Architectural Abstracts

I officially started my quest to make a photo book as part of SoFoBoMo last weekend. I've decided that my theme will be "Architectural Abstracts" - inspired by photographer Amanda George as I mentioned in my last post. This photo is one of the first images I took.

I must admit that the theme was partially chosen due to my time constraints. Taking photos of parts of buildings that I find interesting is something I can do while going about a normal weekend. It's not something I have to plan a lot for... I don't really need to schedule in an entire day or even half a day for a specific location. In fact, most of the photos I have so far were just taken while on a trip with the family to buy some new clothes at an outdoor shopping mall.

At first I was feeling frustrated that I wasn't going to have time to plan this all out more - to produce a real book that other people would be interested in. However, I really had a lot of fun taking photos over the weekend and have realized that my personal satisfaction is what's important.

It has also been interesting trying something different. I've never really looked so closely at buildings before - or the shadows they produce. You really can find beauty anywhere, if you just take the time to look.

I've discovered that I love my Canon G7 for taking photos like this. It's small, unobtrusive and versatile. I can't exactly say the same thing for my DSLR kit. The style of photos I'm taking requires that everything be in focus, which suits the Canon G7 well. To get the same results with a DSLR I'd probably either need a tripod (so I could stop down to f/11 - f/16 or so), or an expensive lens with image stabilization. The G7 gains points since it has image stabilization built in. The obvious downside is that the G7's images can be a bit noisy, but I'm shooting everything at ISO 80 so it's not very noticeable... and I don't think it will show up in the small prints that will be in the book.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be adding some of the more interesting photos to this new "Architectural Abstracts" section of the gallery.