Paradise Lost: Ice Castles are Burning (Juxtaposition Homework)

May 6, 2013 | Author: Carol Anne

It took me quite a while to decide what I wanted to shoot for my juxtaposition assignment. I didn’t know what do. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go political or pop culture or just funny. In the end I went with a mix of elements and politics. Nero fiddled while Rome burned and our politicians argue semantics while our country goes to hell in a handbasket.

Working on this assignment (exploring juxtaposition) helped me to improve my photography skills because these shots didn’t just happen. I had to think about what I wanted to shoot, I had to go buy sandcastle molds, fill them with water and freeze them, figure out how to keep them stable in the freezer so they didn’t tip over while they froze, I spent a considerable amount of time trying to decide when and where I’d shoot the photos without burning myself or burning the house down — VERY IMPORTANT —, I had to set up the shoot and take the photos. A lot of time and thinking about taking and making photos went into this assignment.

I used 91% rubbing alcohol (bought at Target) to light the fire. I poured the alcohol over the ice castle. At first I couldn’t get it to light and was stumped but then I took a chance and tried to light the pavement rather than the ice itself and the alcohol finally lit.

I cropped this in both iPhoto and Picasa and applied the soft focus effect in Picasa.

Earlier Versions:

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On Faith & Divine Mercy

April 7, 2013 | Author: Carol Anne

Sunset after mass, Sunday, April 7, 2013

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday. The priest said in his sermon tonight that God meets us where we are. I’ll add that to the thoughts that have been running through my head this week.

I’ve been struggling with the deaths of several people I grew up with/went to school with, all of whom were of similar ages. In the last three years I’ve survived two major surgeries, four minor surgeries, and 32 radiation treatments. I’m a little more than one-year cancer-free and I know that it could have been me. I could have been any one of the three who died. I’m grieving for the loss of the cocoon of invincibility that youth and good health provide.

Tonight by the grace of God’s divine mercy and the power of prayer I’m alive and well and grateful for my life. I’ll work the rest out as I go.

Posted in Major Surgery & the Road to Recovery, Spiritual Ramblings | Leave a Comment

words and thoughts

April 6, 2013 | Author: Carol Anne

words and thoughts that have been running through my head this week…

With love we are healed.
— me

The deepest cuts are healed by faith.
— Pat Benatar

Tomorrow we are all undefeated again.
— Some Super Bowl commercial

Easter gives meaning to human existence.
— Father Antony Savari Muthu
(12:15pm mass Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013)

Posted in Pointless Ramblings | 1 Comment

Buddha by Candlelight (quality of light homework)

March 21, 2013 | Author: Carol Anne

Buddha by Candlelight in my Garage

The assignment this week was color and quality of light. We had several qualities of light we could choose to shoot for the assignment, I chose low light. I was working on this assignment when I saw an amazing photo while checking out the photography blogs nominated for Bloggies this year. One of the opening photos on Canvas of Light is this amazing photo that just took my breath away. It captured my imagination and inspired me. Go ahead, go take a gander at the gorgeous photo that inspired me. I’ll wait. It’s gorgeous, right?

So back to my assignment, like I said I chose low light as my example of quality of light image for this week’s assignment. One of the suggestions for low light was candlelight so with this photo living in my head I decided to recreate it using a statue of the Blessed Mother. Two problems arose; 1. The religious goods store across the street didn’t open on Saturday, and 2. It poured all night Monday when I wanted to set up and take the photos.

So with no statue of the Blessed Mother to use I was at a loss as to what to use as the subject of my photo, I have 2 gargoyles but I wasn’t going for a dark feeling for this photograph. I have a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, but I wasn’t feeling that look either. On Sunday afternoon I stopped in the dollar store to buy tea lights for the photo shoot, 3 bags of 16 for $3.21. While we were at the dollar store we stopped in PetSmart to buy cat food and that’s where I purchased the Buddha statue, in the aquarium aisle. With the problem of what to photograph solved we made our way to Target for groceries. While in Target I bought two pieces of poster board to use as a backdrop if none of my outside ideas came to fruition.

I shot this one using a technique I learned in class, zooming in and out while taking the photo.

Monday evening arrived and instead of it raining all day it rained all night, so my plans to shoot the photo on my front walkway or in my side yard were no longer an option. So I went to plan C, I set up the black poster board on my kitchen counter so my background was black and so it wouldn’t look like a photo shot on my kitchen counter. Immediately a problem arose, our smoke detector couldn’t handle all 48 of the tea lights burning at the same time. It was at this point I lost my mind and threw a tantrum.

Chuck came to my rescue and set up a card table out in the garage and so once again I set up my black poster board (so it wouldn’t look like a photo shot on a card table in a garage) and lit 48 tea lights, which is way more time consuming than one would think. I set Buddha down in the middle, went back inside and retrieved my camera and tripod and started shooting for the next two hours. The photo I turned in for my assignment is the top photo in this post.

The Details

1.  Top Photo

Shot in Aperture Priority mode

Exposure:  1/13th of a second

Aperture:  f/4.5

ISO:  100

Focal length:  60 mm (macro lens)

Exposure bias:  -1/3 EV

2.  Middle Photo

Shot in Aperture Priority mode

Exposure:  5 seconds

Aperture:  f/29.0

ISO:  100

Focal length:  60 mm (macro lens)

Exposure bias:  -2/3 EV

3.  Bottom Photo

Shot in Aperture Priority mode

Exposure:  13 seconds

Aperture:  f/29.0

ISO:  100

Focal length:  34 mm (18-55mm kit lens)

Exposure bias:  +1 EV

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After the Darkness, Before the Light (Deep Thoughts on Toy Test & the Meaning of Life)

March 17, 2013 | Author: Carol Anne

I took the above photo earlier this morning during the blue hour; it’s my favorite time of day. It’s the only time of day or night where the earth is neither fully light nor fully dark. It’s the time in between when anything is possible.

The title  —After the Darkness, Before the Light— shook loose a few things that have been rambling around my head for the past few months, which gave birth to today’s thoughts on where I’ve been and where to go from here.

Once upon a time I was the resources editor for our local parenting magazine. I spent eight years compiling the calendars and writing features about holiday and seasonal happenings, but my real love was the annual toy test feature, an 11-month labor of love. Starting in January and working straight through November I researched toys and the companies who made them, read trade publications, magazines and press releases, searched the web for the newest and coolest toys. In February I made my annual visit to Toy Fair in New York City, where I met with toy companies and wandered the floors of the Javits Center visiting booth after booth watching amazing toy demonstrations. The rest of year was spent researching and requesting and cataloging the toys we received for testing. You haven’t lived until your job includes opening endless boxes of new toys for the holiday season. The UPS man hated me, but I suspect a few of my coworkers enjoyed the endless toy deliveries. October brought about toy testing and the writing of the toy test feature.

One year we held the toy test at a local mall. This just might have been the most fun I’ve ever had while at work. We had local sports mascots and Disney Karaoke, goody bags full of neat little toys and CDs and books and assorted trinkets. We had lots and lots of toys to test and lots of little toy testers and their parents; mall patrons could test even more toys. I was so proud to have put together and pulled off such an amazing event. The publisher even had lunch brought in that next week because she was so happy with the event’s success.

I left my job in 2008 for any number of reasons but mostly because I was feeling burnt out. It’s been a little more than four years now and in that time I’ve survived six surgeries, three of them major, 32 radiation treatments, and countless medical tests.

I recently completed a journalism class and am currently taking a digital photography class at my local community college, both of which have helped to reignite my creativity.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about what I want to be when I grow up and what it is that I want to do with my life and I keep coming back to my beloved toy test and a feature I created shortly before I left, Hot! Hot! Hot! It was part of the news and notes section of the magazine, it asked local children’s shop owners what was selling well and what products parents were loving and what they thought would be the big trends for the coming season. It was a tough feature to put together because print magazines have such a long lead-time and some of the information would be out of date or speculative. I always thought this would make for a fantastic web feature.

So where do I go from here? Honestly, I don’t know.

  • Is there a job out there for someone who loves to write about fun stuff like events and Halloween happenings and new products and what’s hot in stores right now?
  • Can a blog make money?
  • Can a website?
  • Do I want to work for someone else?
  • Do I want to go my own way?

I don’t know the answers to any of the above questions. I have a lot to think about.

A few weeks ago a girl I graduated high school with died after being hit by a car while out jogging. The only way I can even begin to make sense of this tragedy is to believe that her story was meant to end here, that it was somehow already completed. I don’t know. I can’t get the thought out of my head that it could very well have been my story that ended and if my story wasn’t meant to end almost three years ago, what’s my next chapter? Where do I pick up the story line? I don’t honestly know, but I can’t help feeling that I need to literally and figuratively pick up the pen and start writing my story again in order to be worthy of my story not ending on that October day.

Posted in Soul Baring Ramblings | 4 Comments