Penning Photography Daily

Happy Accidents: images which pop with feeling or interest when they have technical mistakes.

I thought about turning my hotel room into a mini studio for this one. I put the comfy chair (Monty Python: “Oh No, Not the Comfy Chair!) angled against the light wall. Turned the coffee table on it’s long end and used that as a tripod (mine is in Virginia, waiting my arrival tomorrow for a commercial shoot). Set up the wireless shutter and flash thingies. Set my flash behind me to light up the wall behind me.

So there I was, taking shot after shot, and varying the basics, light, shutter speed, pose, etc. At one point the flash turned off. I turned it back on, forgetting that it defaulted to full auto and pumped out the light like crazy.

And now we have this result.

Of all the frames taken, this one pulled me in with my eyes and expression. Forget that it’s totally blown out, it just speaks to me.

Again, proof to me, that it’s better to save all shots. There’s hidden goodness undiscovered in those frames.

Cuppa Coffee and a Crosswalk.

As I was walking from my hotel to the conference this morning, I took note of the folks around me. I kept capturing frames of people and things of interest.

This gem popped out of the screen at me and I knew I had a good one for today.

I like the perspective that my ultra-wide angle lens, the Sigma 10-20mm gives here. The crosswalk looms large, like the oncoming traffic does, perhaps, to this fellow’s eye as he surveys the scene for safe passage.

I thought about cropping it, but the elements at the edge of the frame intrigue me and make the scene complete. To my eye at least.

I saw my reflection and had to use this.

In fact, I went back for a second take, interrupted by a fellow traveler.

Funny how it was, again, the last frame that was the best. I kept the others not used, for some unseen future use.

Riding the steel cable.

10th floor please.

The view out my hotel window.

A long day of meetings and intelectual head scratching, along with networking with my information technology peers. By the time the evening rolled around, I was beat.

Instead of going out to find a meal, I got takeout from a local oriental restaurant. “Hot & Spicy” is what I asked for. I got medium but the vegetables were fresh and crunchy. Good thing I asked for extra hot sauce, it came in handy.

Speaking of hot.

Not really, but this is the view out my window. Night landscapes are fascinating. I prefer to explore them with other folks, for safety reasons, in places I’m unfamiliar with. So, I didn’t venture forth tonight. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Another day, another opportunity.

Speaking of hot, I spiced this self portrait up with some split toning in Lightroom 2.

After taking some captures out the window of my hotel room, I turned around and noticed my shadow.

Shadows is more like it.

Multiples of me.

Hand held, as I was trying to stand still and slowly exhale. Worked out ok. =)

Not exciting, except if your main drive goes bad, this thing can be a lifesaver.

It’s an external disk drive reader. What’s nice about it? Well, I by any old SATA disk and pop it into this thing. It handles 2.5 inch laptop drives as well as the 3.5 inch ones like the 320 gigabyte that you see here. It can connect with either USB 2.0 or eSATA.

I brought it with me to do on the fly backups of the daily photos I’ll be taking. Really, I will be. Today was a travel day. There weren’t too many good opportunities to take my Pentax K20D out of it’s safe harbor. I did take a couple of photos with my camera phone, but I decided to use this instead.

Backup early and often. It’s not a question of if, it’s just a matter of when a data loss will occur.

I like this portrait of me, sitting in a hotel room. My laptop in front of me and my camera in the other hand.

My expression surprised me when I saw it after I captured this frame. The tired look accentuated by resting my head on my hand. A slight smile. Something about it interests me.

I decided to convert this to black & white in order to concentrate on the expression and tones.