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Showing posts with label Knoxville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Knoxville. Show all posts

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Upside Down From There

Make a hole with a gun perpendicular
To the name of this town in a desk-top globe
Exit wound in a foreign nation
Showing the home of the one this was written for
My apartment looks upside down from there
Water spirals the wrong way out the sink
And her voice is a backwards record
It's like a whirlpool and it never ends

"Ana Ng"
by They Might Be Giants





Saturday, September 5, 2009

Saturday Sunrise

After thoroughly enjoying a migraine and staying in bed most of the day yesterday, I woke up wide awake at 5am this morning. So I decided to get out and take some photographs.

Taken from Rocky Pointe before dawn. I took about 25 shots just like this, all full of color just dripping out of the sky.
I saw so many things looking at this tree. An alligator's mouth, maybe a sideways capital A, and many more images came to mind.
Taken from the public boat ramp near Concorde.
Little Orphan Annie was right....the sun DID come out tomorrow.
While the sun rose on one side, this was the view behind me, a full moon still hung with care in the sky.
It's been a great day so far and it's only 8am.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

"Cherry"

Photos of my neighbor's '32 Ford.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Saturday Morning Drive

Gone but probably not forgotten... (Mascot, TN)A different burnt out home. (Powell, TN)"A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad track...an inch between wreck and smooth rolling prosperity." Henry Ward Beecher
And thus spake the lord...I mean, it was foggy out.

Saturday, May 2, 2009

It Was A Dark & Stormy Night....

A cold front bullied East Tennessee last night with gusting winds and showers. It's the kind of night that makes you want to stay in, but it was Friday night and we were childless for the evening, so we headed to downtown Knoxville.

Being the first Friday of the month, we headed to First Friday at the A1 Art Lab in the Old City. Each month they exhibit works of local artists in various media. This month's theme is The Green Theme. Each piece somehow utilized recycled materials.

I'll be honest, I've never been one who cared much for this kind of thing, I'm not into the "artsy fartsy" crowd (or what I perceived as that group). I went once last year just to support a friend who was an exhibitionist....errr.....a friend who was exhibiting his works. Since then we've gone many times and enjoyed it.

"Greta" by Heather Harrison. "Abundancia" by Anna Maria Gundlach. This was a 5-6 feet tall full body piece that was cleverly put together with mjscellaneous pieces that would normally be thrown in the trash. She also had some great clay works. Her clay was some of Alexis' favorites this exhibit.A part of "Consumer Nation" by Eurichea Subagh. She created this set using receipts for her canvas. It was a cool idea and well executed (not to mention a steal at $60, ironically). Unfortunately, my shots of the main piece didn't come out well. This was one of my favorites."Industrial Dance" by Zophia Kneiss composed of recycled steel and quartz. This is a HORRIBLE shot of an excellent piece. I wish I had this one to do over again because it does not do it justice. But if you click on the picture to enlarge and check out the detail of what she's done, you can't help but be impressed with her work.
Artists name and piece title didn't come out on my photo. If someone knows, please leave the info in the comments section so I can update it.
Also artists name and piece title didn't come out on my photo. If someone knows, please leave the info in the comments section so I can update it.
"Corporate Bee" by Peggy Mann. This was my hands down favorite of the night and it wasn't for sale. From straight on, it looks like your typicle office layout map, with offices and cubes laid out. But the map is made of circuit boards and the people in the cubes are Prozac pills. Brilliant idea and great execution, IMO.
Alexis played my photography intern, holding my digital target for me to get a good white balance and helping me switch out lenses.
On the way home, there was a break in the rain, so we stopped off on top of the 11th Street Garage (can you guess where that is?) so I could take a few night city scapes. Of course, they had to include the obligatory nighttime shot of the Sunsphere.
Finally, on the way home, I had to take a slow exposure as we passed a lit up police car on the side of the road. I know it's a bit silly but I like these moving exposure shots.Lessons learned last night:
  1. Keep playing with the manual focus on the prime lens. Still don't have it dialed in.
  2. BE MORE PATIENT.......NOW. I rushed too many shots. I do that in crowds. Take more time just looking before even starting to compose the shot.
  3. Keep this excitement and love for photography up.
Nicole B is hosting her second scavenger hunt. I did the first one and it was a lot of fun. It challenges you to hunt for photographs of 25 certain items in your area. People from all over the world did the last one, so you got to see interesting results. Some people went literal on the items while others were very interpretative.

Get over there and sign up. It starts today and runs through the end of the month. You don't have to be a serious photographer to really enjoy this one. It's FUN!

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Composition

I call this "Second day of Spring Break and bored already!" (ha ha)
I took this shot of Trevor and his friend on Tuesday at the pond. Don't they look bored silly? It's just a candid shot but it is a good example about composition and how I've changed my shooting habits.

The night we studied composition, I wrote 4 pages of notes. Great great stuff but there is no way I will memorize and implement it all right now. So I've been focusing on just two or three for now, practicing them, and getting proficient at them. Then I'll add another 2 or 3.

Here is just one of many things I learned in Fundamentals I, it's something simple, and it can help anyone get a little better. It's called The Rule Of Thirds.


No, not like THAT.....ewwwww. (Although What The Duck rules!)

It's a generally known photography principle....I just didn't generally know it before the class;) Before taking the course, I would have taken something more like this:
The subject center frame and the bridge centered vertically. Not bad. A bit boring maybe.

But if you will divide your viewfinder or LCD display into thirds like this:The four points where lines intersect is where you generally want to have your "center of interest". Tom called them "power points".

Vertical subjects (buildings, towers, trees, standing people, etc) should ideally line up with a vertical third mark, like DJ and his reflection in the water in this picture.

Horizontal subjects (horizons, horizontal lines, etc) should be lined up with a horizontal third like the bridge in this picture.

Do you have to do this every time? No. There are all kinds of exceptions that I haven't learned yet. I'm just a beginner, like most people who read this little blog. So try this the next time you are taking shots. It'll take some practice to get it right, but I think you'll find your candid shots looking a little more "photograph" than "snapshot".

Footnote: For those of you worried I might go off the deep end after my camera broke last night and had to get shipped off for repair, don't worry. I'll make do with my old point and shoot for a few weeks. This was just after tonight's sunset shot with a Kodak P850 in manual mode set at f-3.6, 1/640, iso-100.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Aliens Like Ice Cream

Aliens have landed in Knoxville and I got the shot while at lunch this week!

This is a display on top of Graffix Tattoo located on Central. I have driven by this place at least two dozen times since our offices relocated near this area at the end of October and I have NEVER seen it until this week.

This is my new favorite guilty pleasure, The Original Freezo!
Yep, an old fashioned walk up. You place your order at one window, wait around the pick up window talking to the other customers, and then sit on the concrete tables "out back" (aka, over yonder). Alexis says their milk shakes rock. I wouldn't know, I always go for the "full house", a homemade tamale in a bowlful o' chili.

We had a full moon this week, so I couldn't resist an 11pm run to take some more night time shots.
The final showing for Fundamentals I? It went great. I was very happy with the comments from Tom and fellow classmates. I took all of the votes from your comments from the last post and I am embarrassed to admit, put them in a spreadsheet and tallied them up. Interestingly, the votes summed up either in total or weighted (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) produced the same list and matched my initial picks except for one. The final pictures chosen were:
13
14
11
18

Now that THAT's behind me, I have to bust my arse to meet Nancy's scavenger hunt by Sunday.