This was a difficult week for me to get motivated.  I love taking photos, but I don’t always feel inspiration to point my camera in a specific direction.  One of the hardest parts of making 12 images every week is just leaving your house.

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This is the first example of how hard it was for me to leave my house.
This is my neighbor across the street.
Light was perfect, the house was lit up but the sky was dark and interesting.
This house has a lot of character, which I love,
I also love that it exists because it means I don’t have to try as hard to “Keep up with the Joneses”
As far as houses go as subjects… this one is not that interesting to me
Though I do like how the shrub on the right helps the eye move around the image.
And the lines from the electrical wire draw your eye back to the house.

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My second example of how difficult it was to leave the house.
The literal interior of my house.
I worked surprisingly hard on this bad photo.
I went back and forth about 15 times between the camera and the plant to remove as many distracting details from the photo as possible.
I still missed a few things.
In my brain, this photo would have been at its best if it was just a field of white and beige with a splash of plant in one-third of the frame somewhere.
This almost happened, but it was a little difficult to capture.
The inside of my house was fairly dark, so the whites are plunged into shadow.
Whereas the plant is being bombarded by light, so to make sure the plant wasn’t blown out and completely white, I ended up having to make the rest of the house a little darker than I wanted.
Color film has more dynamic range than digital, but no amount of range of lights and darks will make this an interesting photo.

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Okay!  Now a photo I like.
It started snowing in Portland and I was suddenly inspired again.  Over the last few weeks I had been keeping a mental list of locations that would be worth revisiting to get a photo.  This pool slide existence alone really stood out to me.
The snow helped make it way better.
I like that it is split into thirds.
One Dark third, where the subject pops,
The Middle which is neutral looking, but allows us to imagine what is behind it.
And the bottom is a nice field of white.
I also like that the slide is directly in line with the snow-covered shrub
And if you look close you can see that it is snowing in the top third.
I feel like this photo is a success in minimalism, and it is my favorite photo of the roll.

f8 15 seconds

Every time I drive by this staircase my eyes are drawn up the zig-zag pattern.
I don’t think I captured it well from this angle.
It may be something I have to try with a different lens from the middle of 82nd.
I like the lens flare from the top right light.
I don’t really like how there is no obvious subject and the bottom third is out of focus.
This photo is missing something.

f8 1 second

I love this Motel Sign, the colors and the shadows.
You can’t really tell that is snowing on me while I take this photo though,
so that is a failure.
I love that this place’s TVs are all in color, and I think the color sign is a very good use for my color film.
I don’t really love the angle I have of this photo.
In order to remove some distracting elements from the photo I had to get pretty close.
This photo would probably be made better if I went higher and got a better angle.

f8 4 minutes

I had such high hopes for this photo.
I turned off all the lights except my fireplace.
I wanted to capture the coziness of the falling snow and the reflection of the fire.
The fire just looks like 4 orange dots in the bottom.
An interesting thing about this photo is that the exposure time was 4 minutes.
That is the longest time I have ever used to take a photo, so that is cool, regardless if the photo is interesting or not.
My vision of what would make an interesting photo didn’t really materialize.
Good learning experience.

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The next morning I woke up early, energized by snow, and went down to the Zen Center next to my house.
I actually went with this little statue in mind.
I was glad to see it was covered so nicely in snow.
The sunrise, hint of orange and blue in the sky, really make this photo for me.
When editing the photo I also lowered the contrast to make the snow look more serene and powdery.
This photo pleases me.

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This is a real throwback to my palm tree photos from California a couple of weeks ago.
I got pretty low to get this photo, but I wish I got a tiny bit lower to separate the bottom-most thistle from the trees in the background.
I really like the clouds and the colors though, as well as the subject.
This single plant is similar to a nice five-stem bouquet, and I do remember my 7th grade art teacher saying that paintings of odd numbers of objects are usually more pleasing.
So… its okay.

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My intent with this photo was to get a bit more of a sense of the trail through the trees, as well as the bridge.
I like the colors and serenity, but it seems a bit too busy in the mid-ground.

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I probably spent the most time over the last few days editing and re-editing this photo.
I still don’t know if I like it.  But I do like the solar flare.
I think it may be a little too contrasty, I’m not sure.
I do like how the sun lights up the foreground and the hills are in shadow.
Seems like an acceptable photo, but nothing incredible.

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You may recognize this house from before.
Does the snow make it any better?  I don’t think so.
One success here though, is that the photo is a bit more in focus than the other.
I mostly took this so I could have a before an after
I think I actually like the non-snow cooler light version of this house better.

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The colors on this photo work well for me:
Green, pink, blue.
I really love this plant, and I like the snow-covered flowers.
I think I missed focus on this photo though.  It isn’t quite as crisp as I want.
It could be focus or, I might need a faster shutter speed to make sure it is crisp.
Something to consider for when I take photos of plants in the future, is they move in the wind.

Well… I’m glad that roll is over.  Ultimately, I am happy with a few of the photos, and I am proud to have done this for 7 weeks in a row.  I only have a few more photos to take for my 8th week, so we can look forward to this continuing.  I also just bought another 5 rolls of film, so I hope to keep going strong.

I’d love to know if you like a photo that I didn’t like.  Until next time…