Buffalo Tom - Taillights Fade. I was thinking about the logistics of getting this shot when I double checked the thread for the deadline. Oops. We had out-of-town friends coming over tonight for dinner, but turning this to my advantage, I decided to recruit my friend instead of relying on random traffic. Although neither of our wives seemed thrilled about us leaving them with the kids, we set out. As we drove, I explained the set up to my friend, and a storm moved in. We finally got to the stretch of road I had in mind, and ran off a couple test shots to get a general sense of exposure, but none of them worked. But since the rain was getting harder and my wife had already called once to find out why we were taking so long, I just jumped out and told my friend to start driving when I gave him the signal. Set up the tripod, tried to manual focus because it wouldn't auto in such heavy rain and dark, however I couldn't see through the viewfinder because it was too dark. I flipped back to auto, trusted my blind settings, and triggered the shutter when the taillights gave the camera something to focus on. By this point in time, I'm getting soaked and holding an umbrella over the camera in the middle of a thunderstorm. After the exposure, I checked the LCD, saw something that sort of looked like something and said screw it, we're done. Imagine my surprise that I actually liked the shot I got.

For as much I've been looking forward to an assignment like this, I kinda feel like I phoned this one in due to have a lot on my plate at the moment. My plan all along was to steal a good idea from Stobist's Boot Camp assignment. And then Lucky Forward posted. Ah well, I wasn't going to do it half as well as him anyway. So I took the idea for the surface (foamboard under glass) from one of the Boot Camp entries and took a shot of the bane of my weekend (remember, measure twice, cut once, else you waste $60 at Lowe's) and shot it looking into last weekend's project (a beautifully painted basement storage room). The concrete block walls didn't really give it that burley feeling I wanted, so I turned off the light in the storage room, and added the muted spot with a handheld flashlight.

I toyed with the idea of doing something meta-related, like a multi-lingual black Crayola crayon, but as I thought about the setup I wanted for it, I felt a more interesting subject would hold the lighting I had in mind better. I was all set to go to a floral shop and pick out an interesting flower, when, on a walk with her, my daughter plucked this odd looking flower off of a fallen tree branch someone was trimming. I have no idea what kind of flower/tree this is, but it works for my setup better than anything I could have paid for. The idea here is to recreate in a photo what I associate with film noir. So there's a single light to camera right for low key lighting, 1600 ISO for graininess, and a 1.37:1 aspect ratio because that's what they shot. I could've pushed that idea further, but thought that going down a noir checklist would've loaded too much meaning into what I wanted to be a simple shot.

As soon as I saw the topic, I thought "concept" entry. Was this the entry to pull out the pitch black exposure? Nah, after the discussion a couple of assignments ago and seeing Johnny's rule #5, I wanted to invoke the incredible disgust I feel for the current anti-freedom paranoia that seems to ironically exist in this country founded on freedom. The initial thought was to re-create a regionally known picture of a bridge, but with my hand in the frame. I don't have the lens to pull off the re-creation, enough so that I even chose a different bridge, but this still stirs my emotions and conveys my message pretty damned well. I hope. Major props to Johnny for beating me to the idea and for having the cojones to actually risk pissing off someone who could really screw up his day.

I really wasn't expecting this photo to be my entry. This was an attempt to see if I could get the tree to "color" the body of the sculpture while the sun lit up one of the glass orbs in the wings. I couldn't, but it was for the best, because with the sun behind the orb, I lost all the sun flare I like.

There's this curved skywalk between two hospital buildings about a block and a half away from my house that I've been looking for an excuse to photograph since it was built. But after guess's incredible architecture shot and being reminded of the over-sensitivity surrounding public buildings I decided to go in a different direction. What direction, I had no idea. Until last night, while I was comforting my son in his darkened room in the middle of the night, I had an inspiration. Rocking him in the chair, I looked up at the moon we have hanging from the room light, and noticed how the light from the night light created a nice shadow on the ceiling. It doesn't show up if there's any light in the room, so I waited until twilight, just before we put him to bed, and set up to take the shot. I probably take an average of twenty shots to get an exposure I like enough to submit for these assignments. I had such a perfect idea of what I wanted that this one took just three.

Full topic: GAF Photography 2007: Assignment Thread 8: Right Moment: The right place at the right time. With a non-photography related job, a three year old, and a newborn, I dreaded this assignment. I have such few free moments that the probability that one of those would be the "right" one and that I would also be in the "right" place at that moment was looking grim. Oh, I had ideas, but making the time to actually follow through on them just wasn't happening. So I cheated, and made my "right" moment. If it matters to you, and it should, this is staged, although this particular shot was spontaneous. I asked a couple of friends in my office to stage a car accident. Those shots turned out okay, but when the guy started stretching his acting chops, I knew this would end up being my entry.

Full topic: GAF Photography 2007: Assignment Thread 7: Titles: Capture the title of your favorite book, magazine, movie or TV show in a picture. Hrm... "favorite" is such a tough concept for me to pin down, to decide amoungst all of everything is the favorite. I mean, I adore Live, but can I really call them my favorite band against The Smiths, U2, and R.E.M.? And I could go on down that line of thought forever, so I'll spare you my angst and just say that this is a photo capturing the title of a favorite film from a favorite director. I can't even say, however, that this is my favorite film of his, but I'm not about to drive to South Dakota just for a NeoGAF photo assignment. Just to be clear, this is intended to reference Wes Anderson's first feature, Bottle Rocket. Whenever I think about the movie, I always remember a scene where Dignan (Owen Wilson) and Anthony (Luke Wilson) are fighting on the side of a rural road. I was trying to capture the look of that scene while also getting the title. It's somewhat obscure though, maybe I should have looked harder for a 12 Monkeys prop.

If these assignments are supposed to get you to think, they've certainly succeeded with me. But if they're supposed to get you out of your photography shell, well... I've done a bit less well. As hectic as this week as been, and as completely chaotic as the next promises to be, I whipped this lamest of my ideas together in a few spare moments to have at least something to enter. I hope to replace it, but this is my safety in case my other idea doesn't pan out and I run out of time. This represents somewhat of a personal photographic journey, although I've really only used the film camera a couple of times. Mentally replace it with a crappy mid-80's 126 camera to get a sense of my true journey. Pretty pathetic isn't it?

This is the first time that I've taken the camera out "on assignment." Felt really, really self-conscience while doing it, but by the third "shoot," I didn't even notice the guy whose car is the focus of this picture until I pulled the files off the card. Took three scenes, might take one or two more, but I like the sunset warmth in this one enough that I'll probably let it stand. Forced a f/3.5 to get a shallower depth of field than I've been getting on Auto.

A lighting experiment. My first attempt at this topic was a progression of glasses on a counter in order of use in life (baby bottle, sippy cup, plastic cup, glass, wine glass) painted with light. I figured this was too busy, although I had some very sharp shots. So I set this up and painted with light again, but got the positioning so that, afterwards when I calculated it, I was playing with all of about half a centimeter of focus. This is actually the first of my entries in any of the assignments that got any notice whatsoever, and even then, it wasn't a vote, just a someone pointing out that the glass was out of focus.

While I love shots that freeze the action, when I think "movement", I think motion blur. Pretty simple setup, mini RC car on a white board under a bare incandescent with a slow shutter. The car didn't have fine enough controls to really make this work, plus this was my first real try with my new DSLR, and the combination led to a pretty disappointing shot. I do like the aspect ratio, so maybe I should go back and figure out what I screwed up on.

I almost went after a neat backlit snow storm, but it was just too damned cold. So after bouncing around a couple of indoor ideas, I decided to approximate the iPod ads in camera, figuring it was the easiest of my ideas to pull off with my lowly equipment. Although I made two later attempts, this was actually my first attempt and although it wasn't exactly what I was going for, it's become my favorite.

Knowing the photo crowd at NeoGAF, I figured most everyone would use "found" angles to fulfill the theme. That, combined with memories of Geometry classes that the word "angles" elicited, inspired this slighly more literal interpretation of the theme. I'm not really happy with how it turned out, the setup was pretty primitive, but at least this is posted in case I don't get back to set it up properly.