Oops. OK so forgetting to post my photo on the day once since May isn’t too bad. I’m cutting myself some slack. It looks like the October challenge is hobbling to a close!
Here is yesterday’s prompt looking back. In more ways than one! I had to look back through the archives when I realised I forgot to find something suitable.
Waahoo!
I found an hour today to go out and try to complete the second part of my homework. I had to take a photo of something moving with a fast shutter speed and a slower shutter speed to see what effect it has on the feeling of movement in a photo.
Fast shutter speed = clear, no feeling of motion.
Slower shutter speed = blurred object, motion evident
For anyone who read my previous post on this week’s homework you may remember that I was a bit perplexed about how to get a steady shot of a fast moving object hand panning. After reading advice left from excellent photographers and fellow bloggers Mel Mann and Edith Levy (thank you both so much for leaving your comments, I found them invaluable and I think they really helped me get something useable) I grabbed my camera bag and drove to an area in Tea Tree Gully that I thought had plenty of traffic and some interesting things to photograph if I had trouble and needed cheering up!
I found it difficult, although not impossible, to get the panning speed right and ended up with about 4 shots that I was happy enough to use, so I HAD TO PICK ONE! I didn’t think THAT would be an issue, haha.
I also found that panning a car going directly past me was easier than trying to get them coming toward me at an angle. That may be obvious? But I had no idea. Still don’t really.
The other thing I actually found really frustrating was that I wanted to slow my shutter speed down below 1/3 to get a long trail for the stationary background, but I couldn’t get my camera meter to a correct light exposure with the shutter so slow. Anyway, I had to settle for a couple of pretty average shots. As you can see in the absence of the ability to make the moving object particularly interesting I tried to at least make the scene slightly interesting. Again, any suggestions of how to improve my settings would be appreciated because it is now obsessively occupying my mind.
A special mention to the man sitting on the pub verandah looking perplexed as I lay down on the footpath of a main road to try to get some stability by using my elbows as a makeshift tripod. He really did look like he thought I had lost my mind. He obviously doesn’t understand that my mind has been lost…to photography.
I will improve.
Today my family was on another long drive. My husband and I always argue over who gets to do the driving because we both like to drive, it doesn’t matter where we are going. Anyway, today he got to do the driving. So I decided that the best way to spend my time was to take a million photos from the moving vehicle. It can be pretty hard to get a clear focus of the trees whizzing past, but our car and us were consistent so I took a photo of me…again. Another self portrait! As an aside, I am particularly proud of the pinky flair happening in the photo! Who knew I take photos the same way you might drink a cup of tea? Does make for a pleasing shape though. Let’s pretend I did it on purpose for the composition.
I was photographing some vintage cars that happened to park themselves in my vicinity today and noticed the perfect opportunity for a self portrait. I will post some more photos of the cars later, but here I am in the wheel of a 1962 R Series Chrysler Valiant. I don’t know much about cars, but it did strike me as being a beautiful wheel (and car for that matter, but the wheel had its own beauty).
Lesson: if you get in my line of view and I find you interesting I WILL photograph you. That includes inanimate objects. End lesson.
My ongoing struggle is balancing photographing the things I see with making sure my kids don’t get unhappy. Often I will be out driving them to an excursion destination and I will see something and the questions arises, ‘Do I stop and take the photo or keep driving?’. You see I tend to drive to coincide with nap times. They need the naps to keep them, and therefore me, sane. I did try once pulling the car over, leaving the motor running and music playing hoping that they would think we were still moving and keep sleeping. I snuck out, took my photo in under a minute and when I hopped back in the car they were both sitting there wide awake in the back.
So, although I know people say its sacriligeous to take a photo on the run out of the window of your car, at times I do. Because of this new way of looking at things I no longer mind being stuck at the traffic lights. I have a good look around and often find beauty that I might otherwise miss.
I thought I would share with you a few of the things I have found from the car window.
I am… probably hanging out the window of a car right now…somewhere.
I am not very urban. I grew up in the country in a small rural environment. Photos of the streets where I grew up would include farms, fruit trees, dirt tracks, river views and lots of open space filled with Mallee scrub. I thought it best to try to photograph the area I now live which is in the city.
I left the house last night.
You might think that is neither here nor there, but for a mum with two small kids that is like travelling to Mars for a cup of coffee. Anyway, while I was out I thought I had better seize the day (or night in this instance).
My iphone gets a bit grainy at night, but you can see them well enough. I know you’re not supposed to edit them, but that last one needed black and white or the trolley got lost. Sorry.
I took my kids on an excursion again. Only it was raining when I got where i was going and then I drove some more. Then there was nowhere to stop. So what does your average Mum do when she wants to take her kids on an excursion and it might rain? Stop at a cemetery and take some photos of old headstones while her kids have a run and crawl (through the muddy, sodden ground). Don’t even ask me about turning my head to check on my son and turning back to see my baby crawling over an early 1900’s grave. Oh dear.
It was the strangest, kookiest cemetary I have ever been to.
Some of the graves were very old especially for Australia, you don’t often see very old gravestones in an average small town cemetary. One of the oldest there was of a very young soul.
It seemed fairly normal from the road, but as I came closer to the church I noticed 4 prominent lined up headstones, like crooked teeth they had been left to their own devices for many years.
I took a couple of shots of a headstone that had snapped in half and sat there like a sunnyboy deck chair.
Another had been left in a pile of pieces.
Then it got very strange. Around the back, away from the other graves were a set of three headstones behind a huge tree. I wondered if they had been punished somehow by being buried in this way? Until I realised that they had planted a nice little tree on their graves as a memorial and hadn’t given the future much thought. It grew into a GIGANTIC tree.
And finally the graveyard planning to end all planning was this
WTF??!
On my way out I took this final photo. It is not a good shot in anyway, but I was shocked at such a ludicrous situation that I had to take it anyway.
Yes, well it was a strange day.
all that is left behind
Going for a drive in the Adelaide Hills we came across this pub in Birdwood (a town associated with cars) with a car attached to the front. Strange.
A little peek.
Learning the Light 