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Since it's a holiday (President's day), we had the chance to do a little hiking up in the hills of Tilden Regional Park. Not exactly wilderness, but not like the city, either. I'm glad that I can maintain a relatively small ecological footprint by living in an urban area but still have places close by to which I can escape. Now only if there was better bus service so we didn't have to drive the car.
I'm finally feeling like some of my photography is moderately worthy as art. I spent the first 2 or 3 years after I started photographing just pointing my camera at things I thought were beautiful and then wondering why pictures of them never seemed to capture the beauty I saw. Thanks to the vast amount of information on the internet about photography, some of it even good (particular thanks to the folks at the RadiantVista), I've been able to slowly grow in artistic skill. I'm beginning to understand the nature of translating a 4 dimensional experience into 2 dimensions and how the typical human brain moves through that 2D representation.
I'm drawn more and more to black and white photography. It's more honest, in a way--because most people see in color it's more obvious that a black and white photograph is not a small captured bit of reality, but a representation. I've been using the beta of Adobe Camera RAW 4 and the recently released Adobe Lightroom v1.0 software to do black and white conversions from my digital RAW files. It's amazing how much faster one can work with a refined user interface, with results that would take 3 to 4 times as long in Photoshop.
Click on the picture to see the rest of the photographs from today on my Flickr page.
Last Wednesday, I took my camera with me to school and spent about an hour after lunch walking around the campus of UC Berkeley to take some pictures. Doug Plummer, a Seattle based "location photographer", talks about his daily practice of photography and how he usually goes out and shoots after lunch if he hasn't already by that time of day. I enjoyed the chance to get out of the library and walk around a bit, even if the camera kit was significant extra weight on my bicycle commute.
Though I'll take pictures of people passing by if I see a good shot, I find myself drawn to architecture and landscapes more than portraits. It shows here. This shot is of a billboard on the edge of campus--quite the record of events passed.
As usually, click in the picture to go to my Flickr account for a few more pictures in this set.
well friends,
I missed my self imposed deadline to start updating in the middle of January. Life happens, I guess. I'm back in grad school full time now so things are very busy. Admittedly, updating this blog every other day is an ambitious goal, one I probably won't be able to meet. But I'll keep trying, nevertheless. Robin and I haven't even gotten all of the New Year's cards out yet, and it's halfway through February!
Though I haven't updated in a while, I have been thinking about the purpose of this blog: here are my thoughts so far:
- Sharing my photographs
- Keeping in touch with friends and family
- Expressing my thoughts about life as I am living it
- Sharing random internet material I think is worth experiencing
- Reflecting on the process of making art, both my creative process and the technical aspects of photography
I'm unsure at this point how much privacy should be a concern. I like to be open with the world, but I don't want the information here to someday be used against me. At this point, I can't think of a way it would be, but I'm playing it safe for now. So, if I sound a little vague as to the specifics, shoot me an email and I'd be happy to fill in the details.
The photograph above was taken on Valentine's day from somewhere near the Emeryville/Berkeley border along the SF Bay shoreline. I've been wanting to explore shooting some long exposure black and whites (after seeing the work of these two photographers, Michael Kenna and Brian Chapman) and this seemed like a good place. I noticed the ruins of the pier while riding my bike one day and vowed to return as soon as I could.
The softness of the water comes from a 30 second exposure time. I had to wait until just the right time after sunset so that the exposure would be right for this shutter speed. Click on the picture to see some other pictures from this shoot.
