Project365: February’s Best & Worst
So, here we go again with the best 3 and the worst 1 from the last month.
Although February was so short, it provided a lot of really excellent opportunities for photography. It also featured my first two photographic field trips, the first on the National Mall as Snowmageddon began and the second in Columbia after the first wave of snow. Even in the last month, I really feel like I got better, as much in technical ability as being able to take advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves because I was carrying a camera when they presented themselves.
In fact, of the top three images, none would have been made without the Project to both get me off the couch to take the pictures and have the hardware to shoot.
On several occasions this month the biggest challenge was picking the single shot out of a larger pool. When I take 100 shots, I always like a lot more of them then are actually good. It’s an editorial process that requires you to cut something you created. Since I’ve got no technical training I operate on instinct. When I read photography magazines and blogs, I’m often unable to ascertain the differences I’m supposed to see between before-after shots. There are nuances that I’m not yet able to detect. I see the big picture and lose the detail, so when I’m faced with picking a shot out of a group, it’s like picking my favorite child. I don’t know the artistic criteria to choose winners and losers.
Consequently, I may have chosen photos that were less technically sound. But I chose shots I liked. And as they say, there’s no accounting for taste.
While I stayed in aperture priority mode this month, I did take more control and get a better feeling for how to control the depth field. With all the snow, the exposure compensation setting was also really important. I also busted out the old flash – exactly once. I need a cable that lets me hold the flash separate from the camera.
Finally, I shot more people this month, including an honest-to-God portrait shot for a Cherry Blossom Princess. They were all people I knew – no strangers (yet), but it’s definitely progress from the predominantly inanimate objects of January.
Anyway, without further ado… the Best (and Worst) of February:
February’s Third Best: Seasons
As the snow started to fall during Snowmageddon 2010, I took a long lunch, caught a cab and headed down to the famous Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. It was frozen, and in the ice was this leaf. I was actually inspired by a similar shot I saw in Popular Photography, although this one had the really cool vein-like structures in the ice.
I have no idea how this pattern in the ice was created, although my hunch is that that colored leaf attracted more light and heat than the surrounding white ice (like a black car gets hotter). With temperatures hovering right at freezing, that excess radiation melted the water, which then evaporated in the canyon-like channels. Or something.
In any case, it made for a pretty sweet shot. This was one of those shots I had a hard time picking because I took several hundred shots that day, many of which were above the average Project365 shots. That’s the nature of the project; some day’s you feast, some days you fast.
February’s Second Best: Drip
After the snow, we had a cornice of snow hanging over our front door by a good foot and a half. At the end of that cornice, like razor sharp teeth on a Star Wars monster, hung a row of very long, very sharp icicles. When I went outside to shoot, my intention was to capture that row of icicles. The title was going to be “Damocles.”
I’m proud of the process that went into making this shot. I was shooting into the sun, which was going down. That gave the ice a bright back lit glow which refracted to accentuate the shapes, while obscuring the background in shadow to make it dark. The problem was that I wanted a very narrow depth of field, which meant a wide open aperture, which is not good for bright scenes. The shutter speeds I needed were too fast for my camera. So I brought out two Neutral Density Filters, 2x and 4x, to reduce the light coming into the lens, buying me several stops of shutter speed.
I took a handful of shots of the entire row of icicles, and then a few throwaway shots of individual icicle. I wanted to get them as they dripped, and it took a long time to finally capture the action (it’s very hard to anticipate the precise moment a drop will fall, and then your reflexes aren’t fast enough to catch it). I finally got the drip by shooting in continuous mode for a few seconds when I thought a drop was about to fall.
When it finally came time to pick the shot for the Project, I almost went with the Damocles shot. I was about to close this one when Tiffany saw it and it blew her away. So, I reevaluated it, and decided to go with one icicle at a special instant rather than a whole bunch of icicles together.
It’s also one of the most commented on photos from February – second only to the winner.
February’s Best: Aftersnow
This wasn’t the shot I was going for, but it became the best shot I’ve taken this year. A few days before Snowmageddon 2010, we got a dusting of 2-3 inches. I had avoided typical Capitol Building shots because they were cliché, remembering that the Capitol in the snow is rather spectacular. I’d often wished I’d had a camera after a snowstorm.
The original plan – to shoot in morning light – was flummoxed by the train being late and an overcast sky. By the time I got to Union Station, the sun was already up in the sky. The backup plan was to walk in front of the reflecting pool to shoot a symmetrical picture head-on in the snow.
But as I walked around the building toward the west front, the sun showed through the clouds. I only had about 60 seconds before the light flattened out again. I fired off about 4 bracketed frames (I bracketed with exposure compensation), and then went to shoot my originally planned shot.
This shot didn’t stand out when I looked at it on the camera’s LCD. It wasn’t until I opened it on the computer in full size that I saw how great it was. It was an easy choice, as the planned shots still managed to look like a million other shots of the Capitol Building.
February’s Worst: Corncob Capital
For all the effort that went into this shot, it shouldn’t be the worst of the month. I’ve wanted this shot (or, rather, a shot like this, but better) for weeks; and I’ve tried (and failed) to get it on multiple occasions. The problem is the light. First, the light is low, so in order to get a good shot, you need slower shutter speeds. But the shot I envision has an extremely low depth of field. The more obvious problem is the yellow light. This pillar should be gray or maybe tan. But the light is putrid, and I haven’t been able to correct it in-camera or on Photoshop.
Both problems can be corrected with the use of a flash, and I expect, at some point, I’ll get it right.
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