Photography

So… I’ve neglected the photography section of my blog for a long time. The truth is, I started out with a pretty decent Nikon CoolPix 5700… or it was cool, at least, when I bought it. When that broke, I downgraded to a tiny little Canon Elph. And when that broke, I started using just my Droid. Sadness. I even had the money saved up for a new camera, but couldn’t bring myself to actually buy it.

Then I got to take a few pictures at work. Kels let me borrow his camera, and this is what I got. Not the typical plants and bugs like I like to shoot, but the wannabe-industrial-designer in me had a heyday.

So… I bought a camera the next day. It’s a Canon 60d and I bought a nice Tamron lens to go with it. Just getting to know it now, but hopefully I’ll get some fun pictures posted soon.

Amid the wreckage
of clashing goals and deadlines,
I beheld the sky

Perspective

This was taken with my droid. I was laying on the grass at UVU, having just finished a lab project that left me with 45 minutes — not enough time to go back to work, but enough time (given all the many things I had to do that day), that I was in a total panic over wasting it. So at the advice of a good friend, I bought myself a brownie, laid down in the sun, and focused on remembering to breathe. And of course once I had the breathing part down, I took a picture, and wrote a poem.

Since I haven’t been blogging much lately, I figured I might as well share it here. Things will be a bit calmer for me soon: Blendtec’s old graphic designer suddenly quit while I was at South by Southwest, leaving several unfinished projects with looming deadlines. I’ve been pinch-hitting for almost a month now, and that’s been lots of fun. Quite the adventure, too, since I’ve been doing all kinds of things I’d never done before. I have to admit I’m terribly excited for our new designer to join us sometime in the next few weeks.

Now really, why DOES the moon look so much bigger with our eyes than it does with a camera? And why does it look so huge on the horizon, but tiny when it’s high in the sky? I read a web page once that speculated over some theories, and love this comic on the shrinking-moon camera phenomenon. Still, when I went to take out my recycling and saw this, I had to stop and TRY to take a picture. Or two. They don’t do it justice, but I’ll post them anyhow:

Moonrise over the neighbor's house using my corolla as a tripod. One of these days I'll buy a better camera than my Elph...

Moonrise through the maple tree, using my mailbox for stabilization...

I don’t know whether this was in direct response to my tweet or not, but just look what Aperture Science sent me for Valentine’s Day!

Did I ever tell you I love flowers? Yeah, I'm such a girl.

That’s my favorite of dozens of shots. Yeah, it’s safe to say I really dig flowers. And they were a very nice surprise, as I certainly wasn’t expecting anything for Valentine’s Day but the Blue Canary Nightlight I’d bought myself. And the card made me laugh, too. I still need to get a better picture of it, but you can find a printable version here… I got the dopamine one.

I asked the guy who introduced me to Portal (which I still need to finish, incidentally!) if he might know who sent them. His response: “I’m pretty sure the flowers are part of a malevolent social experiment by a twisted AI, but it’s always hard to tell with these things.” Well, twisted AI or not, the flowers are lovely.