Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: November 24, 2009

Home Field

Where: Bradford, Vermont
When: November 7, 2009

Werewolves in which city now?

Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: November 24, 2009

I love her mane, it's so glorious. And she's much too sweet looking to be mistaken for a werewolf. But now I can't get the song out of my head. ;)

Circular

Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: November 24, 2009

Where: Bradford, Vermont
When: November 7, 2009

Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: November 26, 2009

Let's blow this joint

Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: November 24, 2009

Went out with my camera again, and it was great. I apparently didn't need that much time off, which is excellent.

Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: November 24, 2009

mmmmm moody black and white deliciousness.

Letting Go

Where: Bradford, Vermont
When: November 7, 2009

Transparencies

Where: Tuckahoe, NY,
When: November 4, 2009

Drifting Down

Where: West Village, NYC
When: October 23, 2009

I just like the colors against the white background. It's not really my favorite shot, to be honest.

Form follows function

Where: West Village, NYC
When: October 9, 2009

I love how the chain link and the vine have similar properties, and actions.

Building Blocks

Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: November 9, 2009

I had a dream last night, where I'm in a room with a task. I need to set up a chalk board with several moving parts. I try to do it all at once and fail, I can't get the various sections to support each other, can't establish a firm base. The room is crowded with people trying to achieve the same task, a cacophony of clattering, gestures and conversation.

In the middle I see one young girl sitting on the floor, patiently lifting and lowering one side of the chalk board over and over, with a focus that is both intense and diffused. I sit down next to her with my chalkboard and do the same thing, and feel calm and certainty return in the effort to master one small portion of the task, and I realize that I'm dreaming, and that it is a metaphor for meditation practice.

"I've built a grass hut where there's nothing of value...
Meet the ancestral teachers, be familiar with their instruction,
bind grasses to build a hut, and don't give up."

By Shitou Xiqian [700-790], "Song of the Grass Root Hermitage".

I've been distracted, busy and, most recently, sick the last several weeks, and my practice has dropped off, so I was happy to have a dream reminding me to start again, binding a few grasses at a time.

I don't see it.

Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: November 10, 2009

I love the futuristic/retro look of these things. Wish I had had a stronger light that day to really pick up on the shapes. I also should have brightened this before exporting/resizing - sorry it's a bit dark.

Variation on a Theme: Same Sun, Different Day

Where: Solterreno, Vall de Laguar, Spain
When: July 2, 2009

Same sun on other days (these were meant to be links to old posts, but I couldn't figure out how to do it, so I'm putting them all here instead. I kind of like this better, actually):






Editing to add one more that I forgot to include:

The seasons of my life

Where: High Line Park, Chelsea, NYC
When: October 14, 2009

Title from Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide". Which is such a lovely song, but a little too close to the mark a year or so ago, when the need for change and direction felt both too urgent and too frightening. Now I can listen to it and just enjoy it, which is nice. So here's to riding out the tides.

"Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I've been afraid of changin'
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder, children get older
I'm getting older too"

Variations on a Theme: There's Beauty In The Breakdown, in horizontals

Where: Soho, NYC
When: October 25, 2009

Title from Frou Frou's song Let Go. Here's the vertical version.

Phoning Home

Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: November 16, 2009

Inside Out

Where: My Apartment, NYC
When: November 5, 2009

Another from the experiment with out of focus self-portraits. This was the feel I was going for at the time (but liked the color one better). Creepy, right?

I normally select which photo from the backlog I feel like posting so that there's more of a theme, but now I'm just going straight down so it might be a little disjointed.

Dead Heads

Where: High Line Park, Chelsea, NYC
When: October 14, 2009

I kept skipping over this one as an upload choice, but looking at it again (and not as a thumbnail) reminds me why I chose it to upload at all. I love the graceful feel of the branches, and the dof.

To The Point

Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: November 2, 2009

Off center of the center

Where: High Line Park, Chelsea, NYC
When: October 14, 2009

I love the swirly lines in the middle of this! It's why I went with bw, I feel like it makes the detail pop.

Wash away my sorrows, away my pain

Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: September 30, 2009

Title from Shambala, sung by Rockapella. It's exquisitely lovely, and also super upbeat, check it out. It's not tremendous in quality but whatever:
Rockapella singing Shambala

A funny kind of freedom

Where: Scarsdale, NY
When: November 14, 2009

Yep, for reals this time, I'm taking a photo break. I've got tons and TONS of backlogged stuff as a result of what turned out to be a 58 day project, so I'm going to keep posting that for a while, and not pick up the camera 'till I really truly feel like it, for at least a couple of weeks - I've only got a few more weeks left to this semester, believe it or not (I don't!), so maybe once school's out I'll do a short term "every day" project again, because I really did love it, and it helped me develop enormously.

I'll still post stuff every day, don't worry, it just won't be brand new what I saw that day stuff. Probably. I also might pick up the camera again tomorrow, who knows.

Fly Away Home (58/365)

Where: Hudson River
When: Today

Yeah I know I said "no more!" but I happened to take this today, and I like it, so... ugh, and I'm so close to day 60! Maybe I can make it two more days, end on a round number or something... it's like a sickness, I swear.

Once again, compressing it to 710 on the long side ended up making this look darker and way more contrasty than I had intended, but I like it, so I'm keeping it. In addition to that, I did a tone curve adjustment and black clipping to up the contrast, and flipped it because I like the bird facing left.

It's also nice on a black background, check it out here
Where: Scarsdale, NY
When: November 14, 2009

I think I'm taking a break on the 365. I might take it up again after a few weeks, but I need some time to refresh myself.

Stopping By

Where: Bradford, Vermont
When: November 7, 2009

The Coming Dark (57/365)

Where: Hudson River, from my apartment
When: Today

I'm starting to feel pretty burnt out on this 365 project, I have to admit. I was loving the creativity wave for a while, but I"m starting to feel like my photo-brain needs a break. School's taking up a lot more of my time as well, and taking photos, sorting through, and processing them take a non-trivial number of hours in a day.

The compression issue I'm having means it's much darker than I intended, but I actually kind of like it so I'm just leaving it as is.

Doesn't Mean I'm Lost

Where: Bradford, Vermont
When: November 7 or 8, 2009

Title from Coldplay's Lost.

Variations on a Theme: Billboard Wisdom

Where: On the way out of NYC
When: November 6, 2009

Taken through a bus window, which I love because it's like having a cool tinted filter on.

Game Time (56/365)

Where: Scarsdale, NY
When: Today

Went up to a friend's house for a day of board games today! It was lots of fun, and I have never experienced hospitality the way he and his wife do hospitality. Holy crap. I am totally in awe. Plus Puerto Rico is a really fun game.

The Dark Side

Where: Museum of Natural History, NYC
When: November 11, 2009

Where: Bradford, Vermont
When: November 7, 2009

Incandescence (55/365... kind of)

Where: Solterreno, Vall de Laguar, Spain
When: January 31, 2009

So... today's photo didn't happen. I'm all out of juice, and I just couldn't bring myself to do the camera thing. So my compromise was to go through the archives and find something I overlooked.

Apple Crates

Where: Haverhill, NH
When: November 7, 2009

This was neat, it's a farmstand type thing that sells apples and apple based products. It was fun wandering around the crates and talking to the guys that worked there - I learned that apple crates are very very heavy, and therefore probably pretty hard to upset so I don't know where that phrase came from, and I got to see the new back porch they had to build extra sturdy for unloading new crates. And I got to learn what a "utility" is - it's an extra big bag of apples that aren't pretty enough for the regular bags, but are otherwise just fine.

I wish I had been brave enough to take pictures of these guys, they had such wonderful, interesting faces - you know those faces that just look lived in? But I was too shy. So instead I asked them lots of questions about apples.

Tail End

Where: Bradford, Vermont
When: November 7, 2009

Seeking Serenity (54/365)

Where: Tuckahoe, NY
When: Yesterday

Where: Bradford, Vermont
When: November 7, 2009

I'm getting frustrated with exporting photos out of Lightroom - particularly with the d90, there's a lot of info getting compressed into the smaller size, so in images like this with lots and lots of details, the details get compressed and the result is a much darker image than I intended, or that it appears to be in Lightroom, so I have to do some guesswork to lighten it enough for export. Didn't really work with this one, and I'm kind of on the fence about the quality of the composition of this one anyway, but I like the shadows and the winding path. And the location, obviously. ;) This is the pasture I grew up in, for those of you who don't know me. Kind of literally, we didn't have tv in the house so catching crickets and hanging out with the mules were our primary sources of entertainment for the summer.

Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: November 9, 2009

Sorry about not posting yesterday, I was running around non-stop, and on top of that my head has not been in a title place lately, so I wasted a bunch of time trying to come up with some. I give up.

The Warp and the Weft (53/365)

Where: Museum of Natural History, NYC
When: Today

I don't know what warp and weft actually are, but I know they have something to do with textiles. And, well, this is a textile. Ok so it's not a creative title.

Where: Bradford, Vermont
When: November 8, 2009

So both of these photos generate visceral/emotional response for me, which is normally how I figure out what to title them, but I can't quite identify what the emotion is, and therefore no words come to mind.

Where: Bradford, Vermont
When: November 7, 2009

52/365

Where: Hudson River Park, NYC
When: Today

Autumnal Embers

Where: Bradford, Vermont
When: November 7, 2009