med ed

The Medical Education building, where I had class the past two years.

I don't know how people do promo photography for big buildings and the like--I admit that my favorite device for picture-taking is adding interest with a lot of background bokeh.  I can't do much with a big building.  You see it from all sides anyway, as you're walking toward it, so you can't present it in a new and interesting perspective.  Maybe it all boils down to lighting, and a wide angle lens. 

Speaking of lighting, the clouds were ridiculous in real life, all yellow and grey and low-lying sunlight (it was fixing to storm).  And as I dashed to get my camera and document it...the sky cleared, and I was left with all this puffy white boring stuff.  Maybe it would have been better during the golden hour?

(Everything is better during the golden hour.)

quiver

That shivery blur of dogwood blossom in the back of this photo is exactly what they look like when I take off my glasses.  A mess of creamy white rustling at the slightest breeze.

duality

Living pine and dead (also called a snag).

I love the delicate, veiny lacework of the Scotch pine needles--like spiderwebs of ink.  If I had to quibble, I'd blot out those extraneous twiggy branches along the ground and just leave the two trees.  Alas, it can't be perfect, right?  I actually love this shot--I exposed the sky just right to get those clouds to that soft peach against the bluish grey.

oh hot damn

After a huge absence, photos from my Scotland trip in February.  And you KNOW I'm going to stretch these into several entries to make more content. 

The challenges of shooting landscapes weren't lost on me--I don't have a dedicated wide angle lens, so shots on my 18-55mm just looked so...uninspiring.  Compared to what I could see--miles and miles of countryside and mountain and rocky moorland--the camera's view just turned out so blah.  The pictures were flat and boring.  What I wanted to express--the gorgeous, open cragginess--didn't translate to two dimensions.

I honestly don't know anything about shooting landscapes (just that it's hard) because I've really never tried, and I wish I had known earlier the value of closing my camera's aperture all the way down and shooting with a slower shutter.  The results I got from that were so much crisper (duh Joceline, more depth of field) and the colors much richer. 

In all honesty I almost always shoot with the aperture the openest it can go, since I usually am shooting people, and I like a blurry background to add depth.  I didn't even think to change it when I started taking pictures of mountainsides and the like.  I just figured, the camera will focus itself on the farthest object, and if anything, something out of focus will just show depth.  Wrong!  Depth in a photo doesn't come from differences in focus, it comes from taking a picture of a scene with depth in it.  Duh again.  Taking a picture of something that looks good will yield a good picture.  I can't expect a camera to focus on a landscape the way my eyes do--unless I tell it to.  Seeking out a landscape with a focal point, a lot of depth, or a good composition is all on me.  Maybe that's why I've always preferred doing macro photography--it's easy to take a dynamic photo when you get up really close to something. 

Oh well.  I love the photos from my trip anyway, because they remind me of one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.  The first is a mountain we climbed, Meall a Ghiubais, that was much steeper in person (trust me).  The second is a detail shot of the delicate frost that edged every fallen leaf and bit of bracken that lined the way.