Holgafied--Artificial and very artificial

moon and church, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

I am carefully making the appearance of accidents.
This picture has a very different kind of wandering viewfinder--taking each small picture in a panorama obscures how the final product will look. The perspective seems as though it was shot through some special lens because all of the objects sort of lean in towards the nodal point (the camera.)

Shitty photo, revisited

PICT1406, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

Making the fake lomo thing happen is a lot of fun for me. Maybe this style appeals to so many photographers and wannabes because they get a sympathetic masochistic thrill when everything you can plan for has gone wrong in a photo. But when just one thing or two is wrong with a photo, it's not miraculous, it's just the usual, so we delete it or set it aside, without the notion that it could be pink and green and flying through an aquarium, beautiful or terrible or both.

Quality V. Density of pixels

Melody, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

This was shot with the old Gateway digital camera. The over exposure is interesting, I think, but the image is no good for blowing up, really. There are many situations similar to this one, where I like the capture in every way except that the fidelity is not where I want it. So I choose one of the correct answers, and forget about it. The other digital answer is the vexel, with curves and gradients making a labor intensive photorealistic illustration. However, I have been so loathe to use the pen tool, that I never realized that my home Photoshop Elements does not have it.
So I've decided that the "path selection" tool is close enough to the pen tool, although easiest of all would be to just project this image on a big piece of paper and splat ink in the appropriate areas.

Hip junk

clutter, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

If there's anything I seek in life, it's more junk.
Maybe deep down I want a career, but on a day to day basis, I spend a lot of time thinking about things, in my relationships, I spend a lot of time talking about things.
My love of food is largely my love of cooking, which really comes back to thrift store junk: pasta crimping wheels, cast iron pans and kettles, relics from things people used to care about.
Miniatures are one way to have hundreds of design and retro household items while only owning one full size house, then there's digital junk, like the fake flashes and lenses to collect on the iphone hipstamatic, or gui skins, or in-game items.
And photographs.

The Weather

PICT1444, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

With Photography, every day is a unique and perhaps irreplaceable opportunity. It won't be as clear tommorow, it won't be as beautifully hazy by noon, soon there won't be another opportunity for winter photography when the snow melts, but it needs to be warm enough for a digital camera to work. It forces me to place myself in time and space.

Fake lomo temptations

skyride cars, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

We recently shot a roll of film at a class with a pinhole camera, which requires a little guesswork with regard to the viewfinder. I shot the rest of the roll after class and got it developed.
The whole roll had someone's vacation pictures on it, with some interesting results, but now I have some interest in getting similar results without the crushing heartbreak.
And I have, of late, become interested in finding some use for my very large collection of pictures that have some quality that I like.

Arisaema triphyllum

CIMG0586, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

For a brief while, we could blame every smell in the kitchen on this fly pollinated plant, which is understandably not a common ornamental. Probably only one strange smell originated from the plant. We do not know how it got there, but seeds, you know? They get around. It's a deep forest plant, which makes it strange that it probably got inside the house due to an industrial mistake at a garden center.

Snapshot v. Good Photo: Cathead series

Cathead series, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

This is from a "photo shoot" at Lisa's house. I use quotation marks because everything was staged for the camera, but the backgrounds were not really considered, hallways, tables and televisions.
I don't know whether I am penalizing myself for not being more spontaneous, or for not being more carefully staged.
This is another shot by my now-and-then functional gateway camera, so some amount of my thought was devoted to keeping the thing on for 10 seconds at a time.

That serendipitous find: decapitated lawn ornament

decapitated dog statue, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

This was in the days of my Gateway camera, the last days.
You had to press on the bottom door just hard enough, otherwise it would think it didn't have a card. It took pretty shitty pictures, also, I might have taken ten pictures of this sad little scene and this is the only one that turned out. But my concern for max megapixel definition is probably a bit silly most of the time, most things are more tastefully printed at under a square foot.
There was a big storm the day before this happened, but now that I think of it, someone probably kicked the statue or hit it with something big, as it appears to be concrete and nothing else in the yard seems broken.
The next day, the statue was gone.

Never lose a good photo (if someone could have died.)

nofatestairs, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

How, oh how did I lose the large file for this photo. Probably because I burned it to a CD and they are easily scratched and broken.
This stairway design is gone with the remodel. When I was in high school, more people would just do photo shoots with me: They would do cool or dangerous things and I would mostly fail to capture them. Actually my brother was probably the only one to intentionally do something dangerous, like stand on the lip above a doorway in a fencing mask and goggles.

New Christian Hymn and Tune Book

CIMG0498, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

One of many things I rescued from the Half Priced Books dumpster, a book of music from the 19th century. I started scanning it, but got distracted. The sheet music is also on my Picasa web album.
Instead I gave this to a pretty girl to destroy for chine collet in a printmaking class (since it'd lasted more than 100 years already I'd safely say it was archival) and I left the rest of the book to the next class to use.
The instructors were a little troubled, as I used to be (and still am sometimes) thinking it belongs in a library or a museum. I explained to them that I got it in a heap of similarly aged books out of a dumpster, as I assume I will probably get another, or probably could get another, similar copyright free music book.

Good photo/bad photo

PICT1443, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

As I'm learning new tricks with the camera I'm also learning to even more appreciate photos that still look spontaneous, that look like they could be a handheld shot without any photoshop.
This is a borderline one. The bridge always looks like this.
I try not to be super depressed like, but sometimes "what's it all for?" is a question well worth asking, and well worth making up answers.

My "gothy texture" phase

PICT1439, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

I've never been the photoshop wizard I'd sometimes prepare to be.
This is a rotting plant for overlaying on a pretty model's face to make it dark and serious or something.
There's a purpose and a place for everything, right? Maybe.

Electrical line bundles trimmed

CIMG0211, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

This picture doesn't get across the enormity of the situation. This is from a trip to the Philippines. Telephone poles had huge bundles with lots of cut lines hanging from them.
I took this picture when a bunch of people with ladders were trimming the disconnected lines, I suppose they were working for the government there? But they were just letting the cut lines fall into traffic.
And how were these workers involved with the creation of these tangled bundles of wires in the first place?

Cat loves sculpture

CIMG0533, originally uploaded by lotusduck.

I wish I had taken more pictures of this thing. Or did more to rust proof it.
I put up about five pictures of my cat scratching at this thing in a heap of mail.
Thinking about what I'm to submit to Foot in the door 4 this week, and looking at this, I wonder what I'm really good at, or what I should be.

I'm a photographer now?

In January I made myself a goal of maxing out my submission limit to Flickr. I did it, but I had to try. I've always had more pictures than I seem to be able to use or keep track of, so why not? In the last couple of days of the month, I was able to put up a few more pictures and round out 100mb.
It's February 2nd, and I've met my monthly goal a little bit quicker this time. I tossed up a cat show, and I'm done.
So am I going to get a Pro account?
Fuck no!
I'm just going to blog all the pictures that I think I'll want to remember later, so I can see them after flickr hides the old ones from the search engine.