It's a an alien, it's a monster... it's public art!

As you may have realized from previous posts, I have a fondness for photographing public art. This molten silver sculpture just screamed at me to photograph it. I think I could have used a whole roll of film shooting different angles and perspectives. This was the first roll of film when I started to notice the black shadow on my Pentax K1000. At first I was disappointed, but now I think it kind of adds to the eeriness of the shots.

And while I was taking pictures of the public art, Jeffrey was taking pictures of me.

All photos taken with our respective Pentax K1000's
~ M

WAW #17 & #18 - Diagonal Lines & Horizontal Lines

Planning a wedding and honeymoon is a big job. I say this, because I thought for some reason that I would be immune to the overwhelmed-feeling that you always hear brides-to-be talking about. I thought that because we are staying casual about the whole thing, and because we had such a long engagement, and because I have the whole 2 weeks off before the wedding & honeymoon, that I wouldn't feel the pinch. The fact is, I was wrong.
It's not that I am stressed, there is just a lot of things to do, and when you are trying to save a few pennies by doing things yourself, that to-do list can seem never ending.
But, the good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and I have found a few minutes to try to keep up on my weekly assignments. The bad news is that I am not really happy with what I ended up with. The assignment to capture diagonal & horizontal lines seemed like it would be fun because it would encourage me to go out and look at things I might not normally notice. Or to look at them in a different way. So when I grabbed the digital camera on one of our recent "wedding errand" outings, I thought that it would give me a nice distraction... something different to focus on, and maybe remind me to slow down and just enjoy the afternoon.
Well, it did to some degree... but my heart just wasn't into playing with the composition or settings. I just tried to capture things that I saw in, quite frankly, a half-assed kind of way. This morning when I looked through them, I was disappointed and started to search around my house for things to take pictures of. I don't know if this second attempt was any better. But here are the results, less than inspirational, but completed none the less. (gee, I really know how to sell my work don't I?) ;)

Diagonal Lines

Horizontal Lines

Next week's assignment is "Negative Space". I'm going to try my best... but no promises.

~M

Kids, Canada, Crowds & Courage

Although I technically completed my Weekly Assignment on "Kids", the experience left me thinking (and feeling slightly more courageous). As I mentioned in my previous post, crowds seemed to be the key to getting shots of kids without looking like a creeper, kind of like camouflage.
Well, when we went to Victoria for the Canada Day long weekend, I was provided with many crowds for camouflage and it seemed like a whole lot of courage... even out of crowds! Maybe it was because I was in a different city than my own? Or maybe I am just "getting over it"? Anyway, here are some of the results.

The Canada Day celebrations on the lawns of the Parliament Buildings in Victoria provided the perfect camouflage for capturing strangers. I have to say though, with the size of the lens on my Pentax K1000, I am anything but subtle when I point it in any given person's direction (they sense it almost immediately!). But, a bonus with that size of lens... really good zoom! I never would have been able to capture these shots with a shorter lens or with my Olympus prime lens.

 Focusing on moving kids is especially difficult!

Sneak hug attack!

Kids weren't the only ones I was able to capture at the celebrations!

The next day during a walk along the ocean, my courage just kept right up with me. I managed a few sneak shots outside of crowds. Jeffrey kept commenting on how "brave" I was.
** As a side note, the black shadow on the left side of some of the images I have recently figured out it is the shutter. When I have it set to highspeeds (1000 for example) it doesn't seem to open & close quickly enough, and leaves this shadow on some pictures. It has "ruined" some shots, but has added an interesting visual to others. I'll have to look into getting it fixed eventually.

This one took me a long time to muster up the courage, but it was just too good to let pass. Totally worth it.

~M

WAW #15 & 16 - Children and Black & White

So I haven't been very good at keeping up with my weekly assignments and so I decided to try to kill two birds with one stone (or rather two assignments with one picture).
The assignment to photograph children has been a challenge for me because though I work with kids all day, I don't feel comfortable putting pictures of them up on my personal blog. And in the rest of my life, I only have a few friends and family members that actually have children. I was tempted to post some more pictures of my nieces from Easter, but thought that I should really use this assignment to push myself (which is the whole point of doing them!).
Luckily, the perfect situation presented itself when I took my class to Stanley Park for a year end celebration. I was obviously not the only teacher to have the same idea and the park was packed with kids! As a teacher taking pictures, I no longer risked being seen as a creeper. There were so many parents and teachers there that everyone just assumed I was taking pictures of my kids. A wonderful guise!

Part way through my picture taking, I decided to switch over to black & white (a perk of digital over film) to  play around with assignment #16 - Black & White. I find black & white tricky because I think to really get the full effect the lighting has to be right. I find too many black & white pictures just look like colour pictures without their colour. I know, I know... that's what black & white is... but it is just that sometimes they are missing a quality that makes them look like they should be in black & white, like that was the perfect medium for them. I don't know if I captured that, but since it is my first time, I am cutting myself some slack.

The last one is my favourite.
~ M