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Carlyle – Photo 52 Project [Week 21]

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This weekend we went to Carlyle, my hometown, for a getaway for memorial day weekend. We rented a pontoon boat and went out on the lake. I had never been on the lake, even after living there until I was in 6th grade. It was a little cloudy and chilly but other than that it was great fun.

I have taken a picture of this bridge before with my Dad’s film camera and have it hanging up in my living room. The official name for this bridge is the General Dean Suspension Bridge but we always called it the swinging bridge because you can feel it move as you walk around.

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Copper – Photo 52 Project [Week 20]

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Springfield really does have some great places to visit. One of these places being the Dana-Thomas House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for a spoiled socialite. The estate is gorgeous, modern, dark, and outdated all at the same time. The beauty of the house is timeless but it still comes with all of the pains of its time.

The most apparently beautiful feature of the house is the custom stained glass. Unfortunately, no photography is allowed inside. We could take all the pictures we wanted outside and that is what I did. The custom copper gutters have a century worth of green patina and they are fantastic.

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Fire – Photo 52 Project [Week 19]

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This was another desperation shot. I realized at 10:30pm tonight that I had not gotten my picture this week and so began my looking around the house for something interesting to photograph. I have been keeping this Zippo lighter in my pocket for a while now and decided to give it a go. I slapped on the 50mm prime, set the shutter to 1/250, the aperture to 1.8, and fired an external flash in low light. The hardest part was getting the timing right. I was holding the camera and had to delay the lighting until just after I fired the shot. I missed the spark of the flint quite a lot.

Then, it was off to Lightroom to develop it into something the popped out. I edit all of the pictures for this project. I shoot in RAW mode so I can get a little better white balance adjustments.fire-raw-vs-edited

See the above example of how the camera’s white balance was not very true or appealing? I also manually changed a number of other settings to give it the feel I wanted and there we have it. This is an art project, not photojournalism. I feel retouching things is just a natural extension of the process.