Leaving Chuch in a Hurry

So I was standing in the hall at church pontificating on the virtues of Vignette, one of the coolest Android apps out there, and was basically just snapping pictures to demonstrate. This one turned out cool. I hope Beth and Anna don't mind being featured on...THE ONE-A-DAY PHOTO PROJECT BLOG! (That sounds better if you say it in a deep announcer-type voice.)

Jag

We did a small wedding show today up at the Huntsman Center at the U. Totally unproductive as far as getting work but I met Mitch Burt of Zuma Photo. What an awesome guy! This image is the hood ornament on the Jaguar Limo outside.
One interesting thing about this image is that it illustrates the dangers of high jpeg compression. When you choose a lower quality image (not size, quality is usually listed as fine, medium, super fine, etc.) on your camera the processor lumps together similar colors in order to save space. So where there would normally be a slow transition across 100 slightly different colors of blue, all of which must have separate data information, the processor decides to convert it to 10 different colors of blue. You lose the data for 90 colors of blue which saves space but instead of getting a nice gradient you get banded lines that have abrupt changes from one color to the next. Look at the bottom middle of the image and you'll see it quite plainly. I'll tolerate it on a cell phone camera but if you ever see these lines (usually in a nice, blue sky) you know your camera is compressing the jpegs too much.Change the quality to super fine or live with the banding.

Juiced

I've become more and more fascinated with the supermarket as a subject. There are fun shapes and sizes and the lighting is usually pretty good. I think there will be more from my local grocery store as the year goes on.
Shot on the Toy Camera setting in Vignette.

A Little S.A.D.

The only way Seasonal Affective Disorder could be more appropriately named would be if the acronym came out to ANNOYED. I'm sure it's not masculine to admit it but every year about this time I start to feel SAD. It actually isn't sadness, it's more like annoyance at myself and the world. I love having time to work on personal projects (I'm going through all my fine art images from Europe) but somewhere in the back of my mind I have this nagging feeling that every last bit of my work sucks. It's horrible for the self-esteem. I wonder why anyone ever books me and I'm 100% sure that no one will ever hire me again. But eventually work comes in and things get going and I forget that I ever thought all my work sucked. It's good because it pushes me each year to do better and better work, but wow, it's tough on the ego. That's what I was trying to capture in today's image.
Did it work?

Plant in a Tent

We have this cool plant in our kitchen. I put it in my light tent and made a couple of pictures. Normally in a light tent the goal is to expose the subject so the white background blows out to pure white. Since I have no exposure control with this camera it exposes for the tent instead of the plant so I took away one light and just rolled with it. I think it's still interesting.

Portrait of Baby and Mommy Duck

I'm very proud. I had Hannah all day today and instead of working, we did a portrait session of Mommy and Baby Duck. (Hannah did all the posing and hair for the shoot.) It was a lot of fun. (Didn't kill NEARLY enough time though. I still had to work for way too long.)
Image shot with the standard Motorola Cliq camera and edited in PicSayPro.

Waiting

Hannah has a thing where if we go into the bathroom she has to wait outside until we come out or she has to come in with us.
Awesome bathroom linoleum, eh?
Shot with the regular Cliq camera and then edited in PicSayPro.

Self Awareness

Self portrait in the car mirror on a Sunday night.

The Freezer Section

The name speaks for itself. I got some strange looks but it was totally worth it.
Shot with Vignette for Android and uploaded. No editing.

Melted Hearts Premeire

I had a great time tonight with the cast of Melted Hearts. We watched the movie then took questions from the audience. I couldn't resist pulling out my phone and shooting the director, Jorge as he pontificated. I really did feel naked without my camera.
(Left foreground is the lovely and talented Kristen Jensen.)

Limits, Limits, Everywhere

Other than almost getting run over, a pretty straightforward shot. It was taken with Vignette, and toned in PicSayPro.

Stopped

I love it when a plan comes together! Actually, I was driving on the freeway and wanted to capture the way the clouds clung to the mountains. (I didn't act on it because, frankly, there are already too many morons on the road.)
So when I pulled up to a stop light I took the picture, upset that the traffic signal would be in the frame. Then I liked it. It kind of reflects the way we see nature these days. It's never pure and simple, it's always within the context of modern life and technology. It turned out really cool...which of course, I planned.
;)
Otherwise, no editing at all. I'm pretty conflicted. I LOVE playing with Vignette for Android but it just shoots images at such a small resolution that you can't do much with them afterwards. Typically you don't need to but there are barely enough pixels to look good on screen. Maybe I'll print these photos at 3x3 inches and mat them to 8x10. Little mini works of art. I'm doing it.

Head Shot

I had a fun meeting today with an amazing dress designer. Elizabeth, (designer and owner of Modest Couture by Elizabeth,) wanted to arrange a photo shoot for her custom dresses. I'm really excited to put the shoot together, her dresses are awesome. For today, I took the opportunity to introduce myself to a few of her hat dummies. This one agreed to pose for a portrait.

Enough Salad?

So I broke the mold a little bit today. I had a salad for lunch and was noticing the different colors, the red plate, green lettuce, yellow cheese, and white dressing (everything's better with ranch, right?). I played around with different settings on the android app Vignette to see what I could do with the colors. I liked all the images but no single one jumped out. Really, it was an exercise in color anyway so what better way to explore color than to just post them all? So here you go.
On the execution front, I couldn't find an app on my phone to assemble all the photos into a collage so I assembled them in Picasa on my PC. I figure since I didn't touch the photos it still qualifies for the rules of the game...and if it doesn't, it's my game anyway. Feel free to sound off if you'd like.

Not Everyone Loves This Project

I wasn't feeling well today and neither was Hannah. That explains why she's a little annoyed that I've decided to make her the subject of today's photo. The quality of the shot isn't great but the look is priceless.

Flower Delivery

For those who don't know, my wife is an awesome florist. She has a website here if you'd like to take a look. Today's shot is the flowers we delivered for today's wedding.
I have really loved shooting with an Android app called Vignette. It allows you to crop and shoot straight into a specific style. The resolution is lower than I would prefer but it's so fun to shoot with I don't even care!

Roadside

I love fog. I wish I could just order it up every time I needed something ordinary to be beautiful. It worked on this random little tree on the side of the road.
Shot with a little Android app that I have grown quite fond of, Vignette. It basically shoots the photo in various styles from Holga to panoramas without you having to do any editing. The only problem is that the photos are tiny. Hopefully they will update it to take advantage of all the pixels soon.

Self Portrait Using only an IKEA Lamp While Laying in My Bed at 2:00 AM

I was actually quite amazed at the warmth and depth of this image (hey, a portrait has to fit the subject, eh?) since I was basically laying in my bed on my stomach next to my sleeping wife bouncing a tiny $5 IKEA lamp off of a dark wood side table (while trying to prevent the light from hitting aforementioned sleeping wife full in the face) and trying to guess where to point my cell phone.
No editing.

2 Fast For Film

A shock of red hair and a blur. At two, this is a pretty typical view of Hannah. I like that my phone camera had no chance whatsoever of capturing a crisp, clean image in the dim morning light of our bedroom. It was cool to see an image that has all the technical quality of a 1952 television but still works!

A Hankerin'

I just really wanted some Fruit Loops. So I got some.
Shot in my office with very yellow, incandescent light. I shot it once and the color annoyed me so I put a blue filter in front of the camera and voila! white balance.
Editing: Once again, PicSayPro has my back. The "Splash" effect was exactly what this delicious dish needed to truly convey the love.

Remains of a Busier Time

I still have a few reminders in my office of back-to-back deadlines and 4 AM editing sessions. A good image tells a story. This one tells a whole lot of mine. It also makes me wonder why the second spot to the right seems to get the shaft in the stacking department...

Spiritually Disinclined

Hannah wasn't really in the mood for church today.
Basic editing in PicSayPro then a holga action from Photo Effects.

Neon

A simple Neon sign at Red Robin where we effectively avoided cooking this evening.
Edited with PicSayPro--I sharpened and stretched it around the edges.
The first person to post a comment either here or on facebook with the product this sign was advertising wins a signed 5x7 matted print of your choice of the One-a-day images!

Camoflage

Concept: I was shooting in Tooele, saw a dilapidated old tree house and stopped. It looked like this post was trying to conceal itself behind the grasses.
Execution: Self-explanatory.
Editing: Sharpen and Cross Process in PicSayPro.

Keys

Conception: I love the piano that my wife's sister-in-law gave us. It's in the office and I see it a lot. I often wonder how light would play off it at different angles. I suspect it will show up again at some point this year.

Execution: I turned on my 500w video light and put it at about 45 degrees to the piano.

Editing: PicSayPro on Android, baby. Sharpened and applied the cross-process filter. Easy as pie.

Sippies and Shadows

Conception: The origin of this shot is simple: I hadn't shot anything today and it was getting late. My friend Jason Seguin was over and in between photography discussions we were enjoying the antics of my daughter, Hannah. She came over with her sippy cup and set it down on my desk and asked for more milk. I saw the shadow cast by the halogen spot in my office and it piqued my interest.
Execution: The lone halogen light wasn't nearly bright enough to get a decent shot with my phone so we recreated it with a much brighter incandescent photo light. Since the light was so much larger than the original halogen we had to focus it down. Jason held a second metal dish over the first and we lit the cup through the small hole in the light shade. I love that this assignment has force me to consider creative and off-the-cuff solutions.
Editing: Color correction for the tungsten lighting and the standard sharpen and contrast that most camera phones so desperately need.

Going Postal

While waiting in line today to pick up my latest photo toy I noticed these stacks of forms. I think the colors stood out first but then I noticed the myriad horizontal lines.
Editing was just a contrast boost.

Self portrait with my phone acting as an eye patch

Today's photo came from seeing myself in the mirror. I had crazy hair and thought I'd document it. Ironically, the hair wasn't included in the shot I ended up constructing. Editing consisted of flipping it horizontally to reverse the mirror image, upping the contrast, and converting to black and white.
I used an awesome little Android app called PicSayPro.

Patterns at Church

The project is already working! In my quest to keep my eyes and brain focused on finding interesting things in the mundane activities of daily life, I noticed the way two separate patterns played with each other. (I was paying attention to the lesson too.)

No editing at all.

Our Trade Show Booth

We were at the Grand America wedding show the whole day and working hard. Here is our booth.
As far as editing goes, these are the photos that really show the limits of tiny cell phone camera sensors. I cooled down the temperature, upped the contrast, and did some sharpening. There's just not much you can do with so little light and all of it incandescent.

January 1, 2010 - Starting the project with my baby

This is one of my new year's resolutions. I will post a single image that was taken on that day. To help me focus on seeing and making an image I am limiting my tools to one--my cell phone. (At this point I have a Motorola Cliq.) All capture and editing of every image will be done entirely on my phone and uploaded directly.