My Crazy Classroom!

A Sony stitched shot... panoramic version! Click on the photo to view it larger.

Devil Face

The semester winds down, the new one starts up, and all I'm teaching this semester is photography, with three section of Black & White and three sections of Digital. I'm somewhat worried that I may not have so much time for "hand media", and I did a Keynote for my students of the work I had accomplished over the first semester, so I figure I may post a few of those here in the near future.

tissue collage, colored pencil, ink  12X12 inches

Pencil Drawing...

...boy, are they hard to photograph! I need to work on some techniques for this because sometimes a student's best work is done in graphite and the reflective surface is hard to photograph.

Example posted.

Apple Tree, Morning & Dusk With a Stone in the Evening

The apple tree down front by the water is a constant inspiration in terms of my aesthetics, and so I never hesitate to photograph it whenever the opportunity for a new image presents itself. Yesterday (I never got around to a post as the day was very busy) was no exception and it presented itself both in the morning and in the evening.

Here's the post with the stone as well. I love the night time flash.

Through the Window, Lightly... Snow

Well, actually the first one of these is through the window and the second is from the house with the window open (quick shooting so the living room doesn't fill with snow) and the camera "hanging out". I adjusted the levels on both ends as the shutter speed was boosted to 1/800 so I could stop some of the snowflakes that were in focus. You can see blurring of the drops on the window in the first shot, and the color difference (because of the UV in the windows maybe? - I don't know) even though I did no adjustments in color. An interesting comparison in these photos that I find fascinating in it's detail. The apple tree is so often a subject for me, it seems good to mix up the images with lens reach once in a while.

Low Fat Pistachio Ice Cream and Blueberries

yummy!

Faculty/Staff Show at MDI HS "Glimses"

We had the opening for the staff show tonight after school in the Wing Gallery. The teachers all went down after the monthly faculty meeting, and Dan had arranged "gallery" food and all, so it was a great get together! Some excellent work by everyone, and very well received.

Dusk on Snowshoes

... and here are three more from my Alpha with a 300mm telephoto.

Today was a very busy day with the camera.

Cell Phone Photos

Just amazing for me to think back a decade ago and the old Sony 3.5 inch disk cameras. I thought they were the best thing ever, and now even the phone I carry in my pocket can take better pictures. Here are three from today. I've made a "holder for my iPhone that gives me more control for the "macro" shots. Also the "Doll" photo was taken with an app that makes the photos look old fashioned. Remember the old square format snapshots. Really Cool!

Early Morning Moon

I woke up this morning, or at least gained some sort of consciousness and I'm still not sure if I am actually awake right now. I thought Matt was up with lights on everywhere and all, but it was the moon shining all over the newly fallen snow outside, and it was beautiful. Half an hour later I'm posting this photo which is the best that I could get shooting from inside the house. I couldn't bring myself to get dressed, go outside and set up a tripod, especially seeing as how I just photographed that same moon at dusk yesterday on the other side of the sky. 20 second exposure at f20, and this is the best shot I could get. Very little adjustment in PhotoShop, and when I tried to do anything with it in Preview (see the histogram screenshot) it just "noised" out (which is the camera equivalent of "freaking out").

Late Afternoon Snowshoeing... Again

Today I finished up a bunch of schoolwork and then thought I would catch the very brief late afternoon sunlight, so I headed East on my snowshoes through the various borders of bushes and alders that serve as boundaries between the lots along the shore of Flanders Bay. The snow was deep at times, especially where it had drifted over the thicker patches of bush, and was well over my knees on several occasions. I took about 60 pictures and will post a few that were the most meaningful to me and, interestingly were shot closest to home. I guess it just proves the point that you don't don't have to look very far to find an interesting subject.

Late Afternoon Showshoeing

I took the HX1 out with me up behind David Cadigan's with brother Dave fro a trail trek this afternoon before it got dark and got a couple of panoramic shots and more. I doctored the small pines cones one and a couple of the others and not sure I like so much, but here they are.

Schoodic Mountain...

Early Afternoon On the Shore

I posted 30 of the photos from this group that I took early this afternoon. I was standing over the bed folding clothes and realized that I had to go outside with my camera. I was going out to shovel around front to Matt's doorway anyhow, so I got some great pictures. I shot around 60 in this group and selected 30 of them to post to FaceBook right from iPhoto, so that was easy! Here are two of my favorites below!

Sandy & Plastic Bag

No real intent here, just a couple of photos today that I found interesting.

Snow Day, Snow Day...

The tree again, with the bay providing the darker background as there is no ice and snow on it yet, but it's only January and there's a lot of winter yet to come. The wind is really roaring across the bay tonight, and it looks like an early morning to get out and clean up the driveway!

Snow Shoes After School

George and I went up into the woods behind his house after school tonight, taking advantage of the early arrival home from school (which seldom happens as we are usually arriving home well after dark) and took to the snowshoes. I did, however, get dark before we got back, and the following pictures are a result of using the flash on my camera to put some punch into the photos.

HDR... Hmmmmm... I Like the Side Effects!

Like with this photo I got of George in the hallway outside his room with a couple of other teachers. George seems pretty laid back, taking it all in, while the other two are energetically active, or at the least animated, over something in the discussion. The HDR automation in PhotoShop applied to a set of burst shots like this gives an effect that would otherwise be difficult to achieve. Pretty cool what it does to the colors, and the transparencies of the separate figures in the piece. More adjustments could be made, but I left it just as it was finished.

Choices... Anything is Possible

High Dynamic Range and such has been something I have been reading about quite a bit lately and I'm not sure... should the photographer use every tool available to obtain the image that seems the best? I understand the difficulty of shooting a picture that has darks and lights in conflict with one another, but to make something that gives us more information than the human eye can just doesn't seem natural, and of course, it isn't. So the difference is what I am looking at as I post these two identical (well, they are the same picture, I have just pulled more information out of the shadows and placed a little bit more in the highlights to give it an extended dynamic range. While one might see more information, it still doesn't seem natural to me. You judge. I took this shot in my studio while I was downloading 3 hours of video from last Friday's Senior Exhibition. It went great and I may post some things from it after I get my act together!

Knitting and Snowing

The All-Faculty Exhibit in the Wing Gallery at school is just about together. Dan has been working almost a month on putting this show together and it demonstrates the wide variety of artistic endeavors from the faculty of Mount Desert Island High School. I have included just one aspect in a crocheted piece for posting here. My Mom was a knitter and I have always loved the touch and feeling of a knit/crocheted piece of work.

I also took a flash shot of the snow coming down in front of the house. I never tire of taking photographs of that tree, it is an amazing thing of beauty! The various sizes of the snowflakes as the flash hit them at different depths gives an interesting sense of three dimensional space to this shot!

Clementine Peel Center

Pine Cones

More shots from the iPhone camera "macro".

Snowshoeing... First Hike

Dave and I saw a tree growing right out of the ledges. Amazing that it could find nourishment, but we as humans often find spiritual nourishment in the most meager places.

The muse is always with me. I feel like I got little accomplished for school during vacation, but I'm told that might be a good thing! Here's the tree... an establishing shot and the good one.

Song Again...

Here I've shot a few pictures of the Song of India plant with my Sony HX1 just to compare... hmmm... with low-res Interweb pictures it seems to me that the simple cell phone holds it own! Whadya think?

This one is very grainy as it was almost dark, and I would have problems to overcome with this (if I were concerned with improving it) concerning lighting and such, but I shot it in a dim room light after dark. The grain doesn't bother me for some reason, I think because it adds to the abstract nature of the shot.

This second one (there were several others, but these stand out to me) is a lot sharper, and the product was part of an experiment with the flash with back-lighting. It's amazing how one simple subject can lead to all sorts of experimentation and variety (to a degree) of images!

Song of India (Ryan's Plant)

Stumbling around the house looking for something to photograph, I came across the big Song of India plant in the bedroom and started shooting closeups of it. There is a sensuality to being so close to the subject and it becomes very intimate, even though these are not a great resolution and don't have the detail they might when taken with a "real" camera. It is about the "feeling" of the photo and I think that is why I keep coming back to O'Keeffe's abstractions and the sensual qualities they possessed. They still amaze me, as does the prolific amount of work she accomplished even into her later years. There is still hope for more to be done!

I'm feeling good with the green and I hope these last couple of days are a symbol of the kind of winter we might have, although it is always good for some reason.