Gooseberried

Michelle's photo assignment #1

So obviously this assignment is pretty basic as it is our very first one.  I haven't decided what I'll do for it yet.  You know me...gotta get it done at the very, very last minute.  I have to do all the photos in manual focus which I'm still pretty awkward at.  And, I'm confused about how to manually create shallow depth of field.  Ha, I laugh at myself. 

The assignment:

For this assignment you will utilize various methods of composition and technique. The subject matter that you photograph is up to you but the images must show the following…

Composition:

Shallow depth of field

Large depth of field-

Fast Shutter Speed-Slow Shutter Speed-

Two Horizon Line images of the same scene (One image with a centered horizon line and one image without)

5 images where the Rule of Thirds comes into play

Frame Within a Frame-

Fill The Frame-

Color of Light: Photograph under the following light conditions. Remember to change your ISO and White Balance settings to record the light accurately. Ideally, you should photograph the same space or subject under these three conditions to see the difference in tones and color temperature.

1. High Noon or as close to midday as possible in direct sunlight

2. Midday in the shade. No flash

3. Golden Hour (Sunrise/Sunset) when light is best

Without using your flash, photograph a space that is illuminated by natural and artificial light together. Preferably in the evening or in the morning to see what color shifts you get with different light temperatures.

Shoot indoors at night under tungsten or fluorescent lights.

Project 365 - Week 3

Day 13 - January 13: I did a photo shoot of one of my favorite photo subjects, my friend Sarah.  The snowflake idea was hers.

Day 14 - January 14: I'm glad I caught this amazing Arizona sunset just as I was coming out of Safeway.

Day 15 - January 15: My friend Sarah's very full belly after we made us and ate a gluten free, dairy free pizza.

Day 16 - January 16: Scruffy faced neighbor.

Day 17 - January 17: San Xavier del Bac Mission in Tucson, Arizona

Day 18 - January 18: Riding in his '66 Mustang.

Day 18 - January 18: The bulletin board above my desk.  I took all the old things off of it from last year and started myself a fresh board with the fresh new year.  There's a photo of me and my mom, a clip art heart I found to be cute, an old track metal I won when I was in high school to inspire me to get running again once my knee is healed, a card from a friend with a drawing of a doggie's paw resting in a human's hand, a photo of my parents, gnarly photos of the inside of my knee and a post card from my friend Hannah of a cup made of pieces of fruit. 

Project 365 - Week 2

Day 6 - January 6: My neighbor took me shooting in the middle of the woods.  I couldn't do it for too long because the recoil (is that the right word, Neighbor?) hurt my knee after a while.  I just can't hold myself up steadily yet, at least not for shooting guns.  Either way, I had fun.

Day 7 - January 7: One of Flagstaff's beautiful sunsets. 

Day 8 - January 8: I believe these doggies are hoping for some of the lasagna to jump off my plate and land into their mouths.

Day 9 - January 9:  This photo is for my friend, Jim.  I just got a new, hot pink iPod, so I took a photo of myself with it, a colorful scarf and although I don't have a Starbucks latte in hand, I do believe I look pretty stereotypical, Apple hipster.  Take that, Jim!  (Jim hates Apple.)

Day 10 - January 10: Just messing around with my twin.  Her name is Amber.

Day 11 - January 11: Found a group of deer the other day and this was their buck.  He decided to leave the group in search of...newer deer things?...and I got some photos of him on the way out.

Day 12 - January 12: Bowie and the Neighbor's dog, Gizmo wrestling.  I usually correct red eye in my photos, but I like how in this one it makes her look evil.

Happy Friday, internet! 

Project 365 - Week 1

Day 1 - January 1: This shirt is hanging up at my favorite coffee shop here in town and has been for a while.  It says Don't be Afraid to Tell!  I'm not sure what it's referring to, but I thought that it and this kid underneath it was kind of a cool scene. 

Day 2 - January 2: The Neighbor cuddling with his cute doggie, Gizmo.

Day 3 - January 3: A lovely tulip in my apartment.  I had a lot of trouble getting this shot.  I'm not too good at using the manual focus yet and have decided to start out in auto focus and go from there.  So, I had my camera on the macro setting and when I adjusted the lens to focus on the tulip and blur the background (anyone know what that's called?) and then pressed the button to take the photo, it wouldn't let me.  I am still totally confused by this and hope to figure out what was going on later in my photography career. 

Day 4 - January 4: Room #38

Day 5 - January 5: I cloned my neighbor.  Please excuse the unmade bed behind him.  

That's all I have so far.  The rest for week one haven't been uploaded to my computer yet, but I'll cover those next week.  I'm going to try and share my Project 365 photos with you for the week every Friday.  I'm not sure how well I'll stick to that schedule but wish me luck, not only with that, but with this project as well.  

See you next week! 

A little random, what-not

Next week, I'll be starting my new classes and I must say, I'm pretty excited.  I've already received my B.A. in 2006, but since I'm unemployed and have nothing better to do, I'm going back to take some classes I'm actually interested in.  So as of Monday, I'll be taking a beginning drawing and photography class.  I'm really grateful for both of these because a.) my paintings suck and could use a little technical improvement and b.) I need a class to motivate me to keep up with my Project 365.  I'll do a little post of what I have so far in the next few days.

Anyway,  I'll keep you all updated on what sort of projects I hope to be doing in these classes.  I'm excited to actually learn how to draw and to learn more about a subject I already love, photography. 

I was still feeling pretty bummed these last few days about the state health insurance thing, but right now I've got my doggie and my next door neighbor's doggie wrestling in my living room area (not an actual living room as I live in a studio apartment) and a Raisinet just fell into my cleavage.  Good day. 

My little Bowie and her oh, so kissable snout

For the first few weeks after I got my camera, I was still too afraid to let it leave the apartment due to it's fragility, the fact that the lens (just discovered that I don't know how to spell "lense") could get dirty, it's ability to make my chin drop by just looking at it...basically, it's utter holy-ness, my main photo subject was, much to her dismay, my little dog, Bowie.  She was the photo subject of the first picture I took with my precious camera.  And now Bowie can add the fact that she took my camera's virginity to her resume.  I think that would look good under the section labeled 'Special Skills'.

At one point, I took the above photo and since then I haven't been able to tear myself away from it.  I personally think that this photo of her is absolutely breathtaking, not just because the photo quality is good...ahem...but mostly because Bowie is just so dang beautiful.  That squeezable snout, her genuine and wise eyes, her perky ears and the way her white fur blends in with the wall behind her...ahhh...mmmm...oooo. It makes me feel so peaceful and relaxed.  Call me crazy, but this photo of my sweet little snout faced Bowie makes me large-hearted and content. 

If you're gone for a long time, you forget about blogging

Well obviously I've been a bit absent from this neck of the woods known as my blog.  I've been at my parents' house for the past two weeks in Heber-Overgaard, Arizona which is also coincidentally the small, Mormon town where I'm from.  You can imagine the excitement that stems from being there for the holidays for as long as I was, which I've now realized was a huge mistake.  Next time, I'm staying for a week max and I can't say my parents will be sad to read that last statement.  I think my mother and I seriously drove each other insane.  She and I have so much in common that we severely and regularly annoy the shit out of each other.  I felt like I was in high school all over again except now I'm older and wiser and have realized that all those fights back then weren't just because I was a bitchy teenager, but because my mom can be a bitchy teenager too. 

I also discovered that my parents and I have vastly different views on things such as: politics, world issues, charity, religion, etc. so a lot of arguments about these topics were had.  Not to mention, my parents started calling my dog Obama instead of Bowie because she's half black, half white and every time she came in from outside, her paws were filled with mud and my parents were terrified the mud was going to ruin their brand new carpet they just had installed.  They said that Bowie is muddying up their world just like Obama is and so because of that and Bowie's eclectic race, she should be labeled Obama instead.  This situation was actually kind of funny when I really look at it.

I guess I should note that the title of this post isn't exactly true; I did remember the blogosphere. But I honestly didn't feel like using my parents' gigantic computer which not only takes about an hour just to start up, but also doesn't have any of my photos or other cool things like that on it.  So, I decided to skip out on my participation in regular posting. 

Anyway, other than the above, the holidays were quite nice.  Santa was good to me this year and I'm looking forward to a new year.  Even though I had to reapply for food stamps and state health insurance at the end of 2009 which I thought would be no big deal because nothing about my life has changed since I was laid off.  I'm still laid off, still receiving unemployment, still going to school.  But the state decided to send me a letter this year stating that I make too much in unemployment money each week (shouldn't that be some kind of an oxymoron?) and as such, they reduced my monthly food stamp amount from $200 to $16 and as of February 1, 2010 I will no longer have state health insurance.  I'm glad the Department of Economic Security thinks I can live on $16 per month in food and thank god I got my knee fixed before this health insurance thing happened.  The food stamp thing doesn't bother me nearly as much as the health insurance.  I can make it work with having to purchase my own food.  It'll be harder to budget my unemployment money, yes, but I can make it work.  But I would like to have that health insurance in case I'm run over by a car or something which happened to three of my friends in 2009.  Ah, the drivers in Flagstaff.  I'm going to the DES office today to try and talk to them about this and I've just decided that maybe I'll go down there in baggy, smelly sweat pants and a white muscle tank and make myself look really haggard so they'll feel sorry for me.  Hmm...

So despite this unfortunate news, like I said, I'm looking forward to hopefully what will be a better year than 2009 was.  I've decided to participate in Project 365 this year which I've wanted to do in previous years but never had the courage.  Plus, there's a flickr photo group for the 365 project and all the people on there upload some wicked amazing photos taken with wicked amazing cameras and that in itself, intimidated me even more.  But now that I've got myself a wicked amazing camera, I'm going to try this project and try to remain fearless and hopeful that my photography will improve throughout the course of 2010. 

I'm also looking forward to being able to run again as soon as my knee heals fully and to get seriously back into yoga as well.  So, I didn't do one of those 'best of 2009' posts like everyone else did.  Whenever there's something that everyone else is doing in the blogosphere, it really deters me from participating just because everyone else is doing it.  I don't know why.  Maybe it's a way I can be a little more rebellious and add minor excitement to my somewhat normal life.  I'm like the emo girl of the blogosphere, you could say.  Especially with this post.  But either way, I did recap what I am looking forward to in 2010 so this post does have somewhat to do with the new year, right? 

Happy New Year.    

El Dia de los Muertos

Here's another one that my friends, Sarah (from the previous shoot), Hannah and I did in early November during the fall right around El Dia de los Muertos, also known as All Souls Day.  I don't know about Hannah, but my friend Sarah and I really appreciate and have a sort of love for Spanish culture.  Sarah knows a lot more about it than I do, but it was fun doing the shoot all the same.  Let me know what you think!  :) 

Photoshoots

A few months ago, when the weather was still sunny and warm, I did a photo shoot of my friend, Sarah.  Sarah is, by far, once of my closest, if not THE closest, friends I have here in Flagstaff.  My friends and I like to do photo shoots of each other, not because we're amazing photographers, but because it's fun!  So every once-in-a-while, one of us will come up with an idea for a shoot and eventually we set it up. 

I wanted to do one of Sarah in a meadow or in flowers or something that involved an overwhelming amount of nature.  And here's how it turned out:

Eventually, a police officer showed up and told us that we weren't allowed to be in a median on the highway.  I can't imagine, prior to talking to us, what he thought we were doing.  Also, I don't know how he showed up so quickly.  We were only there for 15 minutes and bam, he appeared.  I think the look on his face when we told him that we were just taking some photos of ourselves was well worth the fact that he ended our shoot quicker than we would have liked. 

I wouldn't mind having a criminal record due to creative photography.  Then if I ever wanted to work as a photographer for a magazine or a newspaper, let's say National Geographic, in my interview I could tell them, "I'm so devoted to photography that I got in trouble with the law for it."  Then they'd be like, "Woah.  This chick's hard core."

One of the coolest things to ever happen to me

About a month ago, I went up on one of the tallest mountains here in Flagstaff and saw this guy.  Not only did I see him hiding in the trees, I got to get out of the car, walk slowly toward him and take a few pictures.  This one was taken right as he decided I was getting too close and therefore, ran away.

I've never been able to fully describe with any sort of good writing or grace just how excited animals make me.  I know a lot of people out there don't appreciate animals to their fullest.  Lots of people out there go out on a mission to hunt the friends of the fellow in the photo above.  A lot of people could give a crap about animals and don't even really pay any attention to them.  But me?  I'm an avid animal lover.  I find hope within animals.  Nature, in itself, is a powerful and beautiful thing.  But the animal sector of nature is what really gets me going.

When I look into that Bowie's face sometimes, I can't help but feel a sense of, EEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeee!  And then I tell her how wonderful she is.  There's just something about being around animals that makes me feel happy, makes me feel like life is worth living.  Being so close to this little deary was an experience in itself.  If only I could be a National Geographic photographer or something.

I'm going to try to start being a little more chipper on this blog.  I closed comments on the last two posts but that didn't stop most of you.  I received a crazy amount of emails, twitter messages, facebook messages-- there was no stopping you guys!  You all reached out to me and for that, I feel I've got to straighten up and start appreciating this life I have a little more. 

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for animals, for my friends and family, for my blog friends and for the life I'm living.  I needed you guys to remind me of that, and I'm so happy you did.