The new environs

 Getting my crafting done is a bonus on the weekend and Sunday is a good day to do it.
Summer is a good time to take advantage of the fine weather early in the morning heading off with my camera and capturing different aspects from the Walk to Work photos I've been posting on Facebook.

Having walked last Saturday along 120th Street to the crafting evening I decided to head back along that way and walk through different parts of the neighborhood.
One for my collection of photos of "Stoop Sitters"

 The variety in architecture on the buildings in Harlem is fabulous.

People are out and about having brunch and early morning coffee

 The walk through Marcus Garvey Park was interesting and I certainly won't go back to one particular part which was the drug distribution area with I'd say 6-8 dealers marking out their spots at the top of the hill...very silent for the number of people there just waiting...

 The Richard Rogers stage all ready for the Shakespearean theatre piece which would have been rained out on Saturday night I suspect.

The park also has a large pool with life guards and an area for "beach volley ball".

Harlem has its very own Flatiron building on the corner of St Nicholas Avenue and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, just around the corner from our new home.

Asymmetrical

Asymmetry is the absence of, or a violation of, symmetry (the property of an object being invariant to a transformation, such as reflection). Symmetry is an important property of both physical and abstract systems and it may be displayed in precise terms or in more aesthetic terms. With this in mind and my efforts to document "my story" I looked around my apartment to document some of my things and their asymmetrical nature.

A bit of Australia in my kitchen :).

The coffee table that swings out and around.

My chaise lounge that I love.

Branches

How perfect is this prompt on the day I went to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens :).
I was right about the magnolias being perfect there having read the signs during the week with the magnolias out outside the school. The daffodils were also blooming a sure sign of Easter. How many views of branches can I use...lots :).

My Muse

When I saw today's prompt I kept thinking how the heck am I going to do this one as I couldn't think who or what my muse was. However it was when I thought of photography I know instinctively that it is Edward Hopper who is my muse.

This is a photograph of downloaded images and a book I own :)

Hopper derived his subject matter from two primary sources:  one, the common features of American life (gas stations, motels, restaurants, theaters, railroads, and street scenes) and its inhabitants; and two, seascapes and rural landscapes. Regarding his style, Hopper defined himself as "an amalgam of many races" and not a member of any school, particularly the "Ashcan School".[67] Once Hopper achieved his mature style, his art remained consistent and self-contained, in spite of the numerous art trends that came and went during his long career.

It is the urban-scapes that I "channel" from his work. His slice of life through windows....

Urban architecture and cityscapes also were major subjects for Hopper. He was fascinated with the American urban scene, "our native architecture with its hideous beauty, its fantastic roofs, pseudo-gothic, French Mansard, Colonial, mongrel or what not, with eye-searing color or delicate harmonies of faded paint, shouldering one another along interminable streets that taper off into swamps or dump heaps.

Most of Hopper's figure paintings focus on the subtle interaction of human beings with their environment—carried out with solo figures, couples, or groups. His primary emotional themes are solitude, loneliness, regret, boredom, and resignation. He expresses the emotions in various environments, including the office, in public places, in apartments, on the road, or on vacation.[74] As if he were creating stills for a movie or tableaux in a play, Hopper positioned his characters as if they were captured just before or just after the climax of a scene.

Together with Hopper it is also Henri Cartier-Bresson's work that feature in my mind as I'm trying to capture some aspect of urban and city life. 

Shutter speed

In “Shutter Priority” mode, you manually set the camera’s shutter speed and the camera automatically picks the right aperture for you, based on the amount of light that passes through the lens. This mode is intended to be used when motion needs to be frozen or intentionally blurred. If there is too much light, the camera will increase the lens aperture to a higher number, which decreases the amount of light that passes through the lens. If there is not enough light, the camera will decrease the aperture to the lowest number, so that more light passes through the lens. So in Shutter Priority mode, the shutter speed stays the same (what you set it to), while aperture automatically increases and decreases, based on the amount of light. In addition, there is no control over subject isolation, because you are letting the camera control the depth of field.

I try not to use this mode either, because there is a risk of getting an overexposed or underexposed image. Why? Because if the amount of ambient light is not sufficient and I set the shutter speed to a really high number, my exposure will be limited to the aperture/speed of my lens. For example, if the maximum aperture of my lens is f/4.0, the camera will not be able to use a lower aperture than f/4.0 and will still shoot at the fast shutter speed that I manually set. The result will be an underexposed image. At the same time, if I use a very slow shutter speed when there is plenty of light, the image will be overexposed and blown out. 

With this in mind I took advantage of this and so used the concept of movement with slower shutter speed to take this shot :).

Focused

An opportunity to have a bit of a mess around with photos and focussing. 

Used the Big Lens app to get the short depth of field and the color of the background. 

The little blue bird looks quite happy really :)

Though I'd also have a go at using waterlogue app again as it has proved very useful in creating sources of pics for my art journaling.

Frosty ?....

So today's weather forecast is for 58F (11C +) so hardly frosty weather although is that frosty weather in Melbourne? I'm losing the plot and heading down that slippery slope of not knowing the difference between what Im experiencing and reality of being Australian :) Eeek!
However to get back to the photo challenge of the day- it is one of the warmer days of the season and I thought perhaps I could do the Frosty-ing of cupcakes (another slippery slope-it's icing) but the subway worked against my possible trip to Magnolia Bakery to take "frosting" shots.

I have "settled" for practicing the techniques from my new online course- PractiSing 2016- Katrina Kennedy's inspirational class that goes over 52 weeks and gives practicing techniques for a range of photographic skills and challenges. I only joined over the weekend but think I have made it into the time frame with a day to spare so to speak.
Given there was not the frosty opportunities I had in mind I decided to practice my depth of field pieces a la Katrina's class .

I did here starting exercises in writing and found some interesting ideas within my own thinking that enabled me to try these two shots for "starting"- the theme for January :).

These photos seem appropriate as most Saturdays I have spent exploring my Documented Life Project materials and Art Journaling projects.

40 secret iphone features

The gorgeous Bridie shared the 40 Secret iphone features with me and the one that I immediately started using was using the volume button as a shutter release. 

Needless to say I had yet to get out of bed when I read the article so this was the first shot i took using my new found knowledge

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took this one sharing it with Mary

1. Use Your + Volume Button as a Shutter on Your iPhone…

Taking a picture by holding your iPhone with just one hand is an easy way to get out of focus images. Fix it by holding your iPhone with two hands horizontally, and then push down the + button usually reserved for raising the volume. Now you’ve got a stable picture!

Here is the whole article

New day, new month, new chance....

I decided to give myself a new chance to get back into my blogging- poor choice of a time really when I head off to Australia on July 2 but one shouldn't beat oneself up over these sort of things.

June was a busy month and the end of it was my "exhibition" at the end of another photography class. The theme I had chosen was "From the Ground Up"  - thanks to Sue and Bernadette for pushing me to start up this one- I thought to do it at first and before even starting it found I was putting myself off it. Then I started and it morphed into a night photography thing so here are my photos in a fairly basic state.

The Brill Building on Broadway

The Broadway Grill

In Times Square

At the Rockefeller Centre

Front of the Rockefeller Centre

The Paramount Building

A new month a new chance...

... to try and blog a lot!

Okay for a photo I took of myself!

Sunday is the day I am launching my only personal countdown- so perhaps if you are interested call in here and I will lead you to it.

Having thought about what I might chat on about today- having not chatted on for quite a while I thought I'd go to the list thing but in the process of doing that I thought ten things is too much to think about on a Friday afternoon so perhaps I'd do Five Fings on Friday but better still why not stop butchering the English language for my own conveniec of alliteration and find my "Five Favourite Photographs". Too hard!

So I have "Friday's Five Favourite Photographs of Friends"

A weekend away a few years ago

My mum saying farewell to the bush

Sue trying to get her computer fixed

Ah the Juicy Lucys

Online in line

Afternoon light

The changing light patterns over the day give  amazing colours and reflections of building on other buildings. Gave me an excuse to muck around with the new camera and the new knowledge from the photography course.

The pink tinged sky reflection provides a pink tinge to the building

As the light drops the detail in the reflections changes

The "exhibition" photos

These are the ones that made the cut.

The class project was to take photos each week to bring to class to have them critiqued and help us develop the skills we had learned in class. I learned so much - the change in the photos and my confidence in shooting them was very satisfying. I realized when I was putting them all together that each one represents some of the things I had learned along the way. 

The project I selected was "Grand Central"- getting the light right without using flash and on manual settings was my first challenge. 

Early in the class using shutter speed to effect

Taken during our week of portraits of strangers

Inspired by the work of Henri Cartier Besson

The depth of field class helped get the police and the travelers in shot

Looking through the window in the info booth- a different angle

I tried to get a photographer in focus the previous week and then this opportunity arose