2015: A photo odyssey, part next

This is a catch up post, I'm just going to give you a few photos for the weeks I've missed posting for rather than worrying too much about having one a day. When I set out to take these photos, I promised myself I wouldn't let it get too stressful. It's a personal project taken on for the fun of it. So next month I'm going to try using prompts again because I find them a good source of inspiration - and in the cooler months I find photographic inspiration in much shorter supply than usual.

Moving right along.

Week 13 (16-22 March)

The highlight photo is from the chocolate walking tour I went on - a birthday present from Mum and Dad as this year I decided that I was more interested in doing things with people than coming up with a list of stuff. It was amazing! We stopped at seven venues, tried an amazing variety of chocolatey things and learned quite a bit as we went! This mint iced chocolate from Steven ter Horst was absolutely wonderful.

Week 14 (23-29 March)

 

The most significant thing this week, was that with incredibly inconvenient timing, my phone completely failed. Attempts at bring it back failed, and a new phone was ordered. After a phoneless week, I got the new one... which has a fault with the aux out. So it's gone back for repairs and as I write this I'm using a temporary very cheap phone I bought. It's got an incredibly dreadful camera in it, and I'm eager to have the very nice new phone back.

The highlight photo I chose because I preferred it to the dead phone photo (which is the first little one, I was feeling silly that day). It's part of my back fence, though the gate is in the neighbours' section. It's a heritage listed stable wall and gradually crumbling but it is quite beautiful.

Week 15 (March 30-April 5)

The highlight this week was a camping trip - I spent the long weekend with a great group of people camping, walking, photographing and snorkelling. There's a much bigger album of photos on Facebook if you are interested. The highlight is a fishing boat on the beach at Pondalowie Bay, near our campsite. The oldest graffiti is from 2008, so at a guess that's roughly how long it's been there. It made an amazing photography subject (and backdrop)!

During this week I actually had my new phone, I had some important calls to make/take and hung onto it until I could arrange a substitute. The photo of my feet has a short story - I took a photo much like it for Instagram on my previous phone, but I wasn't able to send it out before my phone shut itself down for the last time, not able to connect to a computer for retrieval (thankfully all but that photo had been backed up).

Week 16 (6-12 April)

A pretty normal week, mostly, and one for getting things done. In the case of the first photo, with a chai and in the Adelaide City Library. After my  haircut, I had work to get done on a deadline. The library proved to be a great place to plug in and get things sorted out.

I also went to a Board Games Day event - and won the door prize! Otherwise it was a good but unremarkable week of getting things done.

Week 17 (13-19 April)

Bacon + Eggs + Pancakes + Maple Syrup is the love story that won me some movie tickets in a twitter competition. There really only was one way to celebrate...

Side note, I actually like this one highlight, other smaller photos format. It's far less time consuming to put together, and I think it looks better too. Just as well I decided to change format for the catch up!

2015 photo challenge week 5

26 - Barbecue in a park, playing cricket and kubb, listening to the hottest 100. Magic. Battery operated radio required so I located my CD/Cassette/Radio from the mid nineties and reacquainted myself with tuning in analogue. The party host tracked down the 6xD batteries needed (apparently a rare size now). Challenge increased as the display is apparently somewhat inaccurate - that photo has it tuned to play 105.5. I was too busy playing cricket and such on the day to take photos, so since the radio played an important part, here it is.

27 - A haircut does wonders for the way I feel about myself. I don't know why,exactly, but it's not something I'm going to complain about. I thought it was time that my photo appeared in my project too. (The one on day 24 wasn't originally intended to be part of it, bit of an afterthought)

28 - Calendars have become part of the Christmas tradition, Mum and Dad get me a different one each year. This one features Monet's work, January was 'The water-lily pond with the Japanese bridge' (1899). A whole month gone... dang.

29 - I'll never get tired of sunsets, you don't even need to go far to appreciate them. This was taken from the end of my driveway. The rest of this commentary's going to head into editing, self-critique and such so if you're not interested, skip ahead ;)

One thing I've been learning this year is how to use my photo editing tools better. If I want a quick edit and I'm on a computer that's cool with the idea, I'll use google's inbuilt stuff (or instagram's), but for better results I'm using GIMP 2.8, rather good set of tools, and free too - I'm mostly editing levels though I also twitched a bit using brightness, contrast, lightness and saturation. Many of my photos, prior to editing, have colours and contrasts that don't really represent what I saw. Learning to use my camera better will help a bit, but editing will always factor in. I'm trying to strike a balance between beautiful colours and pushing things beyond reality. I think this one's a touch overdone - I should have edited it to be more orange than purple as the sky was predominantly orange that evening. It's a nice image that I find visually pleasing, I think the composition's good if not stellar but while enhancing an image is often necessary I want to represent what I saw, which this isn't quite achieving. I'll keep trying...

30 - Movie night at Apex Park in Gawler. It was a lovely night though the turnout was apparently somewhat down from the previous week. While I waited for the sun to set I enjoyed one of the cupcakes... again I realised this photo was very fuzzy when I saw it on a larger screen but I can't retake this. So... here are some flowers I saw on the way too? I got two photos of these, the other is a shade clearer but I prefer the composition of this one.

31 - I bought the wrong kind of feta so rather than have it go to waste, I made spanakopita, a new recipe for me. I'd link you to the recipe but I was rather free with it, halving the quantity, substituting frozen spinach for baby spinach and adjusting a few other things as necessary. Thankfully it's a very forgiving recipe - some cooking is more an art, some cooking is more sciencey... this one seems more at the art end. I think next time I'll add a little grated lemon rind, several recipes included that but the one I used did not. I've not cooked with pastry much before, especially in a savoury context, so I was very pleased with the outcome.

32 - After a night in the fridge, the results were delicious. I'm very proud of the results. I've tried it both cool and warmed, I prefer it warmed in the oven as it causes the pastry to become super-crispy and delicious.

Found Alphabet - S

 

This S comes from Kuala Lumpur International Airport - I was in transit and spotted this on a a lamp in the cafe where I was enjoying a rather excellent teh tarik and some samosas.

The one below was meant to be my S, it's the pavement of a market area in Patong, Phuket. I waited for tuk tuks and market shoppers to get off it for a moment... but the angle and framing just aren't right. This is the best I can get it to be.

*grump*

On the upside my holiday was incredible and I'm working on writing up my travel journal.

Found Alphabet - K

I've had an amazing week! I've done at least 800km in the last six days, but it's been absolutely worth it. On Tuesday I travelled through the Barossa Valley and up to Clare on a day trip. I managed to leave my camera in a restaurant in Clare, making this photo even later than it was going to be...

But now I can bring you a pretty spiffy K - this was part of some decorative ironwork on one of the bank buildings in Clare. I hoped to find more instances of this letter on that trip but while I saw many others, including the H below, K eluded me until I had got all the way to Clare.

This weekend I spent an amazing couple of days with a group of friends - we played games, went hiking and generally had a blast. This photo was where we were hiking this morning. I didn't take terribly many others but I'm sure that everyone else made up for it! I did find a couple of candidates for L, so maybe you'll see them next weekend...

We did see some interesting trees as well - one appears to be gradually swallowing a boulder whole, while we could see a face in the other. Can you see it?

Found Alphabet - E

E was a letter I found all over the place. It was easy to find - difficult to find those that were well defined. I didn't always have a camera hand but I had a lot of shots to look at this week. In the end I chose this one - it's an extreme close-up of a computer at work. If the staff don't look at me too funny I might try re-taking it next week. It's a little fuzzy. If I take one of the public computers before opening the light there should make it better.

There were several Es I liked so in the end I asked Mum to pick a winner. What do you think?

I have put a few of the others I liked below. Including one that's a bit of a cheat as it's lower case, but when I saw it I had to take it. Some of those I didn't include are a bit abstract, or a bit too like earlier weeks. There was another angled and cropped shot of a park sign like D, and another of the wood carvings in the hall, similar to C. The end of the slide was nice, but I decided it was not very clear, so ... these were my finalists.

I've already seen some Fs I want to try to photograph this week. I think like this week the challenge will be finding a high quality one, whereas I think that G week will, like B week, be more about finding one at all. I was thinking through the alphabet while walking and looking for Es earlier today... G and Q seem the most challenging. But first I'll worry about F.

Found Alphabet - D

Much as with the week I was searching for A I kept on finding Ds everywhere. I need to get into the habit of carrying my camera everywhere again, as I wasn't always able to catch them. I did go D-hunting today (It's a long weekend so the Monday totally counts) and caught some at a party on Sunday. The one I chose I especially liked - and it's got the D for dog thing going which is a bonus. Playground equipment was also amazing for D finding. I found a whole lot more than I'm showing here. It was... a succesful week.

B was particularly elusive in its week - I didn't have any extras to show. But I did find an unexpected one today, this showed up where a piece of playground equipment had been ripped up.