Taking Time

Today we took Time to go have a picnic at Lahontan Reservoir and do a little swimming. Beth had to drive out to Fallon this afternoon so we went with her then after we drove over to Lahontan and let the kids play in the water for a bit and had a picnic dinner. This is a shot of the dam at the reservoir, I just thought the building looked interesting.

Black and White

We went for a drive out to Crystal Mine today and dug around the rocks a bit. On the way back out I stopped a few times to photograph a few different flowers and these plants. I am not sure just what they are but I thought they would be good for doing some black and white conversions. The lines created by the leaves and the tonal range of the scene is something that works well with black and white photography. I liked playing with this one and I have a couple different shots from this spot I will probably do the same with as well as I will have to make it back to this spot sometime to get some other angles and compositions.

Strawberries

These Strawberries became the subject of my S photo. I like the way the red stands out on the white plate and background, I have also seen some nice images done with strawberries either splashing into a bowl of cream or cream splashing onto them. I decided for my shots I would keep it a bit more simple and not as messy this time. (click on image to view larger version)

This last photo is to show what we must do with the strawberries when we are done.....eat them!

Rocks

I went out for a bike ride last night on a hill near our house and put my Sony point & shoot camera in my camelbak. I wanted to have a camera in case I came across something worth grabbing a few pictures of and my old Sony is much smaller than my Nikon DSLR and therefore easier to take along on a quick bike ride. When I was out on the top of the hill I thought I could try taking some pictures of the Rock outcroppings to use for R. So I played around with it for a while trying to find some good angles and ways to frame it to make it somewhat interesting. I also find that when I am trying to take more than just a snap shot I have a harder time with the Sony as I am wanting all the controls my Nikon gives me. It was a nice ride and I think it was a good exercise to make my self work within the confines of the Sony camera to come up with some images. Part of the ride I did was on a very narrow trail with a pretty steep hill right next to it that you would not want to fall down (right by the rocks in the last photo), not totally sure what the trail was from but it may have been an old trail from wildlife going threw there.

Quarters Falling in Water

So Q came up and Quarters falling in a glass dish full of green water came to mind. I know! This is probably what you were thinking also because what else would one do for Q other than Quarters falling in green water!? So that is what I did and the hardest part was getting the camera to fire when I dropped the quarters. I started off trying to use my remote trigger and each time I dropped the quarters I was holding the remote at the wrong angle to even trigger the camera, so my first 3 attempts the camera did not even go off. Finally I decided I was able to reach the camera with one hand and drop the quarters in with the other hand at the same time (I actually slid them off in a row from a piece of paper I was holding so they all did not fall in one group) and that started working for me. In the end I think three of the images had some real interesting looks going on with the water but I chose this one as the water is interesting and I managed to catch one of the quarters still falling.

Pet

I figured the kids could use a break from being my subjects and I would use Strider for P as in Pet. After a few minutes of trying to get him to stay in a sitting position I was starting to second guess using the dog for my subject as he was trying my patience and wining! In the end he does a better job of staying in a laying down position and those photographs came out better anyway. I was going to use a flash however there was just enough light in the room to try this with just natural light so I left the flash off. I also had my assistant Hannah holding a piece of white foam core off to the left to bounce a little bit of light back on him.

Old camera

For O I finally came up with the idea of Old and it had nothing to do with me doing new for my last post, I actually did not think about that relation until I went to post this and saw my last post. I have a small collection of old cameras and accessories and figured one of the cameras would make a good subject. This "box" camera is an Ansco No. 2A Buster Brown. From what I could find the patents for this camera were 1906, 1910 and 1916 and the camera was sold up until around the early 1920's. Not sure just how old this exact one is but probably around 90-100 years old and probably worth around $5-30 so I will not be fully retiring anytime soon.