Oy Vey

50.365 26mm f4.2 1/200 ISO 200Okay, so this is how the evening was supposed to go down:  I pulled out my Christmas card list.  Cleared off my workspace.  Found a favorite pen and the stack of cards just delivered from the printer.  Glass of wine?  Check.  Fresh pomegranate and tangerine for dessert while I muster all the holly jolly I can manage?  Check.

But wait, these fruits are so picturesque!  And I'm supposed to be experimenting with my flash after all!  And I have yet to take a picture for the day!  Could only mean one thing!

Blergh.

Oh but I was tempted to pull out the tripod, set the camera for the longest exposure I could think of and fix the white balance and the noise in Lightroom.  But that would hardly be sporting.

Blergh.  Blergh.  Blergh.

Let's just say that Day 50 kicked my ass.  And then sucked all the merriment out of me.  Gotta get outside on Day 51.

Let There Be Light

49.365 44mm f5.3 1/200 ISO 200I was talking to a friend yesterday about this project and I told her that if the practice of doing a particular thing every day has any merit it is in this: it makes you step outside your comfort zone.  It is probably obvious to anyone who has spent even five minutes looking at my pictures that I am most confident in a space with plenty of sunlight.  I have written here on more that one occasion about my flash aversion.  So if I had decided to create a photography practice where I took a picture when the spirit moved me or when the conditions were right I would shoot only on days when I encountered the perfect light. 

But what I committed myself to is one picture a day and here I am in the middle of winter with a desk job in an office with no windows.  I live in a house that's over 100 years old, so there's not a lot of natural light in here at this time of year either.  I have pushed the high ISO setting on my camera and the noise reduction capabilities of my editing software to their limits and beyond, all in an effort to avoid using a flash.  Finally it occurred to me that this 365 project intersects with Daylight Standard Time at the place where I learn to use supplemental light.

So today's picture represents my leap into the realm of the flash.  It will take me some time to use it artfully, maybe a lifetime, but as I played with changing the direction of the light and the exposure I actually felt like I was having a small revelation.  And then, for the first time since he was born, I took a picture of my toddler in the bathtub that is not grainy or blurred or yellow. 

I haven't been this delighted about a light bulb, well, ever.  This is what the project is about.  It forces me to look squarely at the door I've been avoiding for a long time and then walk through it. 

Englewood Gothic

48.365 40mm f9 1/100 ISO 200 I heard an interview on the local NPR station a couple months ago about mobile slaughterhouses that allow small farmers and ranchers to process the animals they raise without entering into unfavorable contracts with the big feedlots.  These mobile units come to the ranches, which reduces the stress on the cows before their slaughter as well as making it possible for these ranchers to get a fair price for their meat.  They can then sell their meat at local farmers markets.  

I love the idea that we are moving, little by little, away from the industrial food complex and I see signs every day that it is happening.  My husband grows the best tomatoes I've ever eaten in a plot in our northwest Denver backyard.  My brother, Av and his girlfriend Jackie are plotting ways to move out of the city and onto a farm, but in the meatime they get the most exquisite eggs from their urban chicken coop and are totally devoted to practicing the principles of permaculture even in their city garden.  I really believe that these kinds of small steps are the beginning of a revolution in the way we eat. 

In thinking about these things it occurred to me to enlist my brother and his girlfriend in a portrait project.  You might have realized by now that I am a naturalistic, in-the-moment, kind of photo girl.  I am constitutionaly incapable of posing people.  So the obvious option would be to shoot these two working in their garden and see what unfolded. 

But then I got this wacky idea of going the opposite direction:  I wanted use the iconic image American Gothic as a jumping off point.  But where that image is all dour Puritan Dust Bowl, I wanted to put Av and Jackie in their back yard in their dayglow Burner clothes surrounded by their project.  It was a challenge for me to step out of my comfort zone and they were great sports in playing along.  I like the way this image connects them immediately to the tradition of American farming, but also gives a sense of the joy and optimism and creativity I see fueling this movement.  I have an idea that this is what the new American farmer looks like.  And I like it.

Small Mystery

47.365 55mm f5.6 1/640 ISO 200So here's a small mystery I've been pondering the last, oh, 47 days.  On my birthday when I walked out of my house to go to work this small, kitschy ceramic bird was sitting in my front yard.  I noticed it, even took a picture of it, but didn't think much more of it.  Since then it has found its way around the yard, the front porch, and perched on the fence but no one has ever showed up to claim it.  Likewise no one has yet taken credit for putting it there.

I wouldn't think much of it but for the fact that my birthday, 47 days ago, happens to also be the day I unleashed Bird Wanna Whistle on the world.  I figured a 365 project should have a start date with some significance and since my birthday was right around the corner, why not?  So in the days since then, as this strange and cheerful little bird has stood sentinel at my front door, I've wondered how it happened that it turned up on just that very day. 

Maybe it's just a coincidence.  Or maybe it's actually a mystery.  (Or maybe the person responsible for said bird will 'fess up after reading this.)  Not to get all woo woo on you, but is there a chance that it's the kind of wonderful synchronicity that signifies that things are aligning just right?

Endurance

46.365 42mm f5.3 1/5 ISO 1600I am phobic about black and white.  I mean, don't get me wrong.  I love a good black and white image as much as the next guy.  But shooting black and white (or in these days of digital, with the intention of making something black and white) completely intimidates me.  And when I get to processing, I almost never think anything I capture looks better sans color.  But today when I went in to get Ezra up from his nap and the light in the room was low and he was peacefully laying in his crib I knew it would make a good black and white. 

This child is in the phase where he believes it's his job to grow before my very eyes (more experienced parents can says whether this phase lasts into adulthood).  I love making pictures of him which are drenched in the technicolor of our lives together but black and white does have the singular effect of freezing a moment and pinning it into a place outside of time.  It's an illusion, but I suppose as a parent it does have a certain charm.