Church

United Methodist Church in Spring City, PA

There’s not a whole ton that I love about my hometown – we live in a great neighborhood with spectacular neighbors, but take me out of our little nook in Spring City, and I feel like I’m in the middle of nowhere.  As a kid who grew up partly in Philadelphia, and partly in its suburbs, living this far into the country is just too quiet for me.  I’ve grown used to it at this point, and honestly can’t imagine moving anywhere else because of the friends we’ve made in the area.

That said, Spring City isn’t all bad.  For instance, the United Methodist Church right in the main part is really pretty.  Matter of fact, there are a lot of older buildings in the area that I’d love to be able to photograph.  Today, Will and Liam were out in Strasburg, PA at the Strasburg Railroad, and I had a few minutes before they got home to head into Spring City to photograph the United Methodist Church there.  I’ve passed it several times and thought that it would be fun to stop and take some pictures.  It definitely was, and I kind of wish that I had had the time to stay longer and take more – I’d like to get images of the building from all sides.

For this photo, I was standing on the entrance steps and looking almost straight up.  I like how the image turned out, and really only lightened the sky a little bit to take it away from the deep, deep blue that the camera captured.  The other colors in the building were pretty much as I remembered them, so not bad on my part.  This might even be one I hang up at home, assuming my walls have enough space!

Clocktower

The clocktower atop our local Wegmans store

 

I’ve definitely learned a couple of things about myself over these past few weeks:

• While having Liam with me is fun, its not conducive to being able to get a ton of shots of a single subject.  Meaning, if I like something, and want to photograph it, I’ve got enough time to take two, maybe three shots before Liam starts getting antsy.  And there’s only so much candy I’m willing to give him as bribery.
• If its not something I’ve been thinking about photographing, the photos always turn out crappy, because I don’t actually want to take photos of them.  My best photos on this site are probably ones that I’d been really wanting to take.  Go figure.

Its certainly eye-opening.  I love taking photos of families and kids; those photos have turned out well.  The others that I particularly like, there’s a good chance that I’d been interested in taking those photos.  The ones that I wasn’t as “into” taking (the medals, for instance), never turned out quite right because I didn’t care enough to spend a lot of time on them.

Similarly, I think this one could have probably turned out better had I had the time to take a number of shots at a number of angles.  But alas, it was Wegmans, and Liam wanted to get inside to see the “big choo-choo”.  I do want to get out there and take some photos because I think the clocktower is just fun-looking, but its one of those things I’ll have to do without Liam and on a day where I have a ton of time.

Still, not a terrible shot.  I once again used the color monochrome because I liked the “older” look of it (reminds me of Back to the Future), but the color shot turned out decently as well, once I’d cropped it to be mainly the tower (I was too far away when I found the angle I wanted, but the crop allowed me to get the closer shot anyway.

So, there you are.  Once this challenge is over, I promise to stick to just those photos that interest me, in hopes of finding a better series of shots to share with you all.

First Friend

Liam's very first "favorite toy"

 

This might not mean a lot to anyone else, but it means something to me: this train was Liam’s very first favorite toy.  My parents gave it to him right before his second birthday, and he carried everywhere for a good 6 months.  It ate with him, slept with him, traveled with him, played with him, spent every waking moment with him.  When Liam was nervous, he asked for “Gold Thomas” (the train is actually gold-colored … well, it WAS … see below for the color shot).  When he was tired, Gold Thomas.  Sad?  Gold Thomas.

Now, Liam is a year older and while he is still into Thomas, Gold Thomas has been cast aside.  He sits in the train case, waiting to play, always ignored.  To me, its a little sad … perhaps I watched too much of The Christmas Toy when I was a kid, but I almost feel sorry for the little train.  When he gets older, we’ll probably put it in a shadow box with Liam’s two-year photo, where he insisted he hold the damn thing.

Even though the train is gold-colored, I liked the b&w shot better.  Here’s the color one:

Color Image of Gold Thomas

 

I think its the fact that my walls have absolutely no color – while seeing the severe lack of gold on poor Thomas makes it interesting, the ugly white walls in the background tend to distract me.  So, I tried it in b&w, and I think I liked it a little better.  Plus, for some reason I feel like the b&w somehow portrays loneliness a little better …

Lovely Little Ladies

Portrait of a friend's kids

 

Wayyyyyy back in 2007, a neighbor and good friend asked me to take portraits of his three kids.  His son had just turned a year old, and his two girls were 3 and 4, I believe.  Sweet little girls, and a ball to photograph.  I ended up taking quite a few of all three kids, but this one of just the two girls stuck out as my favorite.  They just randomly decided to pick those flowers out of the bushes behind them, and they got a kick out of posing with them.  In this particular one, they happened to snuggle up together, and it wasn’t so long into the shoot that the younger one’s smile was starting to stiffen.

I love it in color, but I’ve been having fun playing with the black and white features of Aperture, and thought this would be a great one to try it with.  Here’s the color version, by the way:

The color version

 

Honestly, I think I might still like the color version better, but I enjoyed getting the experience with Aperture.  Now, if only I could figure out how to zoom in so that I can get the color just right …

Sometimes the Schuylkill Can Be Pretty

A view of the Schuylkill from a local bridge

 

This one isn’t exactly a stunner, but after messing with the color a little bit, I think I came up with something that I like at least somewhat.  I honestly think I would have liked it more if the sky was a nicer blue (it was rather gray) and if there had been white, puffy clouds in the sky.  I’m a big fan of the puffy variety, being particularly puffy myself.

This is another one where I set the color monochrome feature to give it that sort of old-ish look.  I brought it to about 80% brown, which is why you can see hints of color in the image.  I also darkened the sky a bit because even with a brown hue, there were burnt-out spots that I didn’t like.

All in all, I think I like the shot, though not enough to frame it and hang it up, but I feel like I’m getting there, so that’s pretty cool.

Beauty, Broken

The Limerick Towers behind the Schuylkill River

 

Not that the Schuylkill River is a stunning river down my way … its dirty and you’re never quite sure that a body won’t pop out of the water as you look in.  Still, there’s something lovely about a river reflecting the surrounding treeline and the sky above.  I had to enhance the photo a little bit to make the water look even this blue – its just not a lovely river.

The towers from the Limerick Power Plant stand behind the river and just cut the beauty.  Not that we don’t need them; I understand that they’re providing power to many of us in the area, but still … they’re ugly as sin, and not exactly green.  We’ve got solar power, so I feel like I can put in a couple of digs about the power plant.  We live pretty close to it, but I was really selective about our home when we moved to this area.  I absolutely did not want to be able to see the towers from any window in my home, and as luck would have it, we can’t.  I find the towers to be almost upsetting – I don’t really like the idea of nuclear power at all, I can’t imagine that that amount of nuclear waste is going to do this earth any good.  This image is just a reminder to me that the earth and its beauty can be decimated in an instant with a single bad decision.

Thankfully, there are several angles from this location on the river where you can block out the towers and come up with a nice image.  I’ll probably share them another day.

My Froggy

A friend's baby and his frog

 

This is another image that I took of my friend’s new son.  Isn’t he sweet??  I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that I don’t necessarily have the time to set up for a photograph every day, but I probably have the time to post a favorite photo that I’ve taken most days, so that’s my plan.  When I can take a new and interesting photo, I will.  If I can’t, I’ve got a decent backstock of images that I’m proud of, but that don’t really have a place to be displayed aside from my Flickr site (which hasn’t been updated since last November, because we’ve just been THAT busy).

For this image, we laid wee Liam on a fuzzy blanket on the couch and gave him his toy frog.  Being that the poor kid was only about a month old, he kept slipping and sliding, but that ended up making for some cute shots, like this one.  He was sort of sliding into the frog, and I snapped this one just before he flopped completely over.

To soften the image a little bit, I used Aperture to add a sort of vintage look to it – its a color monochrome selection with a little bit of the original color added back in.  I’m pretty proud of the way it looks.  I also did a couple where the image was black and white, but froggy was in color – turns out he’s a little yellow-looking when I do that.  I’m not sure if that’s how Aperture interprets the image, or if froggy looks more green when he’s surrounded by all of the other colors.  Either way, I wasn’t as pleased with them as I was with this one.

Of course, it makes it that much easier when the subject is this damn cute …

Fountain

Fountain at the VE Club in Warminster, PA

Technically, this is yesterday’s photo.  We got home kind of late, and I didn’t have the energy to think of anything to write.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to get another image posted this evening.

I have always found moving water to be difficult to capture.  You have to time the image just right to make sure you get that feeling of movement in your image.  Doing that often takes multiple shots and a little prayer as well.  I often try taking photos of the waves crashing on the rocks when we’re down the shore.  I would say that 90% of the time, the photos don’t quite turn out like I’d like them to.  Either the wave wasn’t as powerful as I’d hoped and there wasn’t much of a splash, or I snapped the photo too soon and I didn’t get the height that I was hoping to get.  It was a similar situation with this fountain last night.

We were at a wedding reception for a dear, dear friend at the VE Club in Warminster, PA.  This fountain is just outside the front door, and a lovely way to greet guests.  Off to the side of it is a large piece of the Berlin Wall, which was also very interesting, but I couldn’t come up with an artistic way to shoot it.  Anyhow, the fountain was slightly sporadic in how the water was coming out, and I wanted to capture the splashes as it was running … I think this photo does that probably as best I can.  I like how you can see the droplets in midair around the main geyser, and there are even some mini splashes around the sides of the fountain as the water falls down.  All in all, I’m pretty pleased with it.

New Love

Some friends with their new son

 

Ok, I’m sort of half-cheating on this one – the photo itself was taken over the fourth of July weekend, but I edited it today to turn the image black and white and to brush the color in the rings back in.  That said, I don’t care if I’m cheating – its 106 degrees out today and I’m being a weenie.  I’m totally not going outside to take a photo.  My camera might melt!!

Over the fourth of July weekend, a friend from work asked me to come over and take some one-month shots of their new son, also named Liam.  I was both flattered and excited – its not often that you get to practice on someone else’s kid!  They let me set up all of my crap in their living room – backdrops, lights, etc. – and spend around an hour just shooting the baby.  Little Liam wasn’t thrilled with it at spots – those lights are damn hot, and he was hungry – but he was a little trooper, and I even got a couple of those cute crying baby shots too.

Of all of them though, this one is my favorite.  Its one that I wish someone had taken for us when our Liam was born.  I’ve always loved shots like this, and I wanted to make sure my friends had it.  Currently, they only have the un-edited version of it, but I’ll be linking them to this page shortly to see if they like it better.  I also did an all black and white image (where the rings are also in b&w), but I personally love the hint of color in an otherwise monochrome image.

Taking photos of families and kids is probably my favorite thing to do – I love capturing the love between family members, and I definitely think that this one captures that – baby’s hand wrapped around mom’s finger, mom and dad touching hands, their wedding rings showing … images like that always touch me, and they remind me that there is a lot of good and a lot of love in this world.

Accomplishment

My half-marathon finisher medals

 

This is an image of my four half-marathon finisher medals – two from 2006, one from 2007, and one from this past May.  I plan to run another one this September.  Being a heavy unathletic kid, I didn’t get much other than a trophy for a bowling league when I was younger.  These four medals are something I’m damn proud of.

Now about the photo itself.  I was in search of some backdrops online a few years back so that I could take some more professional-looking photos of Liam, and the backdrops were EXPENSIVE, as were the stands.  So, a friend forwarded me instructions for a DIY stand, and I set about looking for my own backdrops.  There’s a fabulous store in my area called Jomar which offers all sorts of random junk at a discount – its like a ghetto TJ Maxx.  Lucky for me, they also sell fabric.  Most of it is around $1/yard, though I think this faux velvet might have been around $3.99/yard.  Still not bad, considering the backdrops I was seeing cost around $70+ each.  I liked the black just for reasons like this – I like how the fabric itself reflects a little bit, and I’ve used it a lot for some pretty neat stuff.

As for the lighting, it could have been better – Will bought me a beginner’s lighting kit a few years back so that I could build upon my almost-professional setup.  I would have loved to use it tonight, but there just wasn’t enough time, so I ended up wrapping the flash in a piece of muslin, which didn’t diffuse it as much as I would have liked.  Perhaps I’ll take another shot with the lighting later.  Another idea that I had was to hang them up on the black background and just have them in a line, sort of zig-zagged.

With the short amount of time I had (and a lack of nails to temporarily hang the backdrop and the medals), this is what I came up with, and I’m at least somewhat pleased with it – took me a while to get the medal ribbons in the corners of the image, and I like how it turned out – sort of a medal starburst if you will.

All in all, I’m pleased with it – I’ll be interested to see if I have time to try more images of it, and how they turn out too.