Photo of the Week - The Easy Way Out

This week's photo - again, embarrassingly, shot with my cell phone - is from a project I am working on that is sort of an experiment in spontaneous image-making. Twice a day - at 8.45 and at 2.15 - my phone alarm buzzes, and I'm supposed to take a picture within five minutes of something interesting around me. Depending on the day, this is either difficult because I'm sitting at my same desk for the eleventh day in a row, or easy because I'm out on a shoot and there's all kinds of stuff around. I seem to be getting a lot of photos of my cat, since he's usually draped over the nearest surface.

These were some florist-shop daisies, the kind that have their heads grown so heavy that they come with a little plastic green sleeve around their necks to hold them up during shipping, so that they don't nod like a loaded sunflower. I like the way this one is sort of peeking into the sun, but staying mostly in the shade - a prudent course in the southern summer, no matter what your species, as I'm doing it myself - and the direct sun is giving the bottom petals an almost molten glow.

I called this post "The easy way out" because when I pulled up to do it,  I really didn't have any idea what to write about today, and I realized how much I use the photographs I post as a starting point for my writing. Even though my blog is very photography oriented, I primarily consider myself a writer, not an image-maker - but someone who's very focused on visual stimuli. I would never do a purely photography-based blog, but I can't imagine doing one that is strictly text, either. I need the photos for inspiration - to let the writing genie out of the bottle. Nothing earthshaking in that realization, just something I was pondering today :)

Photo of the Week: Savannah's Talmadge Bridge.

 This bridge went up a few years ago, and a lot - A LOT - of people hated it, because they felt it didn't match Savannah's older, antebellum style. I've always liked it though - it seems spidery and ethereal, and glitters in the sun like something made of a delicate, precious metal (Elven technology?) rather than boring old iron and steel. I suspect that years from now, once it's had some time to settle, people will feel about it the way they feel about I.M. Pei's Pyramid at the Louve - a shocking contrast to the setting, yes, but beautiful in it's own right, and somehow fitting for the space.

That being said, this bridge is almost impossible to photograph well - the area around it is kind of cluttered and there's no good sightlines, like you see in some of the famous night photos of bridges in New York or San Franciso - and I am really stoked (do people still say stoked? Am I a complete dork here?) that I got such a good shot, by taking an excursion boat out to the middle of the river. Thinking outside the box, you see. Or the boat. Whatever.

Finally, the definitive photo of the Talmadge Bridge! Let the haters hate. I like it.

Photo of the Week: Misty

Misty morning in the woods beyond our house, taken a few weeks ago when  the weather turned on itself and gave us a last few cool days before the true heat of the southern summer lays in. Shot, appallingly, with my cell phone. C'est la vie.