose today is very much like a toned black-and-white rather than a color picture (though I was attracted specifically to the golden-brown color of the dried blossoms).

Through a route I can’t retrace at the moment (though I’m pretty sure I started from Doug Plummer’s blogroll) I found the pause | to begin blog. There is a well-written post that, among other things, talks about the role of color in art photography: "One of the main culprits of boring color photography that seems to be everywhere these days is [the] fact that the color has nothing to do with the image." As a nice bonus, there are several examples of good color photographs and some analysis of why they work.

I took a photo of a natural gas access cap in the road and my first impulse was to treat it as black-and-white. But Dawn pointed out how much more she liked the color version and how the color made the debris around the cap seem like confetti and the gas cap like an Olympic medal. In this case, as in every one where visual sensitivity is involved, she’s right.

Shooting and processing notes
Shot with the 17-40 F4.0 L at at 40mm (yeah! I finally got it all the way to the long end for a change), f4, 1/250 at ISO 400. I simply adjusted the white balance in Lightroom and then applied the "Hard" style in LightZone.

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I noticed this as we were going into Crossroads Mall. I was drawn first by the patterns of light on the textured concrete blocks of the wall: on gray days like today I am not used to see light and texture variations like this. I did get my 29 frames in again today (46 frames) but other than the picture of the lake this morning and the pictures of Maya, I didn’t get anything interesting out of the yard. There is plenty of moss and I am always attracted to it but perhaps there was so much of it that I had nothing to contrast it with. Or something.

Shooting and processing notes
I shot this with the 17-40 F4.0 L at 39mm (I swear I thought it was all the way at the longest end of the zoom), f8, 1/250, ISO 400. I was standing right at a 4-way stop and had to wait for cars to pull through, then take the shot, then wait for the cars. I was surprised, though, because drivers actually seemed to wait for me to take a picture before they would pull up all the way. I didn’t make too many cars wait since I got the shots I wanted with just a few presses of the shutter. I did try some experiments including parts of the Old Navy sign. I’m not sure if that’s a stronger picture or not.

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Today is the first day of February and the first day of my 29 Frames experiment. I made it easily today, shooting 56 frames. I posted 12 of them to Flickr. There are more experiments with the red-branched bushes; more successful ones than yesterday, I think. And some photos from a visit to a new (to us) sushi restaurant down near Factoria Mall, including a nice one of Dawn.

Julia left a comment about yesterday’s picture, suggesting that I focus on the slanting lines and the vines. Rather than cropping that photo, I went back and took some more pictures and got the crop in-camera. It is another good way of looking at the scene. Except I just can’t manage all three axes of movement without a tripod, so my lines aren’t at the angles I wanted. And there’s something about those bushes at the base that I like that didn’t work as well when in this format. Maybe. As always with my pictures, I need time away from them, and more time with them, to let the ones that I like settle in.

I might have picked this one for today just because it’s all happening on one plane, like some scribbles on a canvas made of dirt.

Shooting and processing notes
Shot with the 17-40 F4.0 L at 40mm, f5.6, 1/40 @ ISO 400. I again used LightZone. I love the quality of the photos but, oh, the slowness just about kills me. It takes so very much longer than when I use Lightroom and Photoshop. But I am getting pictures that look like what I imagined when I pressed the shutter and that’s got to be worth some time, isn’t it?

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