Autumn Colour Week! (Red)

It's Autumn Colour Week on Flickr and, I have to tell you, these are my favorite colors of all. I couldn't resist digging up a few pictures from my Labor Day weekend in Vermont. If you want to see more red, go here. And if you want to visit the genius creator of this idea, go here. Happy Autumn Colour Week!

Pink Wednesday

I've been doing Spring Colors Week here, and thought I'd post some Pink Wednesday pictures for you.  The top one I shot at a banquet hall when I was waiting to do a group photo of a work team. The previous day, the banquet hall held a funeral celebration of sorts. I do not know who passed, but I thought the lonely, abandoned rose was poignant in its context. It reminds me of this song.

Neutral

I was working on my portfolio tonight, and organizing my flickr pictures by color (I know, it sounds as exciting as organizing your sock drawer, doesn't it?), and decidedly chose the neutral set as my favorite today. I'm into neutrals these days (as my co-workers would attest), and love any color that can be described as wheat, oyster, ochre, clam or dust. Oh, I love COLOR, I do ... but there's something quiet and enduring about neutrals. Don't you think?

If you want to see more color sets, visit me here.

Gentle Orange

My friend Leann (whom I never tire of talking about because she is so inspired and inspiring) brought me this guy last night. In spite of the fact that I seem to buy cashmere for the sole purpose of feeding moths, I should like to have seen him alive. (Really, I should just hang a cashmere sweater in the back yard the way some people hang bird feeders. I digress.)

I'm no pro at moth identification, but he appears to belong to the Polyphemus family (Antheraea polyphemus). Would you agree?

If you want to see more of him, go here. Flickr has just upgraded photostreams with bigger images, and improved geotags to make sharing images a richer experience.

Pairing Pictures III

I like the way these pictures work together chromatically, and share certain textures as well. They were shot on different days, and I wasn't looking for the same color scheme, yet ...

Today starts a new class in for me HDR Photography. In case you are unfamiliar with the term, it means High Dynamic Range, or digital photography on steroids. I'm a little nervous because it means going in the very opposite direction of what I've been doing lately; looking for magical moments of color, line and texture; shooting things just as they are. This new class means photoshop heroics, which I can do blindfolded, but it feels a little like cheating, and the end result is often just a little too fantastic for my taste. 

In a nutshell, the technique involves shooting the same static image in three or four different ISO/f-stop settings, then pulling them into PhotoShop and grabbing the best detail from each to merge into one shot. It also involves using all three shots to have the final image in complete focus. But wait (I'm protesting), I love bokeh. I love that silky blurred background you get with a short depth of field.

Well, discomfort is the mother of growth, and perhaps I can explore some of the same themes I've been enjoying with a new angle. Isn't that what it's all about?

Foodie with a Camera

A few weeks ago, when my sister visited from out of town, we went out for brunch at Le Chatelaine. When the waiter brought our food, my husband sat patiently, warning my sister not to touch her plate until I was finished taking pictures.

Yesterday, my friend Sharon shared a story from the New York Times on this growing trend of food photography. And food blogging. And flickr groups based on food photography. The article mentions several groups I have heard of, and I count seven food photography groups of which I am a member, if you count farmer’s markets among them (I do). I've been following Jen at SimplyBreakfast for years now. I swap photos of food with friends on Facebook; it’s like sharing a virtual meal, bonding over a common appreciation of flavor. I photograph food because I really, really like it.

The article suggests that this trend can be taken to unhealthy heights, not unlike compulsive calorie-counting. While I admit I get a little pang of regret every time I find myself in front of a beautiful plate of food and cannot (mostly for social reasons) take a picture, I like to think that most food photographers and bloggers are practicing aesthetic skills and celebrating our most primal and rewarding sensory experience; flavors.

As Javier Garcia notes in the NYT article, “the French philosopher and gourmand Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”

What I like about food photography is that you have a visual reminder of a meal enjoyed with friends and family. Looking at it conjures not only the flavors and textures, but also the conversation and laughter shared in the moment. My favorite thing about shooting food? It doesn’t squirm or complain.

Food Photography

While it's still a few weeks away, I'm preparing for my final photography class project. I have to create a portfolio that reflects what would become my discipline ... and when I grow up, I want to be a food photographer. While I don't yet have the skills of this guy, or this gal, you can understand why they are both my inspiration, and sought-after by the big food publications.

I went to one of my favorite places (the North Market) yesterday to gather my subjects. I love that you can eat them after you've shot them. As I prepare, I'd love your input on the images that best display food. What makes you hungry? What image would you use in a cook book or magazine article? What's missing?

Your input throughout this class has been extremely helpful in my progress. Feel free to offer me your input here or on my photostream here. And thank you!

Tout le Monde

When I was in high school, my girlfriends and I listened incessantly to Kate Bush, The Smiths and Depeche Mode. We didn't know anyone who wore a babushka. We also didn't know anyone named Kashka from Bagdad or anywhere else for that matter. We didn't blog, twitter, flickr, peek or google, and we certainly hadn't heard of instant messaging.

But today ... today my sister Carol shared this wonderful video with me on Facebook, and I find that tout le monde is at my fingertips.

Orwellian Landscape

A few years ago, before I had a cell phone, I went for a shopping trip. It was a beautiful blue-sky summer day and, with the radio on and a complete sense of freedom, I realized that no one in the world knew where I was.

I don’t have GPS in my car, but Columbus is littered with a number of cameras at traffic lights. If you run a red light, you receive a ticket in the mail, the middleman/cop having been removed from the process.

I use a magnetic badge to get into the office where I work. At work, my emails and web surfing are monitored, some even prohibited. Every website I visit registers my presence. Amazon remembers not only what I’ve recently purchased, but also things that I’ve browsed and, every time I visit, I am greeted with new suggestions to put into my shopping cart. Yahoo! Also manages to gather information about me, because the ads on my Yahoo! home page reflect recently browsed pages or searches. If you ever wondered why you need a little card on your key chain to shop at your local grocery store, it is their way of gathering consumer information on you. The coupons you receive with your receipt reflect your buying trends. I know a man who, every time his wife goes shopping, logs into the credit card account online to monitor her shopping spree.

While our Federal Government conducts none of this surveillance, it still smacks of Big Brother. This isn’t about national security and the government tapping our phone conversations, but all the tools are in place. Spy satellites are taking pictures of us all now; some are said to have a powerful enough resolution to read a newspaper from space.

And we are willing accomplices, giving our personal information at every turn without a thought of our privacy. On our Facebook profiles, we tell all of our friends what we’re doing at any given moment. We Twitter, we Flickr, we Digg. We have entire generations that think it is normal to surrender personal information to complete strangers. I’m aware that when privacy issues are mentioned, many people get a picture of a paranoid man living in the woods with a shotgun and a manifesto. I am not that man, but as someone who has had her identity stolen, I can tell you my electronic credit trail tells a very misleading story about me.

While London boasts the distinction of being the city with the most public surveillance cameras, this is a growing trend. Will health insurance companies start monitoring how much wine I drink? Will a potential employer review my genetic records along with my resume? Could I be unjustly fired for transactions on my credit card that were not my own? How far into the future will we see computers like those seen on CSI and 24 that bring up every minute detail of a person’s life?

And what would it take to fall off the grid?