Week of 3/21-3/27

This was from one of those moments where you know it's so memorable so you try to catch a really good shot of it to explain what it was. Try finding the shot that explains an unofficial saint patties day parade for a secret organization on the south side of Chicago with homemade floats powered by bicycles and alcohol... What an awesome time! (check out the rest of the photos here!)

Week of 3/14-3/20

The Mason Group poses around super Mitch on their way back from lunch (and crime fighting) while taking the long way... Had to choose this one if only for the pose!

Home for a bit...

Had the great opportunity to go home for the weekend. Maybe the shots aren't geographically telling--yes, there are mountains here as opposed to around Evanston--but at least they're taken in a different place.

I picked up my dad's 50mm f/1.8 lens which is really fun to use. It lets in a lot of light so it's good for indoor pics taking advantage of ambient light. Definitely noticing the fixed-zoom limitation though. I'm having to get up and walk much more than with the 18-55mm lens (in which case all I have to do is turn a dial and the frame is bigger or smaller). But, at least I'll get a chance to play around with it a bit.

Week of 3/6-3/13

I really can't emphasize enough how lucky I was when I got this shot. I passed the alley as the man turned on to it and by the time I got my camera up to my eye, I produced this exposure. When I went to make adjustments to the shutter and aperture and re-compose the shot, his shadow was in the wrong place and he was too far from me. It really pays to have the camera out (with the lens cap off) and ready to take pictures. Scott Kelby calls it the "never ready" cap since you're never ready to take pictures for the 1 second you take to remove it and put the camera to your eye.

Before this project, I would have been walking around with my camera in its bag and would have totally missed this shot. Another photographer (the name escapes me) advocated readiness and said he walks around with his camera everywhere because he never knows what he's going to shoot. I can definitely speak to that as I almost never end up using what I thought I wanted a picture of for a given day. This also allowed him to get some of his 'work' done while going about his normal day-to-day activities without having to set time up for going out and taking pictures. Indeed, the times I've gone out to hunt for pictures have often been the least rewarding. Alternatively, if I go out and look for "that thing I saw yesterday that would make a nice easy shot for today" it almost never grabs me in the same way. OR I end up finding something much cooler on my way to or from my initial "target."

Week of 2/28-3/6

This involved doing something I wouldn't normally have done were it not for this project (or if I had had a tripod on me). I set my camera on the ground and stood next to it (cupping my thumb over the viewfinder to keep light from entering the camera body through the backdoor) and set to a long exposure. When I go back and re-take this photo, I'll have a tripod and will play around with the placement of the stained glass with relation to the car trails.