Photo-a-Day 2016: January

Balloons between Powerlines - Albuquerque New Years Day Sky - This is the first photo in my photo-a-day series for 2016. I feel it is strange on many levels, but also beautiful in an odd way - in its simplicity and weird sky colors.

Day Two - It's all fun and games until someone gets locked out...

Day Three - Silver surfer - This guy sailed down the street on his skateboard (like I wish I could - never was a skater) and disappeared into the frosty night...

Day Four - Fractal Tree fractal!!!

Day Five - A day in the life of those shoes... ...and a shoe song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGsfFOvjVyQ) - not necessarily for any reason, just that I can recall two footwear inspired songs, and I like this one better :)

Day Six - A beautiful rainy-snowy-sunshiney-rainy(again) day here in Albuquerque. Perfect for jumping in puddles and photographing raindrops on roses, etc. (these ones here are on irises, but nevertheless ;) )

Day Seven - Was feeling a bit under the weather today, so went for a hike to our volcanoes. The movement and fresh air did wonders for my mood and well-being. Hoping to shake this before it gets too deep.

Day Eight - Freak snowstorm

Day Nine - Arthur - Albuquerque Comic Con

Day Ten - I've been looking towards other photographer's work that I admire for inspiration. The photo today is inspired by a facebook post that I stumbled across from an awesome photographer out of NYC, Syvonne Kozuch. It is also inspired by some recent discussions about my drishti jewelry (http://www.radiantmoonchild.com/drishti-jewelry.html) and options to further use that concept to make new products, including a semi-joking third eye pendant. This is a combination of my eye (taken today) and one of my drishti images. I like it, but it also creeps me out on some levels - so I guess I like it even more :)

Day Eleven - Tribute to a strange stranger who had a strong influence on many of my favorite people. Many lessons learned today.

Day Twelve - For today, I looked for something that I didn't feel would make a good photo subject and worked to capture something beautiful about it. The project started in my backyard with the turquoise silk threads tangled from my clothesline to a small tree nearby. They are there as a result of hanging some fabric out to dry on a windy day, and I'd yet to remove them. They'd actually been bothering me for a while - any time I'd venture out into the back yard, filled with browns and dull, dried colors of winter, the bright blue would stand out and the ugliness of it all would make me feel like cleaning the yard (unsuccessfully, apparently). So, today, I decided, after some time outside, that the tangled threads would be my subject. I shot them from a whole bunch of angles, and I liked the movement of this shot - the way the blurred edges lead the eye towards the center. It all seemed sort of elegant, if not a bit forlorn. From there, I moved on to other 'ugly' or lost things in the yard: the bent up wire fencing around the pond; the lost yellow notepad under the stairs with the water damaged pages looking almost like an unusual bloom; lost pieces of chalk hidden amidst the dried grass; two dead birds. It turned into a game - to see what I could find in the small surrounding area that would fit in with the lost/abandoned theme. All in all, I had a good time, and produced some strong and beautiful images (in my opinon) out of things that I would have thrown away on another day. (And aim to do so on another day, but today was not that day.) See more of the shots here: http://www.radiantmoonchild.com/e-journal/lost1

Day Thirteen - Today I tried to work with unusual compositions and played the "opposite" game in that I thought about how I'd usually take a photo, and then do something opposite from my regular actions (like over- or underexpose to a great deal; use selective focus and focus on the other things in the frame rather than what I was initially drawn to, etc.). There were some interesting results. I liked this one just because there is so much packed into the one shot (even though it looks very basic) and the chance capture was just perfect. It looks fake, as in more of a photo collage than an actual photo, though it was just the result of looking at things from a different perspective today - in this case, roosting pigeons through a hole in the side of the structure they were in :)

Day Fourteen - So far, today has been a full, fulfilling, and magical day :) As it was so warm and beautiful outside, we took the bubbles out and I practiced the equivalent of clay pigeon shooting with a camera - focusing on a small moving target, except in my case I hoped to shoot my target clearly *before* it exploded. Quite beneficial for enhancing my moving target manual-focusing skills. I liked this shot because of the purely accidental curved pattern to the bubbles :) Beautiful day with beautiful people - and more to come, so I'm off 'til tomorrow :D

Day Fifteen - I started out today with a seemingly very simple photo task: take some pictures of an object splashing into water. I figured it would be such a simple thing to accomplish, and having a full schedule today (one without much opportunity for on-the-go photos), I thought I'd knock this 'easy' self-assignment out quickly. I did learn that I have much to learn, which in and of itself is a good thing. I probably should have chosen a different, less chaotic backdrop (I feel like this one detracts from the splashes). I definitely needed different lighting - everything turned out too dark, and I just didn't have the opportunity to move my whole setup around (despite having a great little assistant who loved dropping the marble into the water for me :) ). I got a few shots of cool water drop formations, but none including the glass earth (and on that note, the glass earth added another dimension of having to get it right, because more often than not, it was at some strange rotation where none of the landmasses were recognizable, so it just looked like a strange, blotchy ball...). All in all, I don't feel that this 'assignment' was a complete failure, but I will probably try and revisit a similar scenario in the future. I chose this pic because it made me think of the scene in Apollo 13 where Fred Haise shoots his pee out of the spaceship - "the constellation urine". So yeah, there's that. <3

Day Sixteen - Another fun project today - light patterns. I used a small led attached to a string and hung it above the camera then swung the light around while the shutter was open for a long exposure. Presto! Pretty, cool light patterns :)

Day Seventeen - Visiting family :)

Day Eighteen - Hamadryad

Day Nineteen - Mi mama

Day Twenty - "All photographs are self portraits." - Minor White - Though it was supposed to be 55 degrees, and most of the day felt lovely and warm, up in the foothills nearing dusk, the wind picked up and it was quite chilly. Still, I'd hate to waste an opportunity to clamber around the rocks just because it's a little cold ;)

Day Twenty-one - Lucky - The project for today was to take a roll of film in a 10-square-foot area. As I'm currently shooting digitally, I took 24 shots. You can see them all here: http://www.radiantmoonchild.com/e-journal/10-x-10 Fun <3

Day Twenty Two - Visited the zoo today, so I took a bunch of 360 panoramas and converted them to mini planets - an homage to all the various environments required to house the animals. This one was the weirdest by far...

Day Twenty Three - Red - (No, I don't have a fox. Fox image is by Katerina Bartosova from the website Unsplash - very awesome site with **FREE** high-quality images to do anything you like with - like pretend they are sitting calmly for a photo in your lap.)

Day Twenty Four - Orange

Day Twenty Five - Yellow

Day Twenty Six - Green

Day Twenty Seven - Rode the train up to Santa Fe, so practiced some panning shots and motion blur. I liked the appearance of circular motion around this tree.

Day Twenty Eight - Went on a search for a desk/table... Stopped by one of the surplus stores here in town. The child was not very happy, but I had a great time exploring out in the yard. Didn't find a desk...at least not one without extra buttons and hoods etc, that were really cool, but not exactly the function that I was looking for.

Day Twenty Nine - The photo series 'Humans of New York' has inspired me so much over the years. I've decided to embark on my own similar project, Humans of New Mexico wink emoticon I have several shots from this year for this series, though I am working on my people skills in more ways than one, as I am quite awkward at striking up conversations, especially with strangers. Most of the shots so far have been like this one, surreptitiously and from a distance. There have been a few embarrassing approach techniques (fail!) that I've decided not to continue using, but I also feel like I'm making progress in that area, and (most) people I've talked to so far are quite accommodating to having their photo taken when they know it's for a project. This woman was walking down Yale - I thought it was the same woman that I'd bought bread and organic veggies from, but it was a different lady, wearing similar clothing and pushing a similar cart...

Day Thirty - Stacks of Abstract

Day Thirty One - The Dancing Trees - I was given a couple neutral density filters recently, so took them out to try and take some longer exposure photos of the windy afternoon. The goal was to capture the trees with the lighter, thinner branches moving around in the wind (so they would be blurry) and the thicker, heavier branches would be stationary (and therefore in focus)...