I'm away at a conference now and can't post anything new... But I suppose I could post a Red Bubble reject. This is one of the photos taken in Jan 2009 when my camera was brand new. We went out into the -40 degree weather and waist-deep snow to photograph old farmhouses. I remember the day this was taken quite clearly. The sun was bright, the sky a brilliant blue, and the little bits of grass sticking up were like yellow strings of gold against the snow. I liked these photos better in monochrome, though. The color versions seemed too busy.

All of these early farmhouse photos were slightly underexposed... I think because my camera was metering from the snow, and I knew nothing about post-processing then. Even the monochrome conversion was done in-camera. The vignetting occurred because I was using a cheap lens. In my opinion it adds to the vintage feeling of the shot. If I was trying to recreate this shot intentionally now, I probably wouldn't even be able to.

I'll probably do a complete overhaul of my Red Bubble profile soon. My three most viewed photos have 200 more views than their nearest competitors. To be honest, the most viewed photos are not my best photos, and if I am getting sick of looking at them, I'm sure others are too. I want to put up some better shots that have been buried on this blog, as well as some fresh new shots. All of that will have to wait for my laptop to start speaking to the hard-drive where my photos are stored, though. In other words, expect the overhaul some time in the next 10 years.

This is the latest Red Bubble Reject. It was taken in winter 2009, on the first real photo journey I took with my new camera. We went out into the country and photographed some abandoned old farmhouses.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much when I took this shot. I certainly didn't plan the shot or have any sort of composition in mind. I had never peered through the window of an abandoned house before, and it seemed kind of taboo. The inside of the house was also very dark. One of my main reasons for choosing a Nikon D700 was its reputation as the best DSLR on the market for low-light photography. I always seemed to be crouching in the ditch photographing wildflowers at dusk with my point-and-shoot and a close to 0% success rate. I was eager to try out the low light performance of my new camera, but I didn't actually think I'd come out with a useable photo. I was pleasantly surprised! I like the look of the peeling wallpaper and paint, and the snow (with little mouse footprints) on the ground. Despite the lack of planning for this shot, it placed quite high in an online photo competition I entered (32nd place from more than 400 entries).

I find it both comforting and unnerving to look at a photo like this. It's a reminder that all of the things we treasure right now, all of the things our lives revolve around, all of the things that cause anguish and stress... they all end up like this, someday.

I belong to an online art and photography community called Red Bubble. I joined this winter, and it has been a great place to see some interesting photos and share some of my work with others. I keep the photos in my Red Bubble gallery sorted by number of views. When I add new photos, I give them a few days at the top of the page to be seen before sorting them. I figure that this way, the "cream" will rise to the top. This is probably an oversimplification. I'm using the number of views as a surrogate marker for how much people like the photo. In reality, there are other variables at play. Some photos just look more compelling as thumbnails. A more interesting thumbnail might generate a click, even if the photo itself is mediocre. The converse is also true. I think the hummingbird photo I posted on Red Bubble is among the best I've taken. The bird can't be distinguished from the green background in the thumbnail, and I think that's why it has been relegated to second-page obscurity. Some photos fit nicely into all sorts of groups and challenges and develop a greater presence on the site. Others aren't so easily pigeonholed, and rely solely on random visits to my profile for their views.

I have decided to keep my Red Bubble profile pared down to only 60 photos (or 3 pages) and eliminate the ones with the fewest number of views. I decided this after looking through a few profiles of people who have thousands of photos in their galleries. It's rare for me to go beyond the first page when I view someone's profile, let alone scroll through 200+ pages. I want my profile to maintain some sort of meaning.

One of the reasons I started this blog is that Red Bubble on its own is not the ideal forum for displaying my photography. For one thing, it's a site geared toward selling art, and this creates certain biases. The photos most appropriate and appreciated on Red Bubble are polished works, designed to sell and appeal to the masses. I want a forum to display some photos that maybe aren't technically brilliant, but are personal favorites of mine. some of these photos have interesting stories behind them. Others just highlight quirky tidbits and personal fascinations of mine (old machinery, wood macros, flower petals, etc).

The first photos I pruned from my Red Bubble gallery were taken when I was just starting out. Some of these old pictures are gems, but there's a steep learning cure in photography, and I take a very different photo now than I did a year ago. A lot of these older pictures no longer represent my "best" work, and I have let them fade unceremoniously into the ether. It was inevitable, though, that some of my favorites would fall off the Red Bubble site. I've decided to give those a permanent place on this blog. Without further ado, I present you with the first Red Bubble Reject: Rusty.

I got my new camera on December 30, 2008. Despite the fact that the temperature was between -15 degrees and -40 degrees Celsius most days, I was desperate to try it out. Every time I had a weekend off, Graem and I would bundle up and jump in the car with the camera and tripod. We investigated a lot of abandoned farms and houses. After a few hours of photography, I was exhausted from tramping through fields of snow up to my waist. My pants and long underwear were soaked right through, and I felt ready to drop dead from fatigue and hypothermia. Nonetheless, these are among my best winter memories. This is a picture of an old rusty piece of farm machinery taken in February 2009.

I have lived in cities my whole life, and I am very naive about farming. A coworker recently mocked me because I didn't know what a combine was. I knew it was some kind of farming implement, but I certainly couldn't sketch one or point one out in a picture. Despite my ignorance, I am fascinated by farm machinery. I especially like older rusty tools. There's something about abandoned things that I find moving: once-useful tools rusting in the overgrown weeds, once-inhabited buildings now deserted, once-loved toys now forgotten... These subtle reminders of impermanence are my favorite subjects for photography.

The selective blur effect in this photo is created by a Lensbaby Composer. I used to think the Lensbaby was a poor man's tilt-shift lens... now I realize it's more just a toy. It takes some interesting photos, nonetheless.

I used the Lensbaby to make it appear that the old rusty tractor was racing across the field.

I have a strange fascination for machinery of any kind, although I rarely understand what the machines are supposed to do.