Week 32: Colin Rockin’ at Martyrs.
Taken Saturday, January 17th, 2015. My buddy, Colin, was performing one of his last shows with Blindspt before he breaks off to do his own solo material. Snapped this shot of him rockin’ out (on the far right), but really it looks like he just stepped out of an Herbal Essences commercial. Anyway, they put on a pretty hair-raising show… nudge nudge 🙂
You can find his solo material here: colinmorris.net.
Taken Wednesday, Jan 14th, 2015. I normally tutor on Wednesdays, but since my lil buddy Zerick couldn’t make it, I decided to take a walk down towards Millenium Park for a photo of some ice skaters… The photo didn’t really pan out well… so instead I am posting this photo I took while panning on this fella walking.
Taken Tuesday, Jan 6th, 2015. I’m working on a bunch of new years resolutions, one of which is to continue taking pictures in Chicago. I’ve started to take the Red Line from the Monroe stop in the loop, since it means I get on the train one stop ahead of the other half of the rush hour work crowd. The station here is a little darker, and doesn’t seem quite as lively, but I did find this lady playing her accordion for the waiting passengers. Doesn’t seem to be quite as popular as the singers, but she isn’t quite as interactive either.While I can’t even recall what she was playing, I will say that it takes an immense amount of confidence and thick skin to ply your trade on the subway, where the only feedback you’d get is from the expression of hurried commuters trying to get somewhere. Thanks but no thanks; I think I’ll stick to just sharing my photos on the internet. 😛
So as I watched her play, I took out my camera and waited for the train to pass in the background, and snapped a few shots before I shoved my camera back in my pocket, and dropped the only dollar I had in her bag and boarded the train. Although it was a quick photo, and I was actually able to eyeball exposure and had the settings dialed in just right without even having to futz with my camera too much. Which is something I feel kinda proud of… Like that should earn me a ribbon or something!) Even the the camera is slower, and with the manual controls (or especially because of the manual controls), I am still able to take a quicker shot than I probably could have with this other newer camera I have.
One of the other things I’ve done is converted this to black and white, and brought it into photoshop to do some dodging (to decrease the exposure in some areas, and increase the overall contrast of the image). I’m finding that I like doing that for my black & white conversions, but it would be a terrible pain to include into a workflow for an entire series of photos, but I’m sure that’s just my laziness talking there…
I’m a little torn between whether I like the black and white version, or if I prefer the color version (also dodged a bit). I think each have their own merits.What do you think?
Week 30: Jimmy’s 34th Birthday
Taken Monday, December 22nd, 2014 just off of the barely traversed back country roads of Montana. I spent my Christmas out there visiting my brother, and just happened to take a picture of my bro with his dog, Zipper in front of this finely constructed home. We had taken some time to walk around and check out the inside of this… Can you even call it a house? It’s kind of a creepy thing, checking out an abandoned structure. It had 3 rooms, with a roof, walls and floorboards, all warped and coming apart at the seams. An old mattress lay in the middle of the room, revealing it’s rusty and decrepit springs for the world to see; while old torn clothes, various broken furnishings, and beer cans littered the rest of the room. It felt creepy in broad daylight, so I can only imagine how it would be in the dead of night, with the wind howling and whistling through all the nooks and crannies in the walls.
Anyway, we didn’t stay long enough to find that out in person. We had our own scary encounter later on. As we tried to head back to the cabin were we staying, we took an alternate backcountry route, which, come to find out, was fairly iced over. As night was falling, the temperature dropped, and we almost slid off the side of an iced over single lane road into an 50 foot ravine. Luckily after some white knuckling, we were able to do some controlled sliding back down the sloped road and turn around and head back to our cabin the same way we came. Maybe this year, I’ll get my brother some snow chains for his truck for his birthday.
Anyway, I’m trying to catch up on posting my photos, so hopefully, I’ll be sharing more soon!
Seldomly Updated 