Burn the streets.. shots and thoughts

Our fair city hosted a snowboarding competition today... didn't enter the photography contest because... well... because I'm rather lazy and I really have to focus on school these days.. I can only be productive for so much. I did take a few shots, though. Yeah.. great times. The energy drink company Burn was the main sponsor. And they did a really nice job of it... I got my free energy drink and my then warm slice of pizza, which I am enjoying as I'm writing this.

The riders provided a great show which made me stay with them until the end (despite the fact that my fingers were literally sticking to the lens of my camera.. yep... it was that cold) and I really hope the organizers do something like this again... I doesn't have to be snowboarding... I mean... other sports can be just as fun. How 'bout a golf tournament, eh?
Yeah... I'm joking about the golf part. But I do hope something like this happens again. Oh well... 'nuff said!

Some shots:

I'm also thinking of starting a new little project regarding the blog... more to follow.

R

red ink + desk lamp = love ? you tell me...

"Have you ever seen blood in the moonlight, Will? It appears quite black." - Hannibal Lecter

Oh, relax! It's just ink. I did a little bit of experimenting with the desk lamp, some lenses, ink, a syringe and a few other things.
Oh... and I discovered that some of my red ink cartridges have numbers carved inside them.. like this one. I wonder why. Any ideas?

Yep... still reversing lens... Shut up! It's fun.


R

One shot one kill... things I've learned

There have been 7 interesting days, I'll tell you that (there were 7 shots taken). And I did learn a lot from the project... about things I can do and, most importantly, things I can't do. So... here they are.

1. I can shoot everyday. It wasn't as hard as I had previously imagined... grabbing the camera, making sure I had the card inside, preparing the set, thinking about the light... everything seemed so natural.
2. Finding something to shoot is hard. The hardest part of the project was finding something worth shooting. I really wanted to get something out of this project... I mean... more than experience. I would try to find ideas all day... think about things I had always wanted to shoot and then discard the ideas because of the limited amount of time I had, the limited number of shots I had... you know... mostly because I wanted to play this safe. And I did... most of the time. The most risky shot I took was on day six of the project, when I went outside, calculated my exposure, went to the middle of the road, focused and shot. The image is pretty much out of focus, as you can see, and the framing didn't turn out so well either. I was able to somewhat fix that in the post-processing.
3. I'm not a one-shot kind of guy. Which is good. The purpose of the project was not to make me a guy who only takes one shot in one location. It was to help me improve my skills and to help me start shooting something. God knows I needed that. I really enjoy having the possibility of taking another photograph of the subject, of changing the perspective or the composition and being able to make my choice later, in the post-processing phase. I feel I learn more about the subject as I keep photographing it. Of course it's more efficient to take one shot and just use that one, but, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't yield the best results.
4. I should focus less on the technical side of things. Whenever I try to come up with an idea, I start from a technique or a certain lens I want to use, from technical elements such as bokeh or shallow dof, which is not entirely bad, but when creating a photograph (I'm not really sure I can even use that word when talking about my work, but hey!... thank God there's no Blogger Police), I think I should start from the main idea or the feeling I want it to convey or hey!... even from the subject and then work my way down to equipment and types of light I want to use and the rest of the stuff.
5. DON'T BE AFRAID!!!!! Whenever photographing something or experimenting or taking a photowalk, your courage will always be rewarded. The courage to whip out you camera, even though it might make people uncomfortable or it might get wet or broken, the courage to keep shooting, although you're not really sure about how it will turn out. But, most important, the courage to say... 'Hey! I'm shooting something today'.

Yeah... that's pretty much what I've learned from the project... hope it sticks with me long enough...

More shots to come...

R

One shot, one kill.... day eight (final day.. one day late)

I took this one yesterday, but couldn't upload it... my Internet connection was down for most of the night.

Emergence of darkness

Original exposure

I just couldn't let the series pass without a bit of reverse lens fun...

My thoughts of the project... to follow...

R