149. Trash - April 10-23, 2016
Don-
This is the entrance to an area that I do a fair bit
of photography. Last week while entering to get a
tree pic I once again saw a lot of trash dumping.
So I thought that trash might be an acceptable theme.
This is the entrance to an area that I do a fair bit
of photography. Last week while entering to get a
tree pic I once again saw a lot of trash dumping.
So I thought that trash might be an acceptable theme.
Byron-
This isn't exactly the picture I had in mind. I thought it would be a picture of the truck with a blur of the trash can being lifted to the top of the truck. I got that picture but I liked this one better. It was an overcast day so that helped with a long exposure. I attached a neutral density filter to the lens. With my remote in hand, I made a series of photos as the truck approached and did its thing. This was my favorite. In the other photos the truck is emphasized and the trash is a blur that can't easily be identified. In this photo I enjoyed how features such as the license plate and front bumper became extruded, 3D looking objects.
ISO 100, f11, 1/4 sec, ND filter, camera on tripod, 18mm focal length.
This isn't exactly the picture I had in mind. I thought it would be a picture of the truck with a blur of the trash can being lifted to the top of the truck. I got that picture but I liked this one better. It was an overcast day so that helped with a long exposure. I attached a neutral density filter to the lens. With my remote in hand, I made a series of photos as the truck approached and did its thing. This was my favorite. In the other photos the truck is emphasized and the trash is a blur that can't easily be identified. In this photo I enjoyed how features such as the license plate and front bumper became extruded, 3D looking objects.
ISO 100, f11, 1/4 sec, ND filter, camera on tripod, 18mm focal length.
Deron-
This photo is a re-creation of an autobiographical incident that happened earlier this week. I am being portrayed by Sam Crawford. For safety purposes this is not the road that the incident took place on.
So, I was riding down the busy Alessandro Avenue in Riverside. I needed to make a left turn on Sycamore Canyon, so I looked back and saw traffic was coming, but if I gave it a good kick I could make it to the corner before the cars got to me.
I got out of the saddle and boosted my speed up to about 30 mph, when, to my chagrin, my right knee hit my phone which was mounted on my bike. The phone launched off my bike and cartwheeled onto Alessandro. After traffic passed and the coast was clear, I went back for it just to find it in the condition you see in the photo. My Samsung met it's demise at the hands/wheels of a 2013 Ford Explorer.
This photo is a re-creation of an autobiographical incident that happened earlier this week. I am being portrayed by Sam Crawford. For safety purposes this is not the road that the incident took place on.
So, I was riding down the busy Alessandro Avenue in Riverside. I needed to make a left turn on Sycamore Canyon, so I looked back and saw traffic was coming, but if I gave it a good kick I could make it to the corner before the cars got to me.
I got out of the saddle and boosted my speed up to about 30 mph, when, to my chagrin, my right knee hit my phone which was mounted on my bike. The phone launched off my bike and cartwheeled onto Alessandro. After traffic passed and the coast was clear, I went back for it just to find it in the condition you see in the photo. My Samsung met it's demise at the hands/wheels of a 2013 Ford Explorer.
Kevin-
When Don announced this Trash theme my mind immediately went to thinking of bottles of CocaCola in a garbage can. But having produced that image already for WPOTM - Week 109 - Product Placement I needed a new idea!
Fortunately I had been to Desert Center, California a few days earlier to capture my image for WPOTM - Week 147 - Tree. You may recall how sad and desolate the dead palm trees looked in that photo. But that was nothing compared to the rest of Desert Center. So I made another trip out there.
I photographed a number of abandoned buildings in the area. But what I really wanted to capture was the former Desert Center Elementary School, which closed many years ago. I thought I knew where it was visually on Google Maps, but with no address listed anywhere I wasn’t certain.
Arriving there I found a couple of minor problems. On was that the school was 400 or 500 feet from the “street. The other was that all of the doors into the school were on the opposite side of the building. This meant I would be walking past a “No Trespassing” sign, to a place where I wouldn’t be visible from a road (a road that almost no one travels along anyway), taking photos of the inside of a former school that has probably served as a crashing point for homeless people and/or a crack house and/or a meth lab, or..., well you get the idea. So what did I do? I got brave and made that walk.
A building can be trash. And when the inside of the building is filled with chairs, pianos, broken glass, building debris, graffiti and every other kind of trash you can imagine, it’s, well, trashy. This photo is simply looking inside of one of the no-longer there doors into the school. I had brought along flash units, light stands, etc. thinking there might be a great chance to make the image look more dramatic. But when I found the distance I would have cover, alone, over multiple trips carrying gear back and forth between the car and the school, and realized that I couldn’t muster the courage to actually walk inside of the building, I decided it was time to take a handheld available light shot. Perhaps next year I will return with the Mighty Braton and do a better job.
Nikon D4s, handheld, 14-24mm Nikkor lens set to 14mm. ISO 6400, f/8 @ 1/320th of a second. Yes I could have lowered the shutter speed in order to lower the ISO. But some of the other rooms of the school that I had just shot were darker and I guess that rather than fiddling any longer I simply wanted to get out of there.
When Don announced this Trash theme my mind immediately went to thinking of bottles of CocaCola in a garbage can. But having produced that image already for WPOTM - Week 109 - Product Placement I needed a new idea!
Fortunately I had been to Desert Center, California a few days earlier to capture my image for WPOTM - Week 147 - Tree. You may recall how sad and desolate the dead palm trees looked in that photo. But that was nothing compared to the rest of Desert Center. So I made another trip out there.
I photographed a number of abandoned buildings in the area. But what I really wanted to capture was the former Desert Center Elementary School, which closed many years ago. I thought I knew where it was visually on Google Maps, but with no address listed anywhere I wasn’t certain.
Arriving there I found a couple of minor problems. On was that the school was 400 or 500 feet from the “street. The other was that all of the doors into the school were on the opposite side of the building. This meant I would be walking past a “No Trespassing” sign, to a place where I wouldn’t be visible from a road (a road that almost no one travels along anyway), taking photos of the inside of a former school that has probably served as a crashing point for homeless people and/or a crack house and/or a meth lab, or..., well you get the idea. So what did I do? I got brave and made that walk.
A building can be trash. And when the inside of the building is filled with chairs, pianos, broken glass, building debris, graffiti and every other kind of trash you can imagine, it’s, well, trashy. This photo is simply looking inside of one of the no-longer there doors into the school. I had brought along flash units, light stands, etc. thinking there might be a great chance to make the image look more dramatic. But when I found the distance I would have cover, alone, over multiple trips carrying gear back and forth between the car and the school, and realized that I couldn’t muster the courage to actually walk inside of the building, I decided it was time to take a handheld available light shot. Perhaps next year I will return with the Mighty Braton and do a better job.
Nikon D4s, handheld, 14-24mm Nikkor lens set to 14mm. ISO 6400, f/8 @ 1/320th of a second. Yes I could have lowered the shutter speed in order to lower the ISO. But some of the other rooms of the school that I had just shot were darker and I guess that rather than fiddling any longer I simply wanted to get out of there.
Paul-
Let’s cover the backstory first…
In early 2001, National Public Radio ran a story about a man in Brooklyn who had gotten fed up with the many plastic bags blown up into in tree branches in his neighborhood. We’ve all seen these eyesores, and tree branches are particularly merciless in keeping a wooden grip on all this plastic detritus for a very long time.
Enough. Stuff like that just had to go…so thought this fellow.
So this Big Applelian started a…well, tree-roots movement (consisting initially of himself) to rid as many trees as he could of the flapping, shredded, arboreally-tortured litter. He soon found he’d need a special tool to reach a lot of higher stuff and efficiently collect it. So he invented one. (Bravo. This is the same indomitable spirit that gave us the light bulb, penicillin, and those kitchen clocks shaped like a cat with moving eyes.) Not surprisingly, his efforts eventually drew a lot of volunteers and (if I remember correctly) regional groups in different parts of the United States dedicated to the same civic cause.
So, when I was in Kansas City last weekend and saw this sight, I remembered that story and thought this would be a good submission. Trash (as in refuse) can be depicted in any number of ways. I thought this photo captured the mess for what it is, while at the same time doing so in a minimal and almost sculpted way.
I also look at it and think, “Wow, that tree netted itself a rare, ground-hugging, flying jellyfish!” Go figure.
And in this episode: 18-55mm lens set at 55mm; aperture priority; ISO 800; center-weight average, EV-.33; 1/500 sec. at f/18.
Let’s cover the backstory first…
In early 2001, National Public Radio ran a story about a man in Brooklyn who had gotten fed up with the many plastic bags blown up into in tree branches in his neighborhood. We’ve all seen these eyesores, and tree branches are particularly merciless in keeping a wooden grip on all this plastic detritus for a very long time.
Enough. Stuff like that just had to go…so thought this fellow.
So this Big Applelian started a…well, tree-roots movement (consisting initially of himself) to rid as many trees as he could of the flapping, shredded, arboreally-tortured litter. He soon found he’d need a special tool to reach a lot of higher stuff and efficiently collect it. So he invented one. (Bravo. This is the same indomitable spirit that gave us the light bulb, penicillin, and those kitchen clocks shaped like a cat with moving eyes.) Not surprisingly, his efforts eventually drew a lot of volunteers and (if I remember correctly) regional groups in different parts of the United States dedicated to the same civic cause.
So, when I was in Kansas City last weekend and saw this sight, I remembered that story and thought this would be a good submission. Trash (as in refuse) can be depicted in any number of ways. I thought this photo captured the mess for what it is, while at the same time doing so in a minimal and almost sculpted way.
I also look at it and think, “Wow, that tree netted itself a rare, ground-hugging, flying jellyfish!” Go figure.
And in this episode: 18-55mm lens set at 55mm; aperture priority; ISO 800; center-weight average, EV-.33; 1/500 sec. at f/18.
Jerry-
The first idea that came to mind after Don picked trash, was "trash can". This is one of those old galvanized steel cans that came with my old house back in North Minneapolis and I just couldn't part with it. I now keep bird seed in it and it keeps the squirrels from breaking in. This is simply a close up of the handle.
D750 with 24-70 at 70mm. 1/100 @ f11, ISO 1600.
The first idea that came to mind after Don picked trash, was "trash can". This is one of those old galvanized steel cans that came with my old house back in North Minneapolis and I just couldn't part with it. I now keep bird seed in it and it keeps the squirrels from breaking in. This is simply a close up of the handle.
D750 with 24-70 at 70mm. 1/100 @ f11, ISO 1600.