The Daily Photograph™

It takes an operator to make it sing

A guitar is just a wooden box

Until you let the music out.

And a camera is just a hunk of metal and plastic until you let the light in.

Need the one to tend the other

Back In the Still Life Again

I am becoming ever more fascinated by what can be done with things around the house. These gloves, I laid next to the silver bowl after some yard work, and today, the arrangement looked good to me. I left the gloves and bowl as I found them but added the dried rose blossoms, and went after it. Available light, plus an extra bit from a handheld tiny flashlight. See if you can spot where I added the extra bit.

A champion light catcher

This weed seriously annoyed me

As I tried to photograph the bluff beyond, its blurry branches caught the light and got in the way of a clean, crisp rendition. I thought to tear it out, remove it from the scene. As I reached to put the thought into action, I noticed the weed had properties and characteristics of its own, every bit as fine and more delicate than those of the bluff. So, I made its picture.

Then, I moved my camera and made a photograph of the bluff.

We've never made wine

This vine is nearly 50 years old

And we’ve cared for it for half of that time, but we have never gotten a good crop of grapes from it. The reason, as Beth gently tells me, below, is that it is a Virgina Creeper and not a grapevine, at all. Wyoming is just too dry in the late summer, even when we water. The birds, however, think it is just keen. 50mm f4 1/125s

They cook sometimes, don't they?

This began as a simple test

To see how closely my 250mm lens could focus. Eight feet and a few inches is the answer. I liked the pattern and used a minim of electrons to record it.

Put me in coach...

It’s too darned hot outside

I know, I was out earlier, and decided not to, anymore today.
Luckily, I have a good swamp cooler, and my little buddy on stand by.

An existential dilema

Slinkies Don’t Work Well On the Flat

And that’s a truth worth noting.

And another thing I just found out: ‘dilema’ is the Spanish for dilemma.
I did not spell it wrong.
I’m bilingual.

More miles than we'll ever know

Today neither the light nor the clouds were interesting

So I searched around. And my old, beat-up, does the hauling and nothing but, truck was sitting there, waiting. It doesn’t get used too often, anymore. Here’s its portrait.

Her favorite book

Still life is still a challenge for me.

This photograph is underexposed by about 2 stops, but with a ‘proper’ exposure, I got none of the flavor I wanted. Here, after bumping the exposure in the editing program, I came at least close, and the wonderful Phase1 digital back gave me far less noise than I expected to see. For those who want tech info: Zeiss 150mm, f5.6, 1 second, 50 ISO, available light. BTW, at these slow speeds, you definitely want to raise the mirror before hitting the shutter.

I’ll write something later to explain why the tech info is nearly always useless to another photographer.