Hiking!

After a long hiatus due to a back injury, I finally got out on a hike this weekend! It was good to get out on the trail. The weather was nice, and the company was quite enjoyable.



We hiked up the West fork of Cold Spring trail to Tangerine falls, and then it started raining! We sat out in the rain enjoying the view for a bit, and then headed back down. The rain turned to hail and we picked up the pace a bit. By the time we reached my car, we were quite wet. I should really keep a towel in my car for these sorts of occasions.

After the dance

After the dance, originally uploaded by nickburlett.

I just bought a used 17-55 ƒ/2.8 lens, and I brought it to swing dancing tonight. I captured this near the end. I love how the wide aperture lets me work in such low light!

New blog domain name

My blog is now available at blog.icollectlight.com! Eventually, I'll probably put up a page at icollectlight.com, but for now, it's just the blog.

Group Photo Journal Project

Speciality Color Services is running a Group Photo Journal Project on Facebook. If you're in the Santa Barbara area, join in! Several disposable cameras will be provided and each person gets the camera for a bit and can take two frames, then send it on to the next person! At the end, photo books of each camera will be made available to the participants. I'm joining in three cameras:

• Camera #1: People


• Camera #9: Fashion


• Camera #10: Pets & Animals

Should be fun!

SoFoBoMo

Most of my readers will have heard about NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month (ok, I'm assuming that I have two readers, and that Ian, who actually wrote a novel a couple of years ago, is one of them). You may not have heard about it's newer sibling: SoFoBoMo: Solo Photo Book Month. 2009 will be the second SoFoBoMo; last year 170 started, and 60 completed a 35-photo book. As of the time of this post, 304 people have signed up for SoFoBoMo, and I'm one of them!

The goal is to create a camera-ready photo book with at least 35 photos, all in 31 days. This means that every image must be shot, edited, and placed into the layout within the month.

While there are many reasons to take part, I'm doing it so that I can make an attempt at a focused theme for a series of images. I've done small photo series in the past — three or four photos of a subject — but I've never put effort into a longer work. So what does my future hold?

My photo book needs a theme to tie the photos together. But what? I have some ideas:



Santa Barbara Hikes — a series of images from the various hiking trails around Santa Barbara. I enjoy hiking, and I enjoy dragging my camera along with me, so this is a natural option. However, I almost feel it's a cop-out — I can easily get 35 photos by going on just four or five hikes, which is easy to do in the 31 days the project allows for. SoFoBoMo is supposed to be about the journey, not the completion of the project. So maybe I should strive for something more complex?






Portraiture — a portrait study of about twelve friends, perhaps three photos each. I really enjoy portraiture, so this project would be a lot of fun. Scheduling twelve portrait sessions with friends (do I even have twelve friends who would lend their image) would be the major challenge here. Actually, determining if I even have twelve friends might be a challenge too ;->






The Magic of Photography — a series of illusions. I'm not sure I can possibly complete a 35 image book in only 31 days. The above image took over ten hours of my time: an hour of prep, an hour of photography (not counting twenty mins of costume/makeup change) and over eight hours of post processing. If I tried 35 of these, I'd need to spend eleven hours every day on the project! Granted, some take much less time (hide and seek took only a couple of hours total), but I still think it's probably impossible. I could maybe do five or ten images and show the various steps as separate images to get to 35, but I think that's cheating.




I have some time to decide, as SoFoBoMo doesn't start until May. I'd appreciate any suggestions for other topics, words of encouragement, or acknowledgments of my insanity!

Location, Location, Location

In real estate, they say there's three things that are important: Location, Location, and lastly, Location. This is because the actual location for the property is more important than anything else. The same building in two different locations can have drastically different prices depending on the surroundings.

In photography, the location for a portrait can be as important as the lighting. Obviously, studio portraits take away the issue of location by substituting a simulated environment for a natural one. I tend to prefer shooting outdoor, environmental portraits to studio work for two reasons:

1. It forces me to go outside.


2. It allows me to capture my subjects with interesting surroundings that I could not easily capture in a studio.

I've chosen two environmental images here to illustrate what I mean. In the top photo, Gaea is lounging in one of the most amazing locations I've ever shot at, Building Resources in San Francisco:


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Building Resources can best be described as a thrift store for construction materials. They have piles of recycled construction materials sorted by type: a pile of bathtubs over that way, some windows there, and a pile of steel right here. Could I have gotten a great picture of Gaea in the studio? Yes, of course. Would it have the same feeling and contrast between a pretty girl in a vintage dress against an industrial background? Probably not. The steel draws you in to the subject in a way I don't think I could achieve indoors.




Here's another location shoot, this time in a rural environment. Meredith is an excellent hooper, and I wanted to capture her somewhere you wouldn't normally see a girl hula-hooping. Why not on top of a pile of round-bales? Again, I could have shot Meredith in the studio and gotten perfectly controlled lighting, but what draws me to this photo isn't just the girl, it's the surroundings.