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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.
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I don't often cut someone's head off in a picture... in fact, when I took this quick photo on a Saturday morning walk, I included my daughter's entire body and was just hoping the combination of that plus her reflection in the water would be somewhat interesting.
The unaltered photo was okay, but I find this cropped version much more captivating. It's like the speed bump acts as a divider between reality (the top half of the photo), and some impressionistic view of reality as reflected in the puddle. You don't get the entire story in either part of the picture... you're forced to piece it together yourself by examining both halves. Tasty.
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My daughter is full blown toddler now. The baby fat is mostly gone, replaced by strong muscles and an even stronger sense of self. It constantly amazes me how much this kid talks - and even more so the deep meaning and level of reasoning behind her words. She is the constant debater and negotiator - producing rather convincing arguments on things like why she should be able to get the sugar coated vitamins rather than the plain ones.
I attribute her self confidence to a number of things: a mom who is equally confident, Montessori school and gymnastics - along with the fact that I was able to stay home with her for the first six months of her life, and her mom for the first two years.
Two of my wife's sisters are credited with starting the radical cheerleading movement (one of them is now a city commissioner). And so, while my daughter was still in the womb, I came up with a radical cheer of my own for her (my apologies to fans of the Flintstones):
"Tough like Bamm-Bamm, sweet like Pebbles, mess with me and you've got troubles."
It's a silly rhyme that didn't mean anything other than me wanting my daughter to be a strong and caring person. It looks like she's turning out to be exactly that, and I'm very proud of her.
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Taken at Leu Gardens in Winter Park, FL - I really liked the strong abstract pattern of the shadow cast by this table, along with the repetition of diagonal lines. To me, this is a very satisfying image... something I can look at for a long time and notice new patterns, or how different things in the image line up.
A couple of people have suggested that I should have moved the chair that cast the shadow in the upper left... but I like how it throws off the symmetry.
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Taken in February 2006, my family and I were at a toddler friends birthday party and young Sara here was walking around and carrying an assortment of balloons. She stepped into light shining in from a set of high windows which created hard shadows on her face... and her hair was standing up due to static electricity from balloons above her head.
She looks rather bewildered, but I think she was just starting to squint a little bit from the light.
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Sunlight shines through blocks of colored glass inside the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel at Florida Southern College. This chapel and many of the buildings on campus were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright starting in the late 1930's.
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According to Scorecard.org, this power plant is the third worst polluter in Palm Beach County, Florida - releasing thousands of pounds of harmful chemicals such as sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid into the air every year.
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A diver returns to the boat after scraping a sponge off of the sea floor. This was part of a boat tour in Tarpon Springs showing what it was like for sponge divers in the 1930s.
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