52 weeks: Week 18 wrapup

© 2010 Simon Hucko

Still haven't found the charger for my DSLR (honestly, I haven't been looking very hard, been busy with other things), so I decided to give the point n shoot another chance to shine this week. Inspired by last week's photo, I decided to flip it into "macro" mode and go hunting for textures. I walked by this dandelion with its perfect arrangement of fuzz, and immediately swooped down to capture the head. After I opened it up on my computer and did the black and white conversion (with a little tweaking for contrast and sharpness, as the point n shoot doesn't exactly shine in that area) I was greeted by a tiny planet with tall fuzzy trees growing all around it. I've seen plenty of dandelion fuzz photos, but I think this one has something unique going on, and it showed me something I'd never seen before. That's the power of photography - taking people to moments or places that they've never been and letting them explore a scene frozen in time that would usually pass them by.

Photography is also a way to play with time, which I talked about a bit in my post yesterday. My pick this week is "The Speed of Spring" by [Adam_Baker]:


© Adam Baker

The thing that really grabbed me about this shot is his description of how it was made. "It's couple of 30sec exposures layered in PS." I've heard of this technique being used to capture star trails with digital cameras, since it helps overcome the noise issues you get with 30 minute long exposures on a DSLR. It never even occurred to me to use the same technique during the day, and a little light bulb went off in my head which is now exploding with possibilities (mostly related to the fact that I don't own a 10 stop ND filter and can't usually get those long cloud exposures). Beyond the technical wizardry, I really like the motion and colors he captured here. My favorite part is the little bit of motion around the edge of the tree, like it was waving at the camera.

I hope my posts this week have given you something to think about and inspire you with your work. I know I've had a few "ah hah!" moments over the past couple of days, and I'm looking forward to realizing some of the images that are bouncing around my head. Get inspired and go show people a world that they've never seen!

~S

[title of blog] on flickr