92.365 San Jose Steel

I am happy that the sun is setting a little earlier.  Sure, it means summer is coming to a close, and that is kind of sad... but the light is now strong pretty close to when I get off of work.  If I dawdle around and take my time driving home from work, I can actually arrive at a photo destination late enough that I am going to get quality photos.  So that's good news.



Tonight I stopped at the North Portland industrial area and took an hour to shoot a few blocks.  It's an area I've visted several times, but I still managed to find a few new things.  This sign on the side of a fence really caught my eye with it's bright colors and metal clamp thing.  Of course, I quickly realized a black and white shot would be more impressive, so I went with that instead.  I am glad I did, it came out great!

89.365 Steel Bridge at Night

It was kind of showery this afternoon, and I was really excited that I would be able to get out and break in my new umbrella with some awesome dramatic sky shots.

So as sunset neared, I loaded up the camera and tripod and headed out.  I hopped on the MAX and got off down at the waterfront.  I was truckin' along feeling good when it started to rain.

And then I realized... I had left the umbrella at home.



Unfortunately it was pretty showery through the whole time down at the river.  I managed to get in a couple of shots, and this was easily the best.

Can't believe I forgot the umbrella.  Ah, what could have been...

A very nice lady running a crepe cart downtown, where I stopped for a snack, was really interested in my work.  She and I talked for quite a while, and she was very generous in her praise.  I think I might be able to work out an arrangement with her, she expressed interest in having some product photography done.  That'd be sweet indeed!

86.365 The Morrison Apartments

I'm not sure why I keep thinking I can just walk outside my door and find an interesting shot in five minutes.

Tonight I walked to a bar I thought might look cool, but there were cars in front of it and people hanging out smoking, so I wasn't able to take a shot. I walked to another restaurant, and they were closed. Also, not very interesting. So there was that.

I was pretty discouraged and was considering going for another of the easy "local art" shots, then I realized I'd never really shot The Morrison.



The Morrison is the neighbor to The Civic, replacing the old Civic building and providing low-income housing. It's a nice looking place and it's good to see a lot of the same people living there that used to live in the Civic.

Not really a great shot, but still something relatively new. There's something in that anyway.

83, 84, and 85 - Three Weekend Shots

Finally I had a chance to go out and do my late night star shots again, although even this trip fell pretty short. I drove up to Larch Mountain again Saturday night and when I arrived just after sunset the skies were mostly clear.

However, over the next half hour as the skies darkened, the clouds rolled in. I did manage to get a couple of fairly short shots in, focusing on the small plots of sky where the clouds weren't going to cross.



Most of my shots ended up with clouds in them, and thus came out with a very distracting red haze covering the stars. However, among the decent shots I had this one, which appears to have a meteor streaking across the side. I love the way it flares up and then burns out. Total luck! I didn't even see it when I was up there...

I got home pretty late on Sunday and didn't really have time to think about my shot of the day... it was already 11 and my brother was going to be stopping by to visit and stuff.



So I decided it was time to pull out the sculpture-across-the-street card. And voila. Another "meh" photo.

See, I'm making these "meh" photos become the norm. Then, after 365 is done, you'll all have lowered your expectations and then I'll be even more proud of myself than I already am. Bam!

(Speaking of lowering expectations...)

I was looking around my apartment, trying to find something interesting for tonight's shot. I was debating whether to go out and try to find something in the street, or try to find something in here.

As I was looking out the window, I saw this metal handle (shiny) and the great lines of the window (diagonally) and then the wonderful bricks and street in the background (bokeh-ey) and, well, I figured I had my shot.

This is a good example of how something can seem pretty awesome when you see it in real life, but turn out totally "huh" when you take a picture.



You know how when I have a really nice shot, and I say "It didn't look anything like that in real life?" Well, this is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. It's not all victory laps and high fives around here. Oh no. You're thinking of Sean E Simmons.

The 3x0 folks will get that one.

Reset!

I had some crazy idea that I would be able to make my own photo art sales blog thing here on Blogger a couple of years ago. I put a lot of work into it, and it never went anywhere. It just sat there, for a year, doing nothing for me. The photos got more and more outdated, yet I kept telling myself I'd tweak this or fix that.

So today I realized that's not going to happen. So I deleted it all.

I'm not sure where I am going to go with this. I probably should do two blogs: a photo blog, and a poker blog. So I need to check out the dashboard and whatever.

But there'll be something here soon. Most likely, we'll see photos and poker both here soon when I take a vacation to Vegas.