The Easy Way

Of all my pictures I took on my last trip, I think this one is my favorite. Bridges are always cool, they are usually a convenient way to get from where you are to where you want to go.. Oh how i wish there was an easy way to get where I wanted to go, or maybe there is, and I just haven't found it yet; that's why I hid the bridge behind all of these branches... maybe sometimes we see the easy way, but we focus to much on the branches that seem to be in the way...

Extruding

Yes, "extruding" is a word... I used it as this pictures title because this picture speaks of pain to me, I hate being cold, and it looks like the post froze from the inside out, finally giving up the ghost as a hundred thousand ice crystals shot out of it....

I made this picture X-Large because it is all about the texture, if you look close you can even see the individual ice crystals... did you know why water expands when it freezes? almost no other substances do that; but its because water is a polar molecule, the polar ends get together as water freezes. and because H2O is a linear molecule, more space results in between molecules... and they failed me in Chemistry.... ha... 

Amid the Fog

I love the fog!  Granted, it can be exciting to drive in, and easy to get lost in... and most the time its not all the great for taking pictures in, but still... its so cool! I like the way it makes everything fade out, because this background can be pretty boring, but now that its gone, who cares? I think what I like most about this picture is the line that the shore makes and the way my eye travels along it.

I like trees in the fog as well... trees are kind of mysterious to me. I always think about how many things they've seen, the people, the weather, the thousand of sunrises...  In the fog I find them even more mysterious.

A Pilot's Lighthouse

So, did everyone know there was a secret road that goes from Utah Lake State Park, around the airport?!  its an awesome road... Monday morning I drove it for the second time, looking for a spot I had found before... the only problem was that Monday was particularly foggy, in fact, I couldn't really see the headlights in front of me on the freeway... cool, but scary. I ended up getting really turned around, thinking I was only halfway along the creepy road (airports are really scary at night, blinking lights... usually red... scary...) when I finally saw this flight tower/ lighthouse, at the end of the road... It made me relate to Nephi's vision, the mists of darkness, they can be pretty scary, fog all around, but then there is light-giving lighthouses like friends, family, and others who can show us were we are... 

Ghost Ship

Pick and Choose

This is Alex's attempt at fine art portraiture... :)  I wish I had had a ladder so I could have my cousin grab one of the top flowers and pop her foot or something... but it's kind of a fun picture anyways. I call it "Pick and Choose" because I see the flowers as opportunities, there's a lot to choose from, and its perfectly acceptable to pick one up and smell it... and if you put it back great, but at least you know what it smelled like. :)  

Ready Upside Down

Now that Christmas is pretty much over... I guess that means I have to start looking at the coming  year, sigh... I'm looking forward to next semester, as well as the entire year, but it seems there is so many questions there can't possibly be enough answers.

I've always thought it funny that to put away or make ready a nice glass, you place it upside down. I guess it makes sense, we don't want bugs flying in. But I feel as backwards as the glasses sometimes; a lot like I'm ready, but I'll have to flip over completely before I can be used... 

Merry Christmas!

 

                                 Merry Christmas Everyone! :)  I love Christmas!  It really is a wonderful time of year, I love how everyone has that special glow of expectation that is practically tangible in the air.  I was thrilled that most of my presents revolved around my photography... (I'm sure you'll all notice an instant improvement... :) ) haha, sorry, you're still stuck with my same pictures really, but a special thanks to my mom and dad for making this year a magical last Christmas.  
I kept my camera handy all day, keeping an eye out for children distracted by new toys... not exactly a rare subject really, but its made for some great candid shots. (Very unlike Christmas Eve when we tried to pose everyone for a gigantic family photo.)
 I love pictures of people, they are great to look at, and the human element always adds something to a photo, but people are so hard to photograph!  they never seem to do quite what you want them to do... which is funny, because all we photographers want them to do is be themselves...  oh well, family is still wonderful, and so is Christmas! I hope everyone had at least a few Christmas wishes come true. ;)

Freedom

I flew a plane once... It was my 12th birthday and Bro. Giles put our lives at stake by letting me take the wheel of the little cesna we were in, thousands of feet above the valley... that was an experience that changed the way I looked at Freedom. To me, Freedom had always been akin to the ability to choose left or right, it was my choice and since it was a free country no one could make me choose either one. After flying a plane, Freedom became the ability to soar. Left or Right?  How boring!  Up, down, sideways, diagonal... wherever!  Now that was Freedom. The ability to soar wherever I had the guts to go. Lately, freedom has become a different kind of daring. Now that I'm "out of the nest" (kind of...)  I have choices I need to make, and which choices I choose honestly depend on how much I dare to Soar.

Beauty for Rent II

I used a picture of this same shack in a project for my Creativity final. It was definitely a different picture, but I'm still fascinated by the Rental sign for some reason. I named these pictures Beauty for Rent because they remind me what I love to photograph. I love the challenge of trying to capture the beauty in this world God has created for us. In a sense he has rented us this magnificent place and it is my life dream to get to see as much of it as I can. Until then though, I'll just keep trying to catch that beauty he's rented to us in Utah Valley...

Juxtapositions

Juxtaposition: an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, esp. for comparison or contrast

Am I the only one or did this word start showing up all over the place in college?  Not that I blame them, its an awesome word :)  Juxtaposition... I've always seen it used to express the contrast of two things that really shouldn't go together... so, since I brought some skates and a trumpet to photograph, I thought I would juxtapose them for an ironic photograph.  I really don't have any idea how they relate; having experience with both, I'd never try them together... :)

FYI, check out the frost on the bell of my coronet, its been outside for about 5 minutes... thats how cold it is... :)

Ghosts

Admittedly, you have to look kind of close to see this one... it didn't really work, but when I arrive way too early at the lake, I'm pretty much the only thing there is to take pictures of... 
I came across a portfolio in a magazine once, the photographer had titled it "Ghosts of Auschwitz."  The pictures were all taken around the concentration camp, but all of them showed people moving in and out of buildings, along the walls... everywhere... but they were ghosts like myself in this picture. It was a cool bunch of pictures, so I thought I'd give it a try, I need some work... :)  But I like this picture, I seem unsure of myself, like I'm not sure how to get to where I want to go... which is pretty much exactly right...:)

This was a fun one to shoot, it turned out cool, because I had to run over after i took the picture. I wasn't still long enough to show up running, but i showed up once i stopped, along with the background the camera had already seen... I like it because it doesn't quite make sense, why would some crazy go out to a frozen pier to play his trumpet?  well, either he's a crazy photographer, or he's a loony music major... ;) 
(This one's not a music major, in fact, I didn't make any noise on my trumpet for fear of the ice breaking and swallowing my camera... :) )

Perspective

The new lens I just got has become my new favorite toy; in fact, my family is probably tired of me walking around with it taking pictures of everything I see... Regardless though, I like looking at things through different lenses, I get a totally different perspective depending on which lens I look through.  
For my Honors 150 final we had to carve a metaphor of the class in soap and surprise, surprise, I carved a camera. 

I think its a pretty fitting metaphor though, a camera changes my perspective just like the class did. I found out I like writing, i was exposed to a million points of view through the billion readings we had to do...  

Perspective is a interesting thing; it goes very well with the proverb about living in another persons shoes. Its amazing that everyone can have a totally different perspective than everyone else. Something fun I like to do with pictures is put myself in the photographers shoes; I wonder where he or she stood when they took the picture and what they were thinking. I like to pretend I'm the subject as well, for instance; I wonder what this guitar was thinking... 

Tis' The Season! For a New Lens!

Hooray for Christmas time everyone!  I've decided to put together an album of my Christmas memories.  Just things like ornaments and decorations, or traditions and people, things that I remember about Christmas time; so those will be popping up once in a while. This time they are in conjunction with my present to myself... A new lens!  My beautiful new 50mm... this is me taking a picture with it. :)  I guess you could count it as a self portrait though i don't know what it would say about me; except maybe that i'm obsessed. :)  I do like my lens though, its quite old, entirely manual... doesn't even talk to the camera, and it will take some getting used to.  

This is probably Ethan's favorite Christmas decoration, he makes sure that he receives the coveted honor of changing the countdown. Of course, if he doesn't then something tragic happens and the snowman falls, and Ethan is coincidently the one who gets to pick him up and put in the numbers... :)  hard to believe there is really only 14 days left!  really only like 13 since today is almost over... luckily I have only one person left to get a gift for... haven't figured out what to get her though... any ideas?  :)

Maybe it's our fault that its been snowing... All Day.........

  This isn't really a Christmas memory, it represents the joy of having a humongous aperture!   This happens to Ethan's favorite dinosaur puzzle... maybe he got it for Christmas one time, thats a good excuse for the picture... 

This is a star shaped box we have, it really does have the words on the box, even though it looks like I added them...

I've always remembered Christmas as a simple, happy time with family, friends, cocoa and cider... always simple, perhaps that is what makes it so great.

This is probably Eric and I's furthest reaching memory, I can't recall a time when we didn't have an elf watching our every move and reporting to the big man up north...   the elves (there's a red one too)  ruled our hallways with the iron fist of terror. All mom had to do was tell us "remember, the elves are watching..."  and we would sit taller, smile, and do whatever mom asked us to...  of course, the elves can see through walls, and hear whispers, and communicate instantly to the North Pole... so all in all they are pretty creepy blokes... 

Life as a Train...

This is my latest self-portrait, I've titled it "Life as a Train".  My first attempt at this trips self portrait was walking across the tracks, but I'm glad that one didn't work out.  Me walking across the tracks would not have told half the story that this one does.  At least for me, life is flying by really fast; and getting faster!  Motion is a fun thing to try and capture in a picture, especially in the dark!  I would have thought it would be easier in the dark, but you learn something new everyday right?

The Subject of Sunrises

Dawn and dusk are every photographers favorite time of day. They were my favorite long before I got into photography though; there is a certain feeling at those times that make me long for adventure, new beginnings, and accomplishment. These pictures are from the same trip to Utah Lake and do a great job of showing how I photograph sunrises.

To our eyes looking at the entire sunrise is a beautiful thing, but thats really only because our mind can put together all the little pictures and process them simultaneously. In a single photo its hard to express the entirety of a scene, but besides,  I find it much more interesting to photograph the detail that drew in your eye in the first place.   Maybe it was just because it was so early, but this picture was full of fantasy for me. The log made me think of a lurking alligator, and the hole in the ice made me check my surroundings for any hungry dinosaurs... perhaps a little over the top, but imagining helps me create more creative and interesting pictures. 

These two pictures are a great example of knowing what you want to photograph. At first I was sure it was those three sticks in the ice that captured my attention. The sticks were indeed interesting and made a great photograph. The unique shades of blue are my favorite and really bring back memories of how cold it was that day. 

First impressions are good, but while waiting for my camera to take the picture (recall that its still pretty dark, so its open for 10-15 seconds)  I noticed that what I really liked about the scene was the first light of the day glowing in the reeds. Moving my camera up an inch or two changed the exposure and caught that light. It also added composition to my shot by showing more sky: 2/3 water, 1/3 sky or vice versa helps avoid a dull picture with too much of the same subject.   This pair reminded me that there is always more than one right answer.

The immortal black and white photographer Ansel Adams once commented saying "I don't photograph landscapes, I photograph weather."  Adams created some of the most breathtaking scenes in existence, and he seems to imply that he did it with the help of the weather. In this last picture I am drawn by the lines that the clouds paint.  The straight wisps seem to lead, and with the reflection even point to, the sun. Mostly I got lucky, but using lines to lead the subject is a great way to focus your photograph. Besides, getting lucky is what photography is all about; granted, the harder you work the luckier you get... but still... :)

Seeing Myself

Have you ever wondered what other people think of you? The question often crosses my mind, but in the end, it doesn't particularly matter.  The question I more frequently ponder is how do I see myself? To be honest, I don't think its a question I can answer yet. I was thinking about that very question while I was at the lake and decided to take a few self-portraits in an effort to answer that question.

I like myself in black and white, perhaps boring to most people, I enjoy the simplicity black and white affords. Next, I have so many different paths to choose from, just like there is lots of branches from the little pier I'm walking on. I used to be pretty sure of which one I wanted to take, now I'm more unsure than I've ever been. My leg is blurred, it shows that I'm moving forward, it also seems to say to me that time isn't stopping while I try to make a decision. If I don't choose now, my  chance might be gone.  If I were to stop and make a decision right now, my choices would be to follow the path I'm on, and continue in science making my way towards medical school, or, make a 180 and pursue my passion, what I love to do... photography. It was windy and slippery when I took the picture, and fear kept me from venturing off to the sides, perhaps fear is the only thing delaying my current decision. 

This picture is fun for me to look at, because its almost like me asking myself what I'm thinking about... If my memory serves me there was an airplane I was looking at, its a pity it didn't show up in the frame.  I don't usually like pictures of myself, but I like this one, I'm looking with longing at something, perhaps what could have been, but more likely I've finally chosen my path and I'm looking resolutely towards what might come of it. I was tempted to take off my backpack while I took these pictures, but I didn't. While I'm analyzing my self-portraits I might as well say what I think the backpack means, its my camera bag, I'm thinking it means the choice I made involves my camera. That's the choice I want myself to make, but that's the choice I'm most afraid of.

It's actually kind of fun to objectively analyze a candid shot of yourself. I'd say give it a try, you never know what questions you'll end up asking yourself. 

The Night Light

Saturday no longer means sleeping in and huddling around the heater vent while I eat breakfast. My Saturday started at five when I woke up craving the success I found on my last trip and headed back to Utah Lake, this time to the far side of the bay. It turns out that 5:45 is still really, really dark. (in fact, there was still bats out..)  For those of you who don't know, a photo is made by the light absorbed on the film or sensor of your camera, needless to say, light is a requirement for taking pictures, but when its dark enough to see the stars photographers have to use their noggins in order to make use of the minuscule amount of available light. Its not too tricky, up the ISO (film speed), use a large aperture (too let more light in), and most of all, a really long shutter speed. A tripod is a must have...  most of all it takes patience, patience to try out lots of different things, and patience while standing alone in the 9 degree air... yes, it was 9 degrees outside that morning, without the wind chill.

My shots made the cold worth it, these are just a few, a set taken from my "pre-any light at all" pictures. They are all worth clicking on to see larger. I'm drawn to the sky in this photo, the lines from the clouds and the gradients... they really bring back memories of some of the prettiest sunrises I've seen. The second thing I'm taken with is the beautiful reflections in the river. Its almost an oxymoron, a perfectly still river. But even though the water seems still, in those pre-dawn minutes, it teems with a life of its own. 

The first picture of the day was taken mostly with the aid of street lights, in fact, if you look closely above the masts there are a few stars.  These boats caught my eye the first time I visited and I wondered what they were doing out of the water, I realized when I saw the docks completely deserted that if the boats were in the water they'd be stuck there all season... but still... this story, in combination with another, tells the story I see in these boats.  While setting up the camera I accidentally breathed a little too hard and my lens fogged up, not a big deal if you don't mind waiting forever for the lens to un-fog itself in the frigid cold. But still, I was without my camera... These boats tell a story of freedom by reminding me what its like to be without it. I love my camera, I love the challenge of expressing myself with it, when all of sudden that freedom of expression is denied I'm lost... I'd imagine a sailor would feel the same way remembering the freedom of waves while walking on a frozen lake, or looking at his landlocked boat. Perhaps we would all feel that way if we were no longer able to enjoy a freedom we once had. 

This last picture is all about perspective, look at how the first block is really big, but as they get smaller you can hardly see the last one, even though its about 15 seconds away from the first one. Also, as odd as it may seem, this picture reminds me of our journey through life, notice the way our path meanders slightly as we try to head straight, the way we are heading towards the light. Yet, we can't possibly reach the light without help. Notice the tree at the end, waiting for us. Imagine the curbs as warnings that keep us from getting off the path.  Christ and His gospel are present in every moment of our lives. By picking up my camera I seem to answer the challenge of  expressing my love of God's creation, I am reminded that "All great art is the expression of mans delight in God's work, not his own."  

Looking Around The Corner

   Little boys are the most curious little critters I can think of, I should know, I was one, perhaps I still am one... :)  This particular specimen is my little brother Ethan, age 6, while we were visiting the state capital building. He kept looking around the corner of giant beehives thinking there were little birds going into the sculpture. He figured out they weren't real pretty quick, but he taught me something.  Of all my family, Ethan was the only one that  thought to look around the corner and see if there was anything interesting. Sometimes I wonder if little kids are smarter than us grown ups, perhaps because they are not afraid of disappointment if nothing happens to be there.  Next time you get the chance, peek around a corner thats out of your way just to see its really nothing.

   I love this picture of Ethan because it gets so close to capturing the moment, I had to be quick on the draw to capture his face before he saw me. I love the lines, and the rail he's holding, as well as his hat, but most of all I love that we can see he's looking at something, its not just a funny expression, there's a reason for it.

Details Make a Story

What Story Am I Telling? 

  When I was younger, my mother would read stories to my brother and I before we went to bed.  She would sit between our beds, and we would lay and listen. Usually she read just a chapter or so, but for me, the stories continued until sleep took me. I would create my own endings, placing myself in as the main character and rewrite the story to fit my ideas. Now that I'm older, I see the world in stories. Everyone has a story, mine is boring to me, probably only because I've been living it for 18 years. Other peoples stories fascinate me though. I think its because they are the stories I haven't put myself in yet.

    When I look at my photos I ask myself if they tell a story, if not, I usually throw them away. These two pictures I took one afternoon on campus are some of my favorites. Because it fit the mood best, I took away most of the saturation/color, but I liked the way the red and yellow still popped out. as well as the mysterious background, for all the viewer knows this taken in Oregon and the girl is calling her vampire boyfriend for a ride... The other thing I really like about this pair is how different they are, even though they have the same subject, background, location, tone, mood... they tell completely different stories 

   

The only real difference is what my subject is doing, talking on cell phone, or writing a note... Yet the change in plot is profound.  At least, to me its profound.  I find myself asking completely different questions of her, instead of wondering who she is talking to, whether its family picking her up, or her boyfriend she misses and where she is going next. Instead I ask the second girl what she is writing, is it a reminder of some important task, or is it a brilliant idea for a new poem or drawing? Is it even for her? perhaps its for someone else entirely...

   Unanswered questions are what fueled the stories I made up after my mother turned off the lights. I see that same source of energy in some of my favorite work. The more questions I can ask my subjects the more my imagination has to work, and the better the story I can come up with.