Things sort of got away from me...

I'm still here. Got a few posts in my brain just haven't been near the computer at home. Stay tuned...

Picture of the week 12/20/10 Merry Christmas

 

I hope you all had a great day! 

Picture of the week 11/15/10 Glass, Brass, and Chrome

My first SLR was a Konica Autoreflex. My father-in-law had one and I used it and liked it alot. When I decided to buy my own SLR I ran across a nice one at Eddie's. Eddies' was a little camera shop along side a flea market that stayed open when the flea market wasn't. I used to go there on cold Saturdays and deal with Eddie. Sometimes I'd get a better deal on days like that because I'd be the only one who came in and he'd rather make a lousy sale than no sale. Eddie's is long gone but the Konica is still in the family. The Konica's mirror is more left of center than most and being left-eyed it suited me. After Konica announced they were no longer going to make camera's I figured I'd better move to Nikon. Why Nikon? Because it is the professional's choice, of course. As I understand it, there was a time early on that if you were a professional photographer and used an SLR it was a Nikon. Period. Today that is not the case and there are plenty of arguments about Canon vs. Nikon. I own a Canon rangefinder and it is a wonderful camera. I own five Nikon SLR's.
I wound up with the collection above piece by piece. Flea markets, ebay, camera stores... when I had time and money I'd spend time collecting stuff I found on the cheap. The Nikkormat was Nikon's entry level line. They are built like tanks, actually, but had less features than the F cameras. You can see they had no hot shoe for a flash but they had two pc sync's (bulb and electronic flash) and you could get an accessory cold shoe. The shutter makes a neat little crunch sound right before the shutter actually fires. It's a specific Nikkormat thing. That groovy case has a metal plate in the bottom with the same lens mounting that the camera bodies have. You mount the lenses, in this case three spares, to that plate to keep them organized. Pretty cool system but the case loaded with a body and lenses is pretty heavy. The photo didn't take too long to do but I'm very happy with it. It has a very 70's magazine ad sort of look to it. This stuff is going on ebay as I have just too much stuff.

Picture of the week 11/08/10 A deal's a deal

 

 Another busy week. Today I spent the day working on a project around the house that I've needed to do for a while. Throughout the day I was thinking of things I could do for my pic of the week. Well, the day came and went and I didn't take the time to create a picture for the project. I had decided to just make an excuse and play catch up next week. I was laying in bed and decided a deal's a deal and I know I've taken some pictures this week. So here ya go. This was the sunrise from Saturday morning. Yeah, I actually was out of the house before sunrise on the weekend and had the foresight to bring a camera. Sunrises/sunsets are wonderful things to behold when they happen but photos of them are pretty weak. So I've done four Pictures of the Week and I've apologized for two of them. Sigh. At least they were on time. I've got 48 more chances to step it up. Thanks for checking in.

Picture of the week 11/01/10

I've been wanting to do a frazzled mommy pic for a while. We had to really work at getting the kitchen that messed up. The maid was beside herself. Of course, the kids were also at a loss. They've never been annoying a day in their lives. Getting the wife to have that look on her face was a chore as well. Seriously, I asked the kids to jump up and down and they obliged and the wife was actually smiling at how cute they were. I must admit I sort of phoned this one in as it took all of five minutes to set up the lights, take the pic and tear down the lights and put it all away. Hey, if we can't get the dishes done how the hell can I put together a giant production just to take one picture? I don't want to cop out on this project so I'm dedicated to getting a pic a week but a quick one that's whipped together in 5 is better than no pic for this type of exercise. I learn from each picture taking experience so at least I got the camera out of the bag. I have some other posts rolling around in my head so check back, there may be another this week if I can find five min.

Picture of the week 10/25/10 Happy Halloween

I wasn't sure what to do for the pic of the week and after carving all these pumpkins it was sort of a no-brainer. Yeah, maybe a bit of a cop-out but there are only so many hours in a week. What I tried to do here is not have an all black background with just the glow from the o'lanterns. I wanted to have a little light on the rest of the scene to balance things. Also, I needed to have a little light on the big guy to show that his nose was formerly the stem. I have two Adirondack chairs sitting on the porch and I remembered the Joe McNally technique of shooting a flash through things to add some drama. I put the flash on one chair and shot through the other. I had to move it around and play with flash power a bit to get it right. I also used a gridded snoot because I was getting some spill on the leaves and the whole thing lost it's scary, flashlight-through-the-cemetery-fence vibe. As for the pumpkins themselves I did the "skull" on the right...uninspired. I did the big scary one with the direction of my five-year-old. The next one, well...I think that's pretty cool. The Boy wanted to do his own carving so I gave him a marker and told him to draw what he wanted. That is what he came up with. It's a spaceship. Yes, totally obvious to you I'm sure but I had to ask. That kid is super weird sometimes and I'm so proud of that. I love that bizarre, rectangle-dot thing he has going on. We used a drill for the dots and the wife was inspired to do the one on the right. First time for the Boy and the wife using a drill. If you have not tried drilling into a pumpkin with a spade bit there is something very satisfying about it. I hope you like the photo. Be careful out there tonight. Rock on. 

Picture of the week 10/18/10

I am still playing it by ear as to what each week will bring and I think that's going to be the future of the project. For this week my picture is a tribute to one of my friends. He loves potatoes. To a fault. I was kidding around and told him I was going to start calling him Mr. Potato Head. I spent a day with him and he ate potatoes with or as every meal that day. Within a day or so it hit me that this could be my first photo of the week. No clue what next week will bring or what day it will happen but for the record I am calling Sunday night at midnight the end of any given week. At least I've got one rule and I've got one consecutive week done. I hope you like it. Feel free to critique the photos and leave suggestions for upcoming photos of the week. Rock on.

Picture of the week

I haven't hammered out all the details of the project, but I figured out what my picture this week will be. It has to do with potatoes. I'll be busy on the weekend, so I'll have it up by Friday.