Moment of the Week
My moment of the week stems directly off of my fresh off the press post, Go Ahead… Be Selfish. In that post, I wrote about finding your passion. I have to admit, that I am still searching for mine. I have tried a number of things and one that has stuck has been photography. I love landscape photography and for me to truly enjoy it, I need to be alone. I don’t have the time to go off on my own to take photos on a daily basis, but the opportunity to do it more often than I do is there, I just don’t take it. Maybe I should and maybe now I will because I did just that on Tuesday and it was fantastic!
For Christmas, my husband bought me a Lytro Light Field Digital Camera. It’s really an amazing concept, if you want to know more click here. Otherwise, my simple explanation is that the camera captures an image and as much light as possible. You don’t need to focus on focusing because that all happens after the photo has been taken. They call these photos living pictures because with just the click of a mouse, you can refocus the picture on any number of objects within that photograph. The trick is, capturing multiple objects on multiple planes.
So back to my moment… my son and I had off this week and we spent it right here at home in NYC. I decided that I needed wanted a couple of days to myself and so I signed him up for two days of mini-camp with his after-school program. When I do things like this, take time for myself, I do just that with it. So on Tuesday, after I dropped him off, I didn’t go home and clean. I didn’t do any errands. I went home and packed up my camera bag, put on an outfit that said “artist in training” and headed out!
I started off in the neighborhood of DUMBO, which is down under the Manhattan Bridge. It overlooks Manhattan and is a great place to grab some great shots of the city. With my iPod playing my favorite tunes and without any responsibilities to immediately attend to, I walked along the water at my own pace. If I wanted to spend 10 minutes just sitting and listening to a few good songs, I did. When I wanted to go back to recapture and image, I did. When I saw a sample store with some cool, chic clothes, I went in and tried on a pile (too bad I didn’t find anything I really liked). After spending a couple of hours on the Brooklyn side, I ventured over to lower Manhattan and towards The Freedom Tower. It was a gorgeous day for February and I even decided to walk across The Brooklyn Bridge to get back to Brooklyn. All in all, I walked almost 6 miles and took over 200 pictures. It was glorious!
And this is what I learned… my Lytro Illum camera isn’t the best for taking landscape photographs. It can be done, but to take advantage of its capabilities, you need something (interesting) in the foreground. It was much harder for me to find that. I also learned that the gray, cloudy day that it happened to be on Tuesday doesn’t make for interesting photographs, especially when the city and buildings happen to have so much glass and/or neutral colors. But, it does lend to black and white photos quite nicely. And finally, out of the 200+ photos, I kept 16. Therefore, I think that I am an aspiring amature photographer, lol.
Whatever… I had an amazing day of just being me!
P.S. These are animations of 1 photo, not a series. It is animated only to show you how this photograph can be focused and refocused again and again. Enjoy!
What was your moment of the week?
