Once in a Lifetime - Venus Transit

Hello everyone.  It has been too long since I posted anything, and I have a fair number of photos taken over the last month or two that I will post soon. But I had to put this one up!  Yesterday (June 5, 2012) was the Venus Transit -  an event during which the planet Venus passes directly between the Earth and the Sun so that the silhouette of Venus is visible against the disk of the Sun.  There has been a bunch of information in the news about this over the last couple of days so I won't get into that. So... given the rainy weather the last few days I did not expect to be able to see the event, but the skies cleared in the afternoon.  Just as it was about to start (literally, about to the minute), a rain cloud blocked out the skies again. Luckily the skies cleared and I was able to take this shot not too long before sunset.  Venus is the small dot in the upper right of the Sun. Enjoy.

View(s)

A little experimentation with alternative world views...

View

 Dark View

Altered View

Simplistic View

So... huh...

Here are a few recent shots that have really nothing to do with each other aside from being completely different. I have been striving to produce better images and I guess I am having mixed results.  I am gaining a better understanding of what needs to be fixed to make an image technically sound, but my ability to actually do it seems to be slower to develop. That is frustrating.

And then there is the question of what is art? What makes something aesthetically interesting and artistic? Why do I like some images and no one else seems to care for them? (And artistically, is 'indifference' by the viewer worse than a strong dislike of an image?) Why does "everybody" seem to like an image, while I am indifferent about it?

Anyway, here are some recent 'experiments':

No

Bumblebee

Deliberation

In a previous posting I showed the unedited version of a photo of a light post with the full moon just below the light itself.  After some number of hours of fiddling around with it, I removed the trees and a second light post that were present in the shot. I wanted this to have a very simple composition without the other elements distracting from the moon and light (though I did think about leaving the tree branches in the upper right corner). I also 'replaced' the over-exposed moon with a full moon from another photo (the perigee full moon, actually) and played with the sky a bit. I am not sure whether I am done with it, but here is the result: Moonlighting.

An improvement

Last time I said that I really wanted to get a good shot of a snowflake.  So here is my latest attempt. While it is not perfect in the photographic, technical sense, it is certainly an improvement over the previous shots I posted. I don't know how much better I can make it without drastically changing the "set-up" and way I take the shot.  Nevertheless, I will continue to play around with the equipment that I have and aspire to take "the photo."  If the snow comes back, that is.

Here are a few different versions that I have played around with on the computer.  Which do you like?

Snowflake (#3) [version a1, version a3, and version a4, respectively]

Winter

This has certainly been an odd winter so far. Not too much snow to speak of and it is late January, but here are a few shots of the white stuff. I really want to get a good shot of a snowflake. Here are a pair of my better attempts (I won't show you the other gazillion failed attempts), and a shot of a "lake effect" squall that moved through recently.

Snowflake (#1)

 Snowflake (#2)

 Squall

Troublesome questions…

Consistent fits and starts? Foci or follies? Expectation or execution? Vision or vapulation?

I am having some general angst about my photography lately, as you may have guessed from my questions above.  I want to keep this one short, so I think that each of these questions may be topics for future posts. Basically, these questions boil down to this: what the heck am I doing?  At this point, I just don’t know.  I feel as if I am simultaneously trying too hard and not doing enough. I guess I will just leave it at that for now.

Today's image is Solitary.