Photo-a-day 2012, week 1

Last spring and summer, despite doing several bike races, I failed to actually write most of them up.  In the fall I changed jobs and moved to a new state and did a fair bit of travel for work.  All that meant very little time on the bike. The work travel will continue, and the time on the bike will therefore continue to be curtailed.  I did start bike commuting again this past week and hope to make that a regular thing when I am not travelling.

Due to the lack of training time, I don't think I will race as full a schedule, or do as many "big" races. The work travel has broadened my photographic canvas though, and recent participation in #birdpoker and other daily photographic themes on Google+ has reignited my photographer bug.

As part of that, I have challenged myself to post one "artistic" photo a day in 2012. To date the vast majority of my photography has been natural landscapes and wildlife. The new job is in an urban setting and the photo-a-day will hopefully help me refine my urban eye and refine an urban style.

New years day found me in Upstate NY for the Ithaca count circle's Audubon Christmas Bird Count. I saw a fair number of birds, but I was counting mainly with binocs rather than my camera, and thus the photo from the first was not bird related, but rather a photo of some fungus on a tree.

I chose this image because I found the texture interesting to me.
Both the finer texture within each "lobe" of the fungus as well as the broader texture of all the lobes on the tree itself.

January 2nd found me and dad on our way to Waterloo NY to look for a snowy owl that had been hanging out on the buildings of the outlet mall up there, and hunting in the median of the highway.  We did not see the owl (the last time it was seen there was the day before we looked), but I did see this farm, that appealed to me. I am not sure how much I like the photo, or how well it captured the landscape, but I decided to use it anyway, because of the interesting sky.

On the 3rd, it was back to work. I had to return the rental car before heading in.  The rental place is near the Walnut Street Station in Upper Montclair.  I had about 20 minute to wait for the next train so spent my time looking around for some interesting things to snap pictures of. I noticed a few of the benches had interesting iron work.  None of the benches were placed against compelling backgrounds, so I had to crop. Aesthetically I found the antique coloration more compelling than the full color image.

Jan 4: I was not inspired by anything on my walk from the train station to work, but did explore some of the settings on my little point-and-shoot in the greenhouse at work. The manager has a large cactus collection as well as several orchids. I was playing with the macro settings on the camera and ended up liking one of them more than any of the other pictures I took that day. In post processing, I darkened the background a bit to really help the orchid pop.

January 5: Since starting my position with Rutgers-Newark, I have noticed a lot of interesting iron work on railings and balconies and fire escapes. Given the area I walk in, I have not wanted to carry the big camera around to take pictures, but I have been keeping a mental list of railings I wanted to come back to with a little camera. This is one of them. I will probably end up with enough railings to do a series on just them. ;-). I liked how the antique finish really focuses the image on the near railing, but this post processing did wash out the depth the original photo has. I may process this image a few different ways as part of an ironwork/railing series. Once I have managed captures of other bits of iron work I like, I will have to post a blog with a series.

January 6: I am the only person from my lab who comes in on Fridays. I like to leave a little earlier than strictly necessary to catch the train so I can explore the areas around campus a little. On the 6th I tried to capture buildings, or architectural components of buildings. For my photo of the day I decided to use this image of the public library. My next mission with regards to the library is to explore the inside. I love libraries! This photo was taken on a fairly overcast day.

January 7: last day of the week and I have managed to find one "share-worthy" photo each day :-) My goal this morning was to sleep in a bit. That didn't happen on account of a tree full of sparrows and starlings singing away outside my window.  I figured if they were going to wake me up they had to pay the price and become subjects for the camera.  The starlings proved a bit camera shy, but the house sparrow stood his ground and sang away. I do kind of wonder what any neighbors might have thought had they looked up and seen a zoom lens sticking out the bedroom window... Just spying on birds! I swear it! I did post this image a bit early in the day and thus didn't give myself a chance to consider photos I took later in the day at the beach.