You are probably quite familiar with the newest major credit card commercials where they use various objects to resemble a smile? The commercial itself isn’t particularly appealing to me, but the concept of impersonating various items around us stuck with me. So imagine my joy when I saw this red-green face smiling at me while we were out few days ago . I just had to take picture of it. And let Iza play a little bit.

This image was perfect for one thing I wanted to try recently, which is one-image HDR. It was taken from several feet on the very foggy day, so it was seriously lacked contrast. I moved a bunch of sliders in Lightroom before coming up with this idea, and I like the final result.

Few days ago Scott Wyden challenged others with request for unique or fancy bicycle picture. I immediately started to think how to present one of our bicycles in a unique way. The thing that was bugging me is how to present an action. All in all bicycle is quite an action item and taking a picture of it parked somewhere seemed to be so boring. Weather outside ruled out any ideas of outside shot (although this one taken a year ago also fits ‘action’ theme) so I decided to choose another approach. There is one thing on the bicycle that sees a lot of action on it’s own, it’s a derailleur. Especially the rear one has pretty tough job to do back there. So I decided to show it’s while working.

I set up two flashes set into repeat high speed sync function, opened the shutter for 20 seconds and shot the derailleur in three position, low, middle and top gear. The side effect of spokes being lit multiple times also added to the dynamic of the scene.

Last weekend, bored with 4th day of weekend, and not willing to go outside due to wind chill, we decided to finally visit the Antique Car Museum in next town. I guess Tomasz mentioned it on his post few days ago. Although there was a lot of interesting cars (and wagons) in there, seemed like all the exhibits were tightly stuffed into too small space. Not a great place for wide shots, but certainly fun for hours of details. A bit dark, though, and as we left our flash in the car, it was hard to take a sharp image. Some of them turned out OK, though, and it is just one of few of my favorites.

Today we finally went to local Antique Car Museum. Old cars have something that makes me stare at them for hours. Probably it’s because back then nobody cared about them being aerodynamic, efficient, economical (not that there is something wrong with it). They were literally dripping chrome. One of the long forgotten details are hood statues. Here is one found on 50’s Cadillac:

Looks like Spiderman, doesn’t t?

Everybody taking photographs took at least once a night photograph of the cars leaving a light trail. But you can do it with airplanes, as well, and the result is not less stunning. Last weekend, we took the camera, and went to local airport around the time of the largest evening traffic. There was maybe 6 planes arriving and one plane taking off (hey, it was Saturday evening, Iowa ), just enough to have time for some trial and error and a keeper. I know now what I want to do different next time, but I still like this best image from that evening.

We went to our favorite small airport to do some flying yesterday, but the weather was not exactly perfect for cross-country. Not risking getting stuck in middle-of-nowhere, Iowa for undetermined amount of time, we turned around and decided to spend the midday photographic planes rather then flying them. More fun for me, if anybody asks . We saw somewhere around the net the HDR gallery for planes, and wanted to give it a try. Again, we disagreed on the post-processing and artistic concept of the project . Tomasz liked more hard-core HDR, which are a bit too much for me. So I ended up processing resulting 12 Citabria and 19 Cherokee images in two ways, and then finishing them off with two different concepts in mind. But I have to admit, having a lot of time, a lot of point-of-views, made the project so much fun! And why not black-and-white or selective colors? Especially if the yellow plane is competing for attention with yellow grass (man, I really did not notice it until I had final processed images on the screen!). Check it out.

I discovered this image, taken back in July, during Worldwide Photowalk in Iowa City, when I opened my Flickr page to add some photos to my profile. I cannot imagine, why I have not posted it on the blog yet, but hey, I can always do it now, right? This image was taken on busy street, in broad daylight, not in a studio with controlled light from strobes. I used Creative Catalyst 10 preset (I believe from here, but I don’t know) and then changed the color a bit to achieve this effect.

There seem to be one thing I can photograph with Lensbaby- airplanes. That probably has something to do with my favorite subjects vs technical limitations. Somehow, the landscapes do not look that appealing when I photograph them with Lensbaby, and airplanes are just about the only “solid” item I tend to photograph. Probably because Tomasz is fascinated with flying, and we are spending more time on assorted flying events then foe example car events.
In either case- the blog photo I took last weekend during Pumpkin Splat on Green Castle airfield. Looks like a have a theme this week .

Recently I find myself experimenting more and more with situations where you can shoot your subject by it’s reflection. Sometimes it’s just face in the mirror, sometimes it’s flower bouquet. Using mirror allows me to get some nice depth of field effects. This photo shows the car my brother went in to church for his wedding last week. It’s nice vintage British automobile with side mirrors mounted way ahead on the fenders. Today such thing probably wouldn’t pass pedestrian safety test, but back then nobody really cared.

The more I use my Lensbaby, the more challenging I find taking pictures with it. It is close to a year since I bought it and took a BetterPhoto class, and it is getting tougher each time I take it out! Maybe I do not take it out often enough? I already learned to use medium aperture, rather then largest for my style and subjects. But still, I tend not to get the right stuff in focus.
This one, however, turned out to be a perfect rendition of speed of train travel.