We had another rainy and rather cool day today so I stayed indoors. We even got some snow today! Typically, what I do on days like today is start at the piano, then do my daily physical therapy, then do some sort of photography or art project, make something for lunch and then nap in the afternoon. I mostly did that today too but I don't think I had any time at the piano.
Instead of my usual time at the piano, I chose to review whatever photos I've shot over the past month or so to see if there was anything worth sharing. I came up with a few.
These first two photos were shot out the moving car passenger window using my little Fuji X30 compact camera. This first one is Mt Mansfield from our road. I like the snow-capped Mt Mansfield starkly contrasting with the trees and grass in the foreground...
This next one is perhaps my least favorite mountain anywhere in the world... Camel's Hump. There is just something about this mountain that rubs me the wrong way. That being said, being that I shot this from a low elevation pointing upward and the summit was snow covered and peaking above the foreground which had no snow made for a nice photo...
As I was sitting on the couch watching television late one afternoon, the sun was catching the rim of one of my lens caps so I captured a photo of it sort of glowing on a darkened shelf next to the television. In 2003, Konica and Minolta merged to form Konica Minolta. In 2006, Sony acquired Konica Minolta... so there is some direct lineage behind this old Konica lens being mounted on one of my Sony camera bodies... and it is a combination I like to use...
I opened the living room window with the intention of capturing a photo or two of birds but I couldn't find a single bird anywhere. Instead, I pointed the camera upwards and shot a test photo of an insulator on a nearby utility pole. I liked the way the soft clouds were positioned nicely in the background to allow the wire to stand out prominently. I also like the detail in the dry, rough wood of the utility pole which contrasts nicely with the creamy sky and clouds...
Below is another photo of the sun that I captured just the other day. I shared two other photos in a blog post on that same day.
I had screwed 15 stops of neutral density filters (two filters) on one of my lenses and figured the sun would be a good target to capture. I really wanted to do a long exposure but there was nothing interesting that would benefit from a long exposure so I turned the camera safely toward the sun. Without these filters on my lens, this would not have been safe to do.
The sun is behind fast moving clouds. In hindsight, it would have been cool to capture some video of the clouds moving across in front of the sun. Surprisingly, I captured quite a bit of detail in this very quick and unplanned photo. You can plainly see quite a few sunspots visible and even some fine granulation is visible. The clouds sort of make this photo of the sun appear as though it is really a planet! I could probably claim this is a photo of Mars and few would call me out on it thinking it really is really a great photo of Mars!
My Sony a7rIIIa was sitting on the coffee table with a very nice and exceptionally sharp Zeiss lens mounted on it. The sun was shining through the living room window behind the camera so I thought it would make a nice backlit monochrome image. This was shot in monochrome mode using a Leica lens.
I typically lean toward creating contrasty images but I'm beginning to like the lower contrast look of film more as I get older. This monochrome image has the look of a milder contrast black and white film sort of like what I can attain with an Ilford FP4+ high speed film. Of course, I like almost any photo of a classic piece of photography gear with the name Zeiss, Leica, Hasselblad, or Mamiya on it which is on some of my own gear...
One of these days, I'd really like to get out and about with some camera gear for the specific purpose of shooting some landscape images rather than just capturing images of anything that is right in front of me. I'm missing my days just trekking around on my bicycle searching for a beautiful landscape to capture.
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