February 12th: Bookends
12th February 2008
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.
Photo a Day 2008 Links
Photo a Day 2008
Photo a Day 2008: February
Flickr: Collection: Photo a Day 2008
Flickr: February 2008 Photoset
Flickr: February 2008 Extras Photoset
February 14th, 2008 at 0:02
My two favorites from the batch - “Compression” (fossils come to mind) and “Escape to Freedom” (the green on the concrete is a nice touch).