Finished

It's a crazy feeling when something that has been a major part of your life for a long time is finished. It's natural to look back and think through everything that has happened. The last 4 years of my life have been great and I can't even begin to explain how much has gone on that has been related to photography.

I have a vivid memory of shooting my first rule of thirds assignment and realizing that what I was doing wasn't quite like anything else. I was doing something for a purpose and to accomplish a goal that someone else had set out but at the same time I had complete control to interpret and fulfill the need. Complete control and interpretation for a set task in an otherwise strict and standardized high school environment? It was eye opening to me and from that day in freshman year, photography took a grasp on the creative side of my mind.

It slowly opened up a completely new aspect of my life and without finding that and learning about it I have no idea where I'd be right now. Over the 4 years I found that I'm not an artist. I couldn't create something if blank canvas was set in front of me. Rather than creation from scratch I feel that I combine and interpret different things to create. Obviously this doesn't apply to most photos but I feel it does when I know the single image I want to capture when going out to shoot. With the general idea the elements begin to fill in and the creation comes from combining and displaying the elements in a way to enable the original idea to be apparent.

I'm excited to see what the future holds and I can't wait to head to Vancouver in a few months.

Here are the images from my final project in my last high school photography class:

For a little more information about each image you can go here and type in the password: twitch.

Water

Water, it can take and ordinary scene and make it extraordinary. I saw this photo and decided that this week's post needed to focus around water. A lot of images and some are fairly similar to others but these are by far my favorite four from a great Memorial Day weekend:

And here's the rest:

Split Toning, Gradient Work, and a LensBaby

"Its good to get out and practice... I envy good gradient work on landscapes (http://www.wieslawpoltorak.com/-/wieslawpoltorak/) and I realized the only way to get better is to go out and practice. When I went shooting I wasn't focused on getting good images, I was focusing on gaining more experience in a few areas."

That was my original write up when I posted these photos. I hadn't even thought about really looking at them, I just wanted to get them up. As I said I was shooting for practice not to get good images so I didn't think anything of it. But today I happened to stumble back upon these and I realized that I really like them. I printed up a 5"x20" of the third image and I can't stop staring at it, it's different from what I'm used to and I'm really feeling it. It's amazing seeing the difference from a downsized internet image to a quality print, I like them both but the print draws me in much deeper.

I think the difference was my mind frame when I was shooting these, it's insane that a slight change in purpose can drastically change the way I was shooting. I feel like I've opened up some new doors and I'm excited to get out and shoot with some different mind frames, it'll be interesting to see the results.

Mega Post

Buckle your seat belts folks, a lot of photos are coming your way.

I spent the weekend at a mini family reunion in Long Beach. It was great to see the fam and it was really nice to finally slow down for a few days. I didn't really have a purpose, just cruised around with the camera and spent a lot of time in the ocean. It was really nice to just hang out and not have any intentions when shooting, basically taking photos of anything that looks cool. I haven't done that in awhile and it was great to get back to the roots.

I also spent a lot of time surfing. I really like to surf and usually I don't have the opportunity to so I was all over it and ended spending most of my time in the water. The conditions weren't great but I had nothing to complain about, I had a blast. Photo cred goes to my mom on this one:

One of the days the boys headed over to a car show. I'd never been to one before so I tagged along with the camera and snagged a few shots. It was crazy to see the variety of cars there from all different years, amazing how much work people had put into these to restore them to mint condition.

Also in this post are a few images from 2 days of assignment shooting at school. I wasn't sure about it at first but it turned out to be a good challenge making quality images happen in a short period of time and a confined area.

As you can see... a ton of photos from all different places. Here are my five favorites from the week:

The helicopter shot always brings this video to mind http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-ImCpNqbJw. I'm not a huge fan of the song but the start of the video is pretty dang cool.

Here's the mass, my top five are also in here:

(I saw a lot of cars at the car show but the above photo still has my two favorite vehicles)

(not only is his car awesome, he also wins the prize for best sideburns)