I’ve uploaded three new pieces to the gallery from Thrusday and Friday’s sessions.

Under the Highway

Under the Highway was shot right by the Rishon Le-Zion train station in a kind of highway underpass. The version uploaded now is the final one, and needless to say, I’m very pleased. I especially appreciate the subtle texture and gradients that the light creates.

Abandoned Building and Abandoned Warehouse are both shots of the same building from different angles. Turns out that house served as part warehouse, part office for the winery right across the street.

As usual, they’re licensed creative commons, so knock yourselves out!

A while back I spotted an old abandoned building and promised myself one day I’ll shoot it. I did it, and I’m still not happy. I didn’t actually get inside even though it’s pretty easy. I guess that’s what you get for being a coward.

The thing is, the building is somewhat raised above the street level, has no stairs and has a fence all around it. Nothing you can’t get past, but enough to ruin shots. The only shots of it which I could take were my usual “looking up at a building” shots.

I was pretty frustrated and decided to at least climb up there, but decided not to step over the fence. I won’t be trespassing just yet.

But then a few blocks away I spotted another building, and this time I was a bit more satisfied with the result. Also, it was a bit more accessible.

Now I also found myself making obvious mistakes. Naturally it’s been very long since the last time I honesty held a camera. I came back home to discover exposures like this:

Stone wall. Note the top-left edge.

It is not really wrong per se except I wanted to get both the shadow and light. I should have compensated for it a bit (half a step maybe) to at least get the values somewhere out there. But in this case I simply pushed it beyond the end of the range, so it created some clipping. I should have known this stuff when I shot it…

And just as a bonus. I saw this cat nearby. I never thought that there were cats like this in the neighborhood. They’re usually aberrations with missing limbs, eyes and sport a wide array of congenital issues. But not this one. It also looked at me when I took its photo.

Friendly neighborhood cat

I’ll take some more, soon.

This one is a shot of the underside of the highway underpass, looking up.

Much like The Stadium, this one focuses on the shapes, texture, shadow and light of the building in question.

It was shot on December 10th at around 19:33. I came back from work and immediately decided to get my stuff together and get out there. Right by the train station, I saw this (among other things).

Most of the exposures weren’t all that great, thanks to me screwing around with the camera.

Under the Highway

And you know I wouldn’t just settle for any one.

So, coming soon, I’ll post the first batch of photos. Hang on tight, yall.

Thanks for pressing me to do it, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it until next year or at least after the exams. Enjoy, they’re all in the gallery.

Out of the blue comes a flapping. Like a large pile of paper being swept away sheet by sheet. My brother, who was in my room at that point for some reason, probably something to do with Super Paper Mario coming out later than expected, or maybe about why .Mac sucks or something like that. It’s always pretty much the same.

Usually when a gust of wind moves the blinds, the flapping sound is not as loud. Not even remotely as this. My brother just told me to ignore it, “must be the neighbors.”

“The neighbors doing what?”

He didn’t know. Of course, even if they were rubbing aluminum foil on the door, it wouldn’t be as loud as this, and besides it didn’t sound as if it came from outside at all.

I searched the living room. No metal blinds there. I looked at the dining table, and there it was, on the window sill. A pigeon.

The window consists of three main parts, three panes, the middle being about the size of the two other panes put together. The panes were split into a tiny window on the top and a significantly larger bottom section – altogether six parts each individually re-sealable. This style is extremely common in Denmark.

The bottom right window was open, and the hook was anchored to prevent the wind from closing it. The breeze was pleasant and somewhat cold. It must have flown in through the open window, and since it doesn’t understand the concept of glass, it didn’t realize that the other panes were, sadly, closed – sealed even.

Poor thing, flew in, and bumped against the window. The flapping noises as I soon realized, came from its futile attempts at flying out the sealed window. It’s not going to figure out how to get out any time soon.

My first reaction to this rare sight was of course, running back to my room to get all the cameras I could find. That is, my camera phone and my Canon SLR film camera, which was fortunately already loaded with about 17 frames of good black & white Kodak film.

In the meantime, it kept on trying to fly out the window.

“Come here, you have to see this!” I yelled to my brother, who stayed in my room.

“What is it?”

“A bird.”

At that point I heard the door slide and shut with a loud thud. Unlike me, he wasn’t very happy, and decided that as a precaution, he better lock himself in my room. At least I had my camera with me.

At that point I declared that bird as officially, “cute.” Under its new status, it was protected against cruelty and had to be photographed.

The poor thing had to go though, I just had to do something. Not only because my brother locked himself up in my room in panic insisting I get the damn thing out.

At some point I stopped throwing bread-crumbs at the bird, and decided to take the broom from the kitchen and show it the way out.

Not that I specifically wanted it out, I didn’t mind it being there, not at all. But then again, it saves me a lot of dealing with my brother, who refused to get out and started screaming at the top of his lungs for me to get it out.

After some wrestling with the bird, it was standing outside the window with its back to me. I reached out for my film camera on the table, and took the last few shots of the pigeon. Portraits, I was practically half a meter away from the pigeon, taking photographs.

I was out of film, and so I reached out for my phone, but by the time I turned to look at the table, I heard again, the flapping noise, and the bird was gone.

Pretty much all the stores I went to, obviously, had the well known UV filter which they tend to stick on the end of every camera for the extra money and polarizers which are there for a similar reason.

Everywhere I went, those were the only filters. Obviously, with the expection of Foto C. But Foto C have everything – that’s the point. Even then, Foto C only had an R8 filter.

So I looked online to find some more information abut filters, with a chart and everything summarizing the whole thing. Guess what – nothing. It’s as if nobody uses filters.

True, the effects that the filters generate can now be easily replicated, but it’s just not the same! Traditional photography has been in the process of slowly dying, but is it that bad? Well. I sure hope not.

I guess the artistic value will always be there…

Just as I began to think that global warming was really starting to show, it began to snow early this morning.

Funny. Last year (and the year before?) it was already snowing back in December, I recall. Though I could be wrong. I don’t know.

So what I’m really looking forward to seeing Fældeparken begin to fill up with snow, until eventually, giving me the shot that I’ve been waiting for 8 months. Now I just need a model.

It’s the same problem all over again, great idea for a movie though not actors; great idea for a shot though no models. If only I had someone who was willing to do those things..

Well, I’ll check next week what it’s like over there, bring my tripod and I guess at the worst case, photograph myself.

The concept was, free registration, and throughout a week or two, they will get five photographic tasks which they must complete. The users will then upload their photos to The Search and their photos will be given ratings (also from unregistered users).

Thus, in order to win, one would have to complete all five tasks, and get as many friends as possible to vote for them. That’s exactly why they don’t have to register, so it’s a piece of cake and you don’t get a hard time convincing them.

There are however horrible flaws with this system, both practically and both theorectically. It’s flawed by design.

Let’s consider the first problem, and I’ll start with something easy – there were no anti-fraud measures implemented. None. The votes were not even IP-restricted, so an IP could vote virtually as many times as they like (or at least, I was yet to see that limit being reached.) This alone turns the competition from a photo competition, to a cheating competition – who can write a piece of code to vote for themselves more times, and faster, or possibly run it on as many machines as possible. Ratings do not actually correspond to the actual quality of the photo, I’ve seen absolutely repulsive photos with anomalously high scores. I don’t think these people have 600 friends who are willing to vote for them. At the same time, amazing photos with unusually low scores. Cheaters didn’t get disqualified, punished or anything of that sort, since a system to take care of such issues was not implemented.

If there was some sort of system, or a system that would minimize cheating, or anything to effectively cripple cheaters, The Search would suck less, so to speak.

Even more annoying was having to visit the Apple Store for mission three, and if you went to Humac at Gammel Mønt, having to find out that they simply did not have what you need. They told me to go to a different reseller, simply because of difficulties they were having. Basically, if I don’t have a code, I can’t participate, and squeezing in another visit in my tight schedule would simply not be possible.

Interestingly enough, The Search in general was not aimed at photographers, it was aimed at teenagers and Swedes in their 20s taking pictures of their girlfriends or otherwise children (if they’re stupid enough to have them at such a young age). The “winner takes it all” prize scheme simply made the chances of winning slim (and even then if you won, the prizes are not all that good).

There was simply no “network effect” present. People don’t sign up to MySpace because they are attracted by the design (no, my eyes hurt from just looking at it), it’s all just because their friends have it, so therefor, they want to have it as well. Everyone likes using it now, and while The Search did offer a group option, it was almost never used, rendering that functionality worthless.

After begging for readers to vote and realizing that even that would simply make no difference at all and would be merely a superfluous attempt. Going the honest way wasn’t going to work, I figured. And thus, I, not being a very competitive person, simply decided to drop the whole thing. And I encourage you to do the same if you’re participating.