D:16 A Little Luck Never Hurt

Check your settings, and check them often.

There is an insurance company that is headquartered in my town, and they have a beautiful building. A great combination of glass, brick and stainless steel. I captured a few good images and headed home to check them out. I had left the ISO on 1600 from the night before. Way too much noise. Fail.

After my little failure, I decided it was a great night to try my hand at low-key shots. Don't ask me why I've never tried them before, because I don't have an answer.

I decided to make the subject of my shoot a little Buddha that a friend gave me. He picked it up in Hawaii in the 70's, and he thought I might benefit from some good luck. After some trial and error, today's post is what I came up with.

This is not my favorite shot, nor is it my worst. It was my 1st attempt at something new and I was satisfied with the outcome. After all, isn't that what this whole challenge is all about? Without pushing the limits of our creativity, how will we ever grow as artists?

As I picked up my manual tonight, I realized that it has less than 365 pages. So what do I do with the rest of the year? What are you planning to do when you run out of new pages? Perhaps pick a page in the morning, and apply that topic to the day's photo?

I asked Tasra Dawson the same question on Facebook, and the strangest thing happened.

We had a short conversation.

Why is this strange you ask?

I'll tell you why. Because in my world, Tasra is a celebrity, and I got to talk to her. My personal "celebrities" are professional photographers who also seem to be amazing people. I would much rather have lunch with someone like Tasra than any movie star. Social media has completely changed the way we interact with the world. Just 20 years ago aspiring photographers like myself could never have interacted so easily with a professional photographer across the country. I think sometimes we forget how amazing technology can be.

Manual: Page 52 - Preset White Balance
I've always used on of the presets for WB, but tomorrow I'm going to give this a shot. Maybe starting out with a custom WB will eliminate a small step in post-processing for me.

Images: I stumbled across Robert Frank's work as I searched for some examples of street photography. This is yet another avenue that I have never tried. I'm not generally comfortable with walking up to someone on the street and asking if I can take their picture. I hope to try it soon!