Word of the Week – Books

One of the aspects of the Olympia Camera Club that I really enjoy is how club activities encourage us to go beyond our comfort zone. For example, the first word of the week for January was books. My challenge was to come up with a creative way to illustrate books.

For me, books represent the communication of ideas, so I started coming up with a list of ways in which communication has progressed over time. I ended up with image above. The howling wolf on the pillow, hard-bound books, paperback books and last but not least, the kindle.

Books are old friends, to be treasured, read over and over, and shared with human friends. In short, communication.

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Water Drop Experiments

 

Originally published on 01/16/2016

For the past two weeks I have been experimenting with how to take pictures of water dropping into a bowl. It has been a humbling experience; it is a lot more difficult than it appears. I started using a turkey baster to produce my drops. It was too difficult to get the drops to fall evenly. So, I built an apparatus using a pump siphon and some old chemistry equipment I had hanging around the garage. Unfortunately, using that equipment has justified the collection of junk I maintain. 🙂  I channeled my chemistry/physics teacher inner self by keeping a lab book of my attempts.

Learning how to do new things is an excellent way to review and improve your photography skills. It is a reminder that we all had to start somewhere with lots of trials and tribulations. Even though this does not represent my best work, it does demonstrate the first steps in becoming proficient in a new photography technique. I will post more in the future on how the water drop adventure is progressing.

Here is one image that sort of worked. The water was coming out in a stream. That’s why there are so many bubbles. This was an excellent way to explore using my new camera with an extension tube. I think that I will buy a burette to make the drops drip better for my next round of experimentation.

 

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Frost

Originally published on 01/04/2016

This is the year I became fascinated with frost. We started having frosts in late November; lots of clear, cold, and sunny days. Each day I’d admire the frost on the ornamental plants around the coffee Kiosk. And so of course I began driving with my camera and one lens to capture the frost.

Here are two images, one is the full image and the other is cropped from that image. I cropped it because people could not really see it on my phone. When I made it bigger, the majority exclaimed that I should repost it with just a small section so that the water drops (aka melted frost) were accentuated.

This next leaf image is another favorite of mine.

To see the entire frost album click here.

 

 

 

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