Last week I finished my 30-day personal photography challenge, and I’m finally getting around to putting up a follow-up to this post. These are the photos from the second half of the challenge.
Day 16: Egret on the stack at Younger Lagoon. A high surf warning is in effect through today and the waves are BIG! This rock stack sits at the mouth of Younger Lagoon and gets bashed by waves 24/7/365. Usually on days like today I’ll see pelicans and cormorants, true seabirds, hanging out on the stack and getting blasted by salt spray. Today a pair of snowy egrets (Egretta thula) landed on the stack but didn’t stick around for more than a few seconds. As birds of wetlands and marshes, they didn’t like it out there in these conditions.
© Allison J. Gong
Day 17: Sunrise. I know, another sunrise. But this time, instead of the panoramic scale of brilliant colors I wanted to zoom in and capture the chiaroscuro effect of the backlit trees.
© Allison J. Gong
Day 18: This day showcased one of my favourite marine artefacts. This is the test, or internal skeleton, of the red sea urchin Mesocentrotus (formerly Strongylocentrotus) franciscanus. I took this photo with the 35mm lens.
© Allison J. Gong
Day 19: Pie makings. This is the first since I started this project that I’ve not been really happy with any of my photos. Maybe that’s because I took a lot of shots of dead stuff at the marine lab this morning. However, this one does have a certain amount of visual interest, I think. As usual, the colors are spot on.
© Allison J. Gong
Day 20: Jade plant. Day 20 had me playing with depth of field again. I wanted to photograph something green, to remind myself of the resiliency of life. We somehow acquired this jade plant several years ago, and have dragged it with us from house to house. I think it has made three moves with us. I pretty much ignore it, and it had mostly died before last year’s El Niño rains brought it back to life. And now it looks lush and green again! And may I just keep singing the praises of this 35mm lens? I feel it is making me a much better photographer.
© Allison J. Gong
Day 21: Diving grebe. A friend invited me to join her at the harbor for some “therapeutic docking”. It took me about 10 minutes to remember that my concussed brain hurts when I lie with my head hanging over the edge of the dock. Oops. So I took pictures above water while my friend hunted for slugs. I really like this particular action shot of a grebe taking a dive from the surface. Bloop!
© Allison J. Gong
Day 22: Not a sunrise! Looks like another sunrise, doesn’t it? But I took this yesterday at 17:00 so it isn’t a sunrise even though the view is almost due east. So what is going on here?
© Allison J. Gong
Day 23: Super moon! I took on the super moon to practice some low light photography. I can see why photographers like those big telephoto lenses! My 18-140mm lens did a good job with details of the moon’s surface, which was nice to see. Had to do some digital zooming to get this view.
© Allison J. Gong
Day 24: Lavender flower. This day saw me experimenting with bokeh. Before I started playing with this camera I didn’t really appreciate the aesthetic potential of the non-subject material in a photograph. This study has really changed the way I look at the world. I feel that my artist’s eye has developed quite a lot.
© Allison J. Gong
Day 25: Setting moon. Last night we were fogged in at sea level so we went uphill to get above the marine layer. From that experiment it’s clear that I need more practice with night photography and long exposures. None of the pictures I took last night was very good in terms of technique, but one of them is aesthetically interesting and I may share it later. Anyway. This one is the super moon setting behind the trees this morning, at about the same time the sun was rising behind me.
© Allison J. Gong
Day 26: Gull in flight. I’m learning that photography is about the moment as much as the subject matter. In this case the subject is a western gull, a California Current endemic species, in flight. What do you think of the moment?
© Allison J. Gong
Day 27: Light through stained glass window. I went down to the church this afternoon to take pictures of the stained glass windows while the organ was getting fixed, then broken, then fixed again. I like the way the late afternoon sun shone through one of the south-facing windows and onto the opposite wall. I find the effect to be kind of spooky and not at all like the pictures I usually take. Maybe I need to play around more with angles as composition. The church dates back to 1864 (old by California standards!) and is the oldest church building still in use in Santa Cruz County. The gas lights, one fixture of which can be seen in the right-hand side of the photo, are part of the original architecture. The hanging electric lamp is not. We still use the gas lamps for evening services, and they are quite lovely when lit.
© Allison J. Gong
Day 28: San Juan Bautista. We went to San Bautista to meet family and friends for a birthday lunch and spent some time wandering around the mission grounds. This image captures the three elements of every California mission–the Indian supplicant, the cross, and the bell tower–and hints of the tension in these settlements. Like it or not, the missions are an important part of California history despite their record of enslavement of the people who lived here first.
© Allison J. Gong
Day 29: Chomp! This day was once again all about the moment. Lucie (calico) and Maggie (tortie) were napping together on the couch when Lucie woke up and started grooming Maggie. Usually it goes the other way around. This time Maggie put up with it for a long time before giving Lucie one warning chomp. After this they groomed each other for a while and then continued their nap for another couple of hours.
© Allison J. Gong
Day 30: Tiny mushrooms. I wanted the last entry to be something special so I waited until we went hiking at Big Basin Redwoods State Park for Green Friday. Hiking through the redwood forest we saw beauty all around us. And mushrooms everywhere! I was messing around with bokeh again and love how these little mushrooms look against the blurred background. My challenge is finished and I’ve learned a lot about my camera and taking pictures. Mission accomplished!
© Allison J. Gong
I feel that I’ve learned a lot during this challenge, both about my new camera and about photography in general. And I’ve developed a whole new appreciation for composition and especially for bokeh. I’ve completed the challenge, but intend to keep taking pictures as frequently as I can. I still have so much to learn!