A whole day of random shooting

Photography started on my way in to work today (6:23) through three walking trips with my Photo 2 classes (12:42). These are eight of the shots I liked, I kept it simple doing very little in Photoshop as usual.

Strange Portraits

We were playing around with some odd takes on portraiture. Cherie shot this RAW file of me hiding my face, and I liked it, so I went ahead and adjusted it, did some dodging and burning and printed it as a negative onto transparency film. We then placed the transparency film over a sheet of 8x10" Ilford B&W photo paper and exposed it for 5 seconds with a #3 polycontrast filter and this is what we got.

Water Motion Study

I returned to a spring in the woods that only remains active for a short time in the spring. We were playing with diffused flash and really fast shutter speeds, some as fast as 1/4000 of a second at f 2.8.

Rotting Buses Revisited

Taking a monotone approach to the ruins and it's surroundings.

Some of my Handmade Books

I went through a period were I built and bound several mixed media books that dealt with issues such as: space exploration, environmental strain, and land usage. There are more examples on my site:
http://ryanmcdonellphotography.com

yard findings

Playing around with settings again. Trying to stay at ISO 50 even with wind, so I was at f1.4 and 1/1000 of a second for one of the shots, f2.8 for the others.

friends

These two could do this all day.

rusting buses

Once in awhile I'll come across decay that's fun to examine and photograph. We found these old buses rotting away and of course we had to snap some shots. I always think about that show on the History Channel "Life Without People" when I find abandoned structures, vehicles, and objects. These buses are returning to the earth pretty fast, they're actually sinking into the mud.

Hamlin Beach

Hamlin Beach was gorgeous this morning and it was practically vacant. I had to shoot some engagement shots so my wife and son tagged along to play in the sand. I finished my work and walked down to meet them taking some shots of things along the way. I was again amazed at clear the water looked and what interesting reflections and textures were available to shoot. Fun little trip.

Adirondacks Spring 2010

Reached the summit of Mt. Seward (4365 ft.) in the Western High Peaks region of the Adirondack Mountains Wednesday under perfect weather. We were the only ones to climb Seward In quite a while according the the log book at the trail head. It was the first time in three trips through the Seward range it did not snow on us, and we saw no people. We packed in 9 miles Tuesday, hiked 8 hours Wednesday, and packed out 9 miles Thursday. No fancy photo gear, I brought only a simple Kodak point and shoot camera which took surprisingly decent pictures. The climb was sketchy, and coming down was worse due to the deep rapidly melting snow. To make things more challenging this mountain does not have a marked trail and is unmaintained, so getting lost is possible. The nights were cold, but we were in a nice lean-to next to Blueberry Pond and a good stream where we could filter water for cooking, oh and no bears this time. Great trip, but glad to be home.

experimental optics

I was playing around with my own homemade optic filter, kinda weird and distorted, but fun.