A bloom a day.

I purchased an Hibiscus plant this summer and we have been blessed with a bloom each day.  Even as the weather changes outside this plant flowers and brings a sweet scent to our living room.  Now one of the reasons I do not like to cut or pick flowers to photograph is that once you do they don't live much longer. Even if you stick them in a vase they have a limit lifespan.  However each Hibiscus bloom lasts just one day and then falls away, so I was not to worried when I decided to cut this one of and use it for today's subject.

After clipping it from the plant I took it to the studio where I placed it on a black piece of plexiglass and place a black card behind it.  I then used my Alien Bee with a small Chimera softbox to the side and slightly behind as my light source.  I took a number of photo's (both with the iPhone and the Canon 7D) and chose the top image for my Instagram 366 photo for today.  These two are from the iPhone and post processed with both Snapseed and iPhoto.  I like the graphic design elements of both.

Now I have chosen not to share my favorite taken with my 7D as I had what I think was a terrific capture and I am planning to enter it in the HIPA awards competition ( http://www.hipa.ae ). This is the second year of the competition and the synonym is short for the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photo Awards.  My good friend, Martin Graham Dunn, is active with this award and it is open to photographer's from all over the world.  This years main theme is "The Beauty of Light" as well as Black and White, Emirates and General.  The prizes are outstanding and prize money is $389,000.  After seeing the results I had from tonight's shoot I am happy with the results from the 7D and am planning to use one of the shots as a submission for this competition.  I hope you will check it out as well.

Down to the wire.

Today was one very busy Saturday.  I had a lecture at the Shaganappi Library on Black & White  photography and then taught my wedding photography class at SAIT in the afternoon.  Both sessions went great and I think all the participants learned and enjoyed.  I then rushed home to get Cool ready for a performance by his Cantare Choir group for an anniversary banquet.  Once I got home for the evening I needed to take a rest and then around 11:30 I realized I still had to create an image for today.

Now I have a collection of cameras and other photographic Knickknacks.  These are two from my collection.  The yellow guy is the Club Penguin photographer and was my Christmas gift from Luke last year.  The other is the Quantas koala which I received on a flight to Australia back in 1989.  I positioned them with one of my vintage cameras behind and shot this photo.  A little post processing in Snapseed and I got what I think is a nice photo.

Making choices.

The photo a day challenge offers many different hurdles and challenges.  Most day's Iam able to take the photo early enough that I know I have it and then can continue on to my daily routine.  Other days can be a struggle with me creating an image in the last hour of the night.  Then there are day's like today when I was able to shoot a number of images that I liked and any one of them could have been the Photo of the Day.

So how do I choose the image to apply that moniker to.  Sometimes one image stands out and is the strongest photo thus making the choice obvious.  Yet for me one of the factors I will use in choosing the photo of the day is what have I posted recently.  I pride myself on being a versatile photographer and one who can create an interesting photo of the simplest of subjects. Thus, variety is important to me.  Even if I have similar subjects, such as flowers, I try and vary the treatment in each photo.

So today I had that dilemma as I shot 5 photo's that I liked.  The first three were shot early in the morning as I noticed that the sunrise was going to be a spectacular one.  These three frames where shot from my front yard but by varying the point of view I was able to get three distinct photo's.  I choose the first one for my Instagram 366 photo for today as I had not posted a sunrise photo yet this year. I also like the colors and the trees silhouetted against the sky. The following two I also liked though for their own merits.

Later in the morning I ended up at Stampede park.  After coming out from my meeting I saw that there were still some plants by the building.  These tall grass stalks caught my eye first and as I moved around them looking for an angle I saw this high rise reflected in the glass and I liked the way I could frame it up with the grass.

I then turned my attention towards some of the flowers and saw this pair.  After taking the photo and post processing it in Snapseed I decided to title it "The Naked and The Dressed" in homage to Helmut Newton's series by the same name.  I liked the way the one flower had all it's petals still where the other was missing them.  Now this could have been my choice for the photo of the day, and some may feel it deserves it.  However I stand by my decision to use the sunrise shot to keep the variety in the project.  This one I can now use as part of another project should I choose.

Looking for the beauty in a winter's blast.

When I saw the forecast yesterday I knew what I wanted to do with the photo of the day for today.  With fall colours still around I went out and looked for the most vibrant leaves I could find.  Our hedge just outside the back door had a few wonderfully bright leaves with a nice coat of white added.  I framed it up and shot then cropped it in snapseed and then used the old lens filter to darken the background and make the foreground pop. I think images like this can show the beauty even after a blast from mother nature.

For the last few months flowers have been a big subject mater, yet now I anticipate more winter scenes.  It will be interesting to see what I will discover.  I think the biggest challenge will be braving the weather when it turns even more bitterly cold.  This is where I admire those nature photographers who go the extra distance in extreme weather to create some of those memorable shots.  I will try to remember them when I am trying to shoot the season ahead.

Staying motivated. It has to come from inside yourself.

One of the toughest things is to continue to do something everyday on a regular basis.  It does not mater what it is but if you don't have a motivation you will more than likely give up and stop.  I have had this problem, as I am sure most of you reading this do to, with a variety of things.  The toughest of all must be staying healthy and exercising regularly. I know for me it is easy to listen to the aches and pains and wimp out on getting out everyday and getting in shape.

This is also true for bloging everyday.  For a while I had been very good but then I just found it to be a chore and other life activities made it easy for me to have an excuse not to write every day.  It also seamed futile as I really don't know how many people actually read my words regularly and missed it when it was not there.  So I would start to make excuses, no ones reading, I don't really have anything to say, there are so many better writers and blogs out there. This is what stood in my way and I let it stop me for a few months.

Yet some how I have managed to take a photo a day for 650 consecutive days now (started December 31, 2010).  I have had no outside motivation here, just a desire to keep shooting and not let the streak end.  I started with my DSLR and this year have mainly used my iPhone.  While I have had some compliments to images through out the project, these are not the reasons I have kept shooting.  It has just become part of my daily routine and as such I anticipate it can go on for a while.  (The photo below is today's Instagram 366 image of a water droplet on one of our tropical plants).

So what do I do for the first two.  If I learned anything from my photo streak it's that my motivation has to come from with in and not from recognition or adulation. I have to do it for myself and I think the bloging will probably be the easier of the two.  It maybe late every night when I write, but I plan to set a side time before I go to bed and share my photo(s) from the day and my thoughts.  I make this as a promise to myself.

Now the first one is going to be more of a challenge.  Time is not really the issue, focus and motivation is.  Here I might need to give me a target, something to strive for.  the main one I can think of right now is to sign up and train for the Calgary Marathon on May 26 of 2013. Now I did complete the race in 2009 in a time of 6 hrs and 58 seconds and can set a goal to better that time.  I'm sharing this here not for people to keep me on task as I know that no one will really care if I finish or not. I do so as a way to motivate myself.  I will share my progress on a weekly basis more for my own record, but hopefully a few of you will cheer me on.

Expanding one's vision.

One of the biggest controversies with digital and especially with the proliferation of cameras in phones is that it has watered down the art of photography.  There are those who feel that to many people are posting things that are not worthy and passing it off as art.  While it is true that we are now inundated with images, I personally feel that it has freed one to be even more creative.

As someone who has been taking photographs for a long time I find that I am enjoying it more now then ever before.  Having a simple camera that I can have with me all the time allows me to be ready when something happens.  I also find that since I have started the photo a day project, I pay closer attention to details around me.  This can be seen through out my project and today's photo is an example of that.  Most of the time we will walk by and not even notice a mail slot in a door.  Yet by slowing down and looking I was able to see the colors and textures and make an interesting photo.

Now the second side of this picture involves what happens after the photo is taken.  Again there are those who find all the post processing techniques now available and there simplicity to be a crutch that too many people use.  Some people feel so strongly they can get down right nasty on the net and message boards when talking about post processed images.

My take on this is that once again we have a new tool that allows us to create images as we see them in our mind.  We can go with straight photography to completely digitalized art work.  This argument just shows you the subjectivity of the medium and I tell my students that while we may not like every photo we see, if the creator manged to capture what they envisioned then it is successful.

My thoughts on the Hipstamatic app.

I have now been shooting with my iPhone for more than a year and have downloaded a number of apps to experiment with and then have chosen those that help me obtain my vision of what I am trying to achieve.  I was taught at the Alberta College of Art and Design to test and learn what different film, developers, processes, equipment, etc. can do and how to utilize them to achieve the results I was after.  The thought was that once you can gain an understanding of these you could produce consistent results over again as you needed.  The more styles you learned, the more tools you had at your disposal to be artistic or to create what a client was after.

As I have moved forward in to the digital realm, I found with my DSLR that I still liked to shoot in the manual mode for more control, but otherwise I kept things pretty simple.  It was not till I started taking pictures with my iPod touch and then the iPhone that I started to experiment with the world of apps.  Some, like Snapseed, have become my staple working in conjunction with the native camera in the devices.  A number of other apps I have tried, but found that they did not suit my style or vision.  Yet a few though I continue to explore and experiment with as I am still not sure about them yet.

Hipstamatic is one of those apps and the one I will discuss today.  Probably the main reason I do not shoot with it as much as I do the native camera is that it gives you a look based on what you choose and then gives you results that are pretty well final (a few others like RetroCamera, WoodCamera and Leme Cam are the same way).  While you can bring the final results into Snapseed or iPhoto for some teaking or cleaning the results are based on what you choose at the time you push the shutter.

I'm not knocking this as it does make one have to fully explore the app and understand the look each film stock and lens choice can give you.  There are 15 actual Paks in the Hipstamatic family as well as the Multiple Exposure Kit, the PopTone Case Pak and two stand alone apps, IncrediBooth and SwankoLab.  The last three really have no bearing on the styles available.  However with so many combinations, 23 lenses, 22 films, 10 flashes (which I have not experimented with at all yet) it can be hard to remember all the different looks that are achievable. Now you can view the Hipstamatic field guide to get information on each feature individually, however there are not always enough examples to get a feel for each of them.  The best way is to test it yourself in a variety of combinations.

Now I have tried this myself and have found that I do tend to lean more to the Black & White films more often then not.  I find that with colour I still prefer to shoot native and then change later.  What I have not kept as close an eye on is the lenses, but the last few outings have made me more aware of some of the unique features.  This is one of the things I am sharing today.  The following two photo's were made with the Salvador 64 lens which has an inherent double exposure built in. It can be used with any film stock and thus give some versatility here for creativity. The first image was taken with BlacKeys B&W (my favorite) and the double exposure is a slightly enlarged version layered behind. (I added the tone later in Snapseed by adjusting the white balance - my Instagram 366 for today).

The second photo was taken with the RTV Shout! film stock which gives a variety of sayings when you take the photo's (I have no idea how many sayings are available at this time - more testing needed).  The Salvador 64 lens did the second exposure at an angle on the axis this time.  This is probably the best example of one of my concerns with the Hipstamatic app.  There still seems to be a fair amount of randomness and chance to the images you take.  While some of the paks seem more stable, I do see a problem if you want to have a set look that you have pre-visualized first.  While this is not necessarily bad, it does take some of the creative control from the photographer.

I have re-posted this image from a couple of day's ago as an example of the Double Exposure Kit..  this feature is added to all the cameras once you purchase the kit. I do like this more then the randomness of the Salvador 64 lens.  I can now plan my shot and execute it with a little more control.  You do have to remember the positioning of each of the two images (you can only do 2 at this time) but that is no different then when trying the same with roll film.

So in conclusion I would say that if you are a total control freak you will find apps like Hipstamatic and the other's mentioned frustrating.  If you like "Happy Surprise's" these apps are perfect for mixing and matching and seeing what develops. Yet if your in the middle like me, all you can do is test, test and test some more till you gain sufficient knowledge that you can keep some semblance of control while embracing the little bits of randomness that do occur.